April 6, 1879 . . . Lincoln University Receives First Regular Appropriation

Lincoln Institute, which became a state institution in 1879 and received its first regular biennial appropriation April 6 that year, originated in a movement of the 62nd Regiment of U.S. Colored Infantry in 1865. Members, almost all of who were from Missouri, contributed $5000 to establish an African-American coeducational school in the state. The money was given from their pay upon their discharge from service January 1866. Members of the 65th Regiment of the U.S. Colored Infantry, also of Missouri, later contributed $1379. Although funds were solicited from the East, the money for establishment primarily came from black Missourians.

On June 25, 1866, Lincoln Institute at Jefferson City was incorporated, one of the first educational institutions named for Abraham Lincoln. Preparatory classes began September 17, 1866, in a one-room building with two students attending. Attendance soon increased, Festus Reed was employed to assist R.B. Foster, president and first teacher, and in June 1871 the institute building was completed. By an act of March 16, 1870, the state agreed to pay $2500 semi-annually to the institute as a teachers training institution.

A normal department was established in 1870, followed by a college department in 1887, and industrial, mechanical arts, and home economics departments in 1891. Also in 1891 the school became a land-grant college. In 1921 Walthall M. Moore, the first African-American to serve in the Missouri Legislature, introduced a bill that changed the school's name to Lincoln University.

The school was accredited as a teachers training institution in 1926, and as a four-year college of arts and science in 1934. Graduate instruction began in 1940, and a School of Journalism was established two years later. After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954, Lincoln University opened its doors to all applicants who met its entrance criteria.

For primary source material on the early history of Lincoln University see:

• Bell, Morris Frederick (1849-1929), Architectural Drawings, 1883-1895
• Benecke Family, Papers, 1816-1989

A detailed source of information on Lincoln University is W. Sherman Savage's The History of Lincoln University (1939), which was reprinted by the the State Historical Society of Missouri in 1996.