Lincoln University of Missouri

Overview

Lincoln University is a public historically Black land-grant university in Jefferson City, Missouri — the first Black university in the state — founded in 1866 by African-American veterans of the Civil War. Soldiers of the 62nd U.S. Colored Infantry, largely recruited in Missouri, ran educational programs during the war and raised $6,300 at war’s end to establish a school; it was founded by James Milton Turner, a student of educator John Berry Meachum, and headed by white abolitionist officer Richard Foster, who opened the Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City in 1866 with a Black student body and both Black and white teachers. The state provided $5,000 a year to train teachers for its new public school system for Black Missourians, most of them formerly enslaved. Under the 1890 Morrill Act, Missouri designated the school a land-grant university; by 1921 it offered graduate programs and was officially recognized as a university, becoming Lincoln University of Missouri.