Lincoln University Founded as First Degree-Granting HBCU

The Ashmun Institute — chartered in Pennsylvania on January 1, 1854 and renamed Lincoln University in 1866 — became the first institution in the world to provide higher education in the arts and sciences to Black men. Founded by Presbyterian minister John Miller Dickey and his wife Sarah Emlen Cresson, it granted its first degrees in 1859. Alumni would include Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall.