"This Ambitious Aim"

The young Negro who came to call on the Reverend John Miller Dickey of Oxford, Pa. one day in 1852 had an unusual request to make. He wanted a college education so that he could go into the ministry, but though Oxford is above the Mason-Dixon Line, there was no college in the vicinity that would take him. Pastor Dickey decided that something should be done: two years later he managed to persuade the state to charter the first Negro institution of higher learning in the U.S.

This week white and Negro notables from all over the world are helping Lincoln University* celebrate its 100th anniversary. President Milton Eisenhower of Pennsylvania State will be on hand, and so will alumni from as far off as South Africa. In 100 years, though it has only one half of 1% (300 students) of the total U.S. Negro college enrollment, Lincoln's reputation has grown out of all proportion to its size.

Pullman Porters & Justices. When it first opened its doors, the school had four students and only one professor--the president, John P. Carter. At one point Founder Dickey had to mortgage his house to save the school, and the struggling campus was continuously harassed by white raids from Maryland. It was not until the 40-year presidency of Princeton Man Isaac Rendall that Lincoln began to come into its own.

Today, under Horace Mann Bond, its first Negro president, Lincoln spreads out over 275 acres of campus, farm and woodland. Its 15 buildings are an architectural assortment ("You might call them Honest Redbrick or Grotesque Style," says one professor), but they house a first-rate liberal-arts college as well as one of the top Negro seminaries. Though Lincoln has no other professional schools, its alumni account for 17% of U.S. Negro doctors and scientists and 10% of U.S. Negro lawyers. Its graduates have served in twelve state legislatures, been U.S. Ministers to Haiti, Santo Domingo and Liberia. One alumnus, ex-Pullman Porter Hildrus A. Poindexter, is a ranking authority on tropical diseases; N.A.A.C.P. Special Counsel Thurgood Marshall graduated in 1930; a year before, Lincoln produced Poet Langston Hughes.

Missionaries & Prime Ministers. With its long line of missionaries, the university has had an international influence greater than any of its rivals. It has students from the Virgin Islands, British Guiana, Kenya, Nigeria, the Gold Coast, the French Cameroons and Liberia, as well as from 22 states in the U.S. Of all its alumni, perhaps the two most notable are Africans: Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nationalist leader of Nigeria, and Kwame Nkrumah. Prime Minister of the Gold Coast (TIME, Feb. 9, 1953). Many of Lincoln's students have returned to their homelands with a better understanding of the great progress made by the U.S. Negro since the school was founded.

Last week Lincoln was embarking on a $4,000,000 fund-raising program. Ultimate goal: 1,000 students. But more and more Lincoln hopes that its students will be both white and foreign. After 100 years the university has come to the conclusion that the "Negro school" is obsolete. "The need today," says President Bond, "is far greater. It is worldwide understanding based on the concept of brotherhood. Nowhere is there a university designed and equipped [so well] to make this ambitious aim a reality."

* Not to be confused with coeducational Lincoln University (for Negroes) at Jefferson City, Mo.

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