The Negro Publicly-Supported College in Missouri

There is now only one publicly-supported college in the state of Missouri which before 1954 was officially designated as Negro.' Lincoln University, located at Jefferson City the state capital, and known earlier as Lincoln Institute, was founded as a school for the training of colored youth in 1866 with money contributed by the 62nd and 65th Colored Infantry, consisting for the most part of men recruited from Missouri.* This was a unique exception to the general practice during the Reconstruction Period of establishing Negro schools on the initiative of and from the contributions of philanthropic whites. After a very precarious existence during the first fourteen years of its life, this school was made a state institution in 1879 and the legislature began to make small biennial appropriations for its maintenance. College work was added in 1887, and with the passage of the second Morrill Act in 1890 it became a Land Grant College. With the up-surge of a new spirit of democracy after the First World War, the name was changed by act of the legislature to Lincoln University in 1921, and it was designated as the Negro counterpart of the state university for whites. It was accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary