This Day in History:
First African-American College Is Chartered April 29, 1854 Ashmun Institute was
established in southern
Chester County, Pennsylvania. Created by an act of the
Pennsylvania legislature, the
institution was named after Jehudi Ashman. Ashman was the U.S. agent
who assisted in the preservation
of an African-American colony in
Africa that later became Liberia. The institution named for
him was initially chartered to
provide theological, scientific and
classical training to African-Americans. Under its first college
president, John Pym Carter,
Ashmun Institute opened on January 1, 1857. It was renamed Lincoln University
in 1866, after the end of the U.S. Civil War.