Lincoln University (Missouri)

History

Lincoln University was founded as Lincoln Institute on January 14, 1866, conceived by the Black enlisted men of the 62nd United States Colored Infantry, a Missouri regiment stationed near Galveston, Texas, at the close of the Civil War. The soldiers — most of whom had been enslaved less than two years earlier and were paid roughly thirteen dollars a month — collectively pledged approximately $5,000 of their discharge pay to establish a school in Missouri. The 65th U.S. Colored Infantry contributed an additional $1,400. The soldiers stipulated three founding conditions: the school would be created for the express benefit of African Americans, it would be located in Missouri, and it would combine classical and vocational education.

Lincoln Institute opened in Jefferson City in September 1866. In 1879, the state of Missouri assumed control of the school, and in 1890 it was designated the state's land-grant institution for African Americans under the Second Morrill Act — joining a cohort of Black land-grant colleges established to comply with that statute's requirement that segregated states either admit Black students to existing land-grant universities or fund a separate institution. The school was renamed Lincoln University in 1921.

In the 1930s, Lincoln University became the focal point of one of the most significant pre-Brown civil rights cases. Lloyd Gaines, a 1935 Lincoln graduate, applied to the all-white University of Missouri School of Law and was rejected on racial grounds. The NAACP, with Charles Hamilton Houston as lead counsel, took his case to the Supreme Court. In Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938), the Court ruled that Missouri had to either admit Gaines to its law school or establish a separate, equal facility — a decision that became a key precedent in the legal strategy leading to Brown v. Board of Education.

Lincoln remains a 1890 land-grant institution and a member of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. Today, its student body reflects the demographic shifts confronting many HBCUs in border states: as of fall 2025, white students slightly outnumber Black students on campus — a contested but materially relevant feature of the institution's contemporary identity that the university has publicly engaged with. The recent trajectory is nonetheless one of measurable growth: fall 2025 enrollment rose 9.8 percent to 2,256 — the largest percentage increase among Missouri's public four-year institutions for the second consecutive year — alongside a 31 percent year-over-year rise in Black undergraduate enrollment and the strongest first-year retention rate (64.4 percent) in more than three decades. A fully funded $45.5 million Health & Security Sciences Institute is scheduled to open in summer 2026. The university marked its 160th year at commencement in May 2026. In fall 2025 Lincoln also completed a fully funded $23.5 million renovation of its largest residence hall, part of a broader campus reinvestment underwritten by state and federal land-grant funding.

Notable Alumni

A representative selection of graduates who shaped law, civil rights, and military aviation.

Significance

Lincoln University occupies a singular place in American educational history: it is the only HBCU established not by missionary boards, denominational benefactors, or state legislatures, but by Black veterans themselves — men who had just won their freedom by force of arms and who chose to spend their discharge pay on schooling for the next generation. The institution stands as a material refutation of the persistent claim that Black self-organization required white tutelage to take useful form.

Lincoln's role in the Gaines litigation also makes it one of the most consequential HBCUs in the legal architecture of desegregation. The case established that the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson placed an affirmative duty on segregated states — a doctrinal opening that Houston, Marshall, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund would press relentlessly over the next sixteen years.

Source notes: This entry draws from Lincoln University institutional history; BlackPast.org's "Lincoln University (Missouri) (1866- )"; the African American Registry; and contemporaneous published records on the 62nd and 65th United States Colored Infantry and on Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938). Enrollment figures reflect fall 2025 institutional data. Discrepancies noted in the corrections log.