This Day in History: First African-American College Is Chartered

This Day in History: First African-American College Is Chartered

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.