Lincoln University Archives: A Student Guide

Back in 2009 I wrote a student guide for the Lincoln University Archives and with funding from a faculty development grant printed 250 copies of faculty, staff and student use. It is available for sale on Lulu.com, and a pdf file of the document may be downloaded at no cost from that site.

My last day in Special Collections

Today is my last day working in Lincoln University’s Special Collections and Archives, as my position of Special Collections Librarian has been eliminated. Hence, this will very likely be my final post. The Langston Hughes Memorial Library building remains closed, as renovations continue, and I remain cautiously optimistic that once the building reopens the decision-makers will have second thoughts about leaving Lincoln’s historic archival records unattended and will decide to hire an archivist to oversee them.

For the coming academic year I will remain on campus, with the title of Assistant Professor in Special Programs, working in the Office of Institutional Research, assisting the grants writer.

LU yearbooks through 1980 now available online

This morning I completed the final uploads to our digital collection on the HBCU Library Alliance's server of our yearbooks through 1980. This was the final group of materials to be uploaded of the projects funded by our most recent grant from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC). The others, described in previous posts, include Board of Trustee and Faculty Minute books, Garnett Literary Society materials, and even the earliest library catalogue of Ashmun Institute and Lincoln University.

Lincoln University's entire collection on this website is organized chronologically, so minute books are intermingled with yearbooks, photographs, etc. We now have 113 items, on six pages of the website (each page has a 20-item limit), so to see all items, it is necessary to navigate through all pages by hitting the "next page" button.

Here, again, is a link to the website: http://contentdm.auctr.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Flupa&CISOSTART=1,1

New Digitized Materials Online

Thanks to our most recent grant from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission we have added additional digitized archival materials to our collection on the HBCU Library Alliance’s site “celebrating the founding of the historically black college and university.” These include the 1867 library catalogue for Ashmun Institute and Lincoln University, several Faculty Minute books (covering the years 1872-1943), and some early class books and yearbooks (1900, 1901, 1923, 1928-31).

Melvin Tolson appears in the 1923 yearbook (“The Paw”) and Langston Hughes in the 1929 yearbook (“Lincoln Phi Delta Theta News”) as graduating seniors, while Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe appears in the 1931 yearbook (“The Lion”) as a graduate instructor. Unfortunately, Thurgood Marshall’s picture never made it into the yearbook, probably because he had to drop out for a while after an accident and did not graduate with his class.

Over the next few weeks we will also upload additional faculty minute books to the site – through the mid-1970s. The rest of the yearbooks (through the mid-1970s) will come later, as well as the minutes and other materials of the Garnet Literary Society. Lots to look forward to! To go to the collection, click here.

Lincoln University’s Archives – a resource for genealogical researchers

It should not be surprising to anyone that I am often contacted by African Americans doing genealogical research who want to learn more about an ancestor who, they know or believe, graduated from Lincoln University. It is always a pleasure to talk to or correspond with them and to alert them to the resources that we have digitized and made available from our website – alumni directories, college catalogues (which in past years included lists of students and information about their class rank and awards at graduation), alumni newsletters, student newspapers, etc. – that allow individuals to do their own research, without even visiting our campus.

Two genealogical researchers who have contacted me over the course of my nine years working in the Lincoln University Archives stand out as unusual, in that their genealogical search for an African-American ancestor came about after learning in middle age that they even had such an ancestor; in short, both these individuals had grown up assuming that their ancestry was strictly European.

In the first case, the individual learned in late middle age that his father had “passed” into the white community as a young man. It was only after his father’s death that he tracked down other members of his father’s family and discovered for the first time the reason for the total estrangement between his own nuclear family and his father’s extended family all the while he was growing up. He contacted Lincoln after learning that his grandfather, whom he had never known, was a Lincoln University graduate (class of 1888).

The second case occurred just last week, when an individual contacted me looking for information – and if possible, a photograph – of his grandfather, an 1897 graduate of Lincoln. This gentleman had no knowledge of his own African roots until he met his African American father for the first time about seven years ago. He described the experience of meeting and getting to know his father as wonderful, and declared his strong interest in finding more about his grandfather. Amazingly, it turned out that one of our online resources, the 1893-1901 Student Record Book that is part of our HBCU Library Alliance digital collection, contained a “thumbnail” size black and white photo of his grandfather!

We are very pleased to be able to help all descendants of Lincoln University graduates in their quest for information about their ancestors, and we continue to “grow” our collection of digitized resources that are available from our website. Our latest PHMC grant is funding the microfilming and digitization of yearbooks, Garnet Literary Society materials, and faculty and board of trustee minutes up to the mid-twentieth century and will result in significant contributions to our online archival collections, once they are complete in 2010.

Albert Einstein photos and letter now online

Albert Einstein's letter to Lincoln University of January 1946, accepting an invitation to visit campus, is now accessible online, as are several images of the event. The letter is in German, and for those of us who do not understand German, we have also posted a translation that Lincoln University registrar and language professor Dr. Paul Kuehner rendered at the time, along with a letter from Dean Joseph Newton Hill to Marianne Grubb, the wife of Lincoln Univerisity language professor Armistead Otey Grubb (who was to become the Acting President of Lincoln after Horace Mann Bond's departure), transmitting the other two letters. Mrs. Grubb, according to correspondence that I have had with her daughter Susan, was instrumental in arranging the visit, and also provided hospitality in her home to Dr. Einstein on the day of his visit.

That visit, on May 3, 1946, was chronicled by several black and white pictures that we have in the archives. The pictures that we have posted online include two of Bond and Einstein in their academic robes, posing for pictures after the conferring of an honorary (Doctor of Laws)on the great physicist; one of Einstein and Bond with other black robed men, one of whom is former LU president William Hallock Johnson; one of Einstein at a blackboard in a University Hall classroom; and one of him, also in University Hall surrounded by children -- the children of faculty members, according to the student newspaper, The Lincolnian, in which this photo also appears, along with a very brief article describing the event of Einstein's visit.

These various items relating to Dr. Einstein's visit to Lincoln University on May 3, 1946 are posted on the HBCU Library Alliance's Digital Collection Celebrating the Founding of the Historically Black College and University, in Lincoln University's collection.

To go directly to that collection, in which we have posted items chronologically (so look for 1946 for the Einstein materials)...CLICK HERE:

It should be noted that Albert Einstein's visit to Lincoln University coincided with a conference on "Objectives and Curriculum" that occurred on May 3rd and 4th and included a session with W.E.B. DuBois as guest speaker -- written up in the same issue of the Lincolnian as the brief article about Einstein's visit (June 4, 1946).

And of course the Lincolnian is available as well, from our website, or by following this direct link...CLICK HERE.

19th Century Ashmun Institute and Lincoln University Newspaper Clippings Now Online

Thanks to the Chester County Historical Society, which has a clipping file of old newspaper articles about Lincoln University; to community resident Hersey Grey, a long-time collector of local history who provided us with the digital files; and to the HBCU Library Alliance's Digital Collection Celebrating the Founding of the Black College and University, which has provided a venue on its CONTENTdm server for Lincoln University to host digital files, we have been able to share some old newspaper clippings, going back to 1853, when the Presbytery of New Castle organized the Ashmun Institute.

These clippings are from the American Republican, the Daily Local News, the Jeffersonian, the Oxford Press, and the Village Recorder, and span the years 1853-1874. They are posted on the website as a compound object, under the title, "1853-1874 Newspaper Clippings of Ashmun Institute and Lincoln University (PA)," appearing second in the list, which is arranged chronologically.

Click here for a direct link to our collection.