- Posted in All University
- Category: Campus News
Honorees are: Dr. Lee C. Bollinger, President of Columbia University; Namibia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Lincoln University Alumnus Hidipo Hamutenya; Actor Danny Glover; Africa America Institute; Businessman Harold Doley, Jr., of Doley Securities; and Distinguished Lincoln Alumni Dr. Edgar O. Mandeville '63 and Dr. W. Alexander Miles '51.
Lincoln University, located in Pennsylvania, will celebrate its 150th Anniversary at a Gala Awards Reception at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers, 811 Seventh Avenue in New York City, on May 6, 2004 at 6 p.m. Tickets to the 150th Anniversary Gala Awards Reception are $250.
At the Gala Awards Reception, the following honorees will be the first to receive awards in the following categories:
- Dr. Lee C. Bollinger, President of Columbia University, will receive the first Thurgood Marshall Award for Civil Rights from the late Supreme Court Justice’s alma mater for bringing the University of Michigan affirmative action case to the U.S. Supreme Court last spring.
- Actor Danny Glover will receive the Langston Hughes Award for the Arts (named after the world-renowned poet, playwright and Lincoln University graduate of the Class of 1929) for the tremendous impact he has made in the world over the years as an artist and activist.
- The Honorable Hidipo Hamutenya, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Namibia and Lincoln University graduate Class of 1968, will receive the Kwame Nkrumah Award for Outstanding Leadership(named after the founder of the Independence Movement in Africa and first president of Ghana and Lincoln University graduate of the Class of 1939) for his role in the freedom, independence and development of Namibia.
- The Africa-America Institute will receive the Horace Mann Bond Award for Education (named after the former president and graduate of Lincoln University who co-founded the Africa America Institute in 1953) as an acknowledgement of AAI’s 50th Anniversary and an institutional offspring of Lincoln University.
- Harold Doley, Jr., Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of Doley Securities, Inc. will receive the Lincoln University Award for Business in recognition for his 30th anniversary as the first African American to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and own the oldest African American investment banking firm in the nation.
- Dr. Edgar O. Mandeville of the Class of 1963 and Dr. W. Alexander Miles of the Class of 1951 will receive the Lincoln University Distinguished Alumni Award for their outstanding contributions to the health of African Americans.
“Since we are at the dawn of the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education,” said Lincoln University President Ivory V. Nelson, Ph.D., “we thought it was appropriate to link the past with the present as we prepare for the future by creating the Thurgood Marshall Award for Civil Rights out of the tradition of the late Supreme Court Justice’s lifework and present it to Dr. Bollinger, who personified that spirit of racial justice by spearheading the University of Michigan’s affirmative action case to the U. S. Supreme Court last year to ensure that the dreams of young African Americans and other students of color could be fulfilled. In this way, Thurgood Marshall’s and Lincoln University’s legacy continues.”
“We have extended this concept,” continued President Nelson, “to include the Kwame Nkrumah Award for Outstanding Leadership that will be given to Namibia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Hidipo Hamutenya, the Langston Hughes Award for the Arts to Actor Danny Glover and the Horace Mann Bond Award for Education that will be presented to the Africa America Institute as an institution. At the same time, we are starting new traditions by instituting the Lincoln University Award for Business to Harold Doley, Jr. of Doley Securities and the Lincoln University Distinguished Alumni Award to Dr. Mandeville and Dr. Miles.”
Actress Sheryl Lee Ralph will be the Mistress of Ceremonies. Music will be provided by Ray, Goodman and Brown, Harlem Renaissance Orchestra and The Sound Choice. There will also be a silent auction and fashion presentation.
“The purpose of the event is to highlight the fact that Lincoln University is a national treasure,” said Lincoln alumnus of the Class of 1968 and Trustee Warren R. Colbert, Sr., CIMA, First Vice President-Investments, UBS Financial Services Inc. and Chair of the 150th Anniversary New York City Gala Awards Committee. “This is why we have carefully selected who should receive our first awards named after some of our very visible alumni. They reflect the kind of training that over 2000 Lincoln alumni in the tri-state area have received.”
Lincoln has the unprecedented distinction among all of the nation's colleges of having two of its distinguished alumni honored with commemorative, first-class mailing stamps by the U.S. Postal Service. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, class of 1930 and world-acclaimed poet Langston Hughes, class of 1929, were honored in January 2003 and February 2002, respectively.
Lincoln University was founded by Presbyterians in 1854 as the nation’s first Historically Black University in the midst of the Abolition movement spearheaded by the Quakers in Pennsylvania. Its mandate at that time was to create an institution to provide higher education for Black males. (The institution became coeducational in 1952.) Currently, there are approximately 112 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) across the nation.
Being the first institution of higher learning for people of color in the segregated America of the pre-Civil War era, Lincoln had to fulfill the dual role of serving as the intellectual safe haven for the nurturing of new ideas, strategies and skills for its students while adjusting its curriculum to prepare its students for their role in a future world that Lincoln University and its eventual “underground railroad” type of relationship with fellow HCBU’s were creating through the ramifications of the Civil War, Jim Crow Era, the Civil Rights Movement, the Independence Movement in Africa and the Global Information Society.
The resulting list of “firsts” that Lincoln University has accomplished institutionally and through its graduates underscores its leadership role in conceptualizing and implementing major new initiatives worldwide. Among the more visible graduates of Lincoln University including the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall ’30 are: poet and playwright Langston Hughes ’29; the founder of the Independence Movement in Africa and first President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah ‘39; the first president of Nigeria, the late Nnamdi Azikiwe ’30; the first African American bishop of the United Methodist Church, Roy C. Nichols ’41; and the first African American female rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, Lillian Fishburne ’71.
As an institution, Lincoln University graduates have created other institutions including:
- The Africa America Institute headquartered in New York City
- Eight other universities in the United States and abroad
- Crossroads Africa which served as the model for the U.S. Peace Corps
- The first Alumni Magazine published by any college or university (1884)
Currently, Lincoln University is one of the nation’s largest producers of African Americans with baccalaureate degrees in the physical sciences, computer and information sciences, and biological and life sciences. More than 25 percent of its undergraduate degrees are awarded each year in biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics and computer science. Lincoln enrolls approximately 2,000 undergraduate and graduate students.