Fred Jerome’s opinion piece is excellent—sobering and well written. However, I submit one point of clarification. In the article Lincoln University is described as “the oldest black college in the Western world.” Founded in 1854 as the Ashmun Institute, the college was renamed Lincoln University in 1866, in honor of Abraham Lincoln. However, Cheyney University, also mentioned by Jerome, is the oldest historically black university in the US, founded in 1837 for “the descendants of the African Race,” according to its original charter.
Cheyney was founded, in part, as a response to the August 1829 race riots of Cincinnati, wherein violations of black codes were used as a pretext for a mob attack on the city’s African American population. The codes, which had become state law in 1804, barred blacks and mulattos from living in Ohio without a legally recognized certificate of freedom, barred them from attending public schools, and required a bond for good behavior. The riots resulted in more than 1000 members of the city’s African American population being driven from their homes.
