[6] Its main campus is located on 422 acres (170.8 ha) near the town of Oxford in southern Chester County, Pennsylvania.

[8] In 1854, John Miller Dickey, a Presbyterian minister, and his wife, Sarah Emlen Cresson, a Quaker, founded Ashmun Institute, later named Lincoln University, in Hinsonville, Pennsylvania.

The college attracted highly talented students from numerous states, especially during the decades of legal segregation in the American South.

[10] In June 1921, days after the Tulsa race massacre, President Warren Harding visited Lincoln to deliver the commencement address.

He spoke about the need to seek healing and harmony in that incident's aftermath, as well as to honor Lincoln alumni who were among the 367,000 African-American servicemen who fought in World War I.

In November 2014, university president Robert R. Jennings resigned under pressure from faculty, students and alumni after comments relating to issues of sexual assault.

[20] Lincoln University's International and Study Abroad Program had student participation in Service Learning Projects in the countries of Ecuador, Argentina, Spain, Ireland, Costa Rica, Japan, France, Cambodia, Zambia, Liberia, Ghana, Kenya, Russia, Australia, Thailand, the Czech Republic, Mexico, and South Africa The Lincoln-Barnes Visual Arts program is a collaboration between Lincoln University and the Barnes Foundation.

Lincoln University main campus is 422 acres (170.8 ha) with 56 buildings totaling over one million gross square feet.

[22] The four-story, 150,000-square-foot (14,000 m2) Ivory V. Nelson Science Center and General Classroom High Technology Building was completed in 2008.

The arch was dedicated by President Warren G. Harding in 1921, to honor the Lincoln men who served in World War I.

Its collection outgrew the building's capacity after notable 1929 alumnus and renowned poet, James Mercer Langston Hughes, bequeathed the contents of his personal library to the university upon his death in 1967.

Holdings include over 185,000 volumes as well as databases containing in excess of 30,000 journal titles, periodicals, eBooks, and media offerings.

Marshall graduated in the class of 1930, directed the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund in groundbreaking cases, and was the first African American to be appointed as a justice to US Supreme Court.

[24][25] Lincoln has over 60 student organizations serving multiple interests including fashion, arts, social justice, religious, international, cultural, service, leisure, media, and publishing.

Supporters began to explore plans to move the collection to a more public location and maintain it to museum standards.

To raise money for needed renovations to the main building to protect the collection, the Foundation sent some of the most famous Impressionist and Modern paintings on tour.

In 2002, the Attorney General of Pennsylvania D. Michael Fisher contested Albert C. Barnes' will, arguing that the Merion location of the collection and small number of board members limited the Foundation's ability to sustain itself financially.

Lincoln University has numerous notable alumni, including US Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall; Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes; Medal of Honor recipient and pioneering African-American editor Christian Fleetwood; former US Ambassador to Botswana, Horace Dawson; civil rights activist Frederick D. Alexander; the first president of Nigeria, Nnamdi Azikiwe; the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah; song artist and activist Gil Scott-Heron; Emmy Award-winning and Tony Award-nominated actor Roscoe Lee Browne; Robert Walter Johnson, tennis coach of Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe; Melvin B. Tolson, teacher and coach of the Wiley College, Marshall, Texas, debate team portrayed in the film The Great Debaters; Sheila Oliver, lieutenant governor of New Jersey; Joseph Newman Clinton, member of the Florida House of Representatives; Luis Ernesto Ramos Yordán of the House of Representatives for Puerto Rico; and politician, Baptist minister, radio host, author, and activist Conrad Tillard.

Notable offspring of Lincoln University alumni include musical legend Cab Calloway; musician and choral director Hall Johnson; civil rights activist Julian Bond; internationally renowned singer, actor, and activist Paul Robeson; lawyer, author, Episcopal priest and activist Pauli Murray; lawyer, educator and writer Sadie T. M. Alexander; poet and playwright Angelina Weld Grimké; actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner; actress Leslie Uggams and actress Wendy Williams.