Distinguished Lecture Series

Springfest edition featuring LU alum and author Michelle Brooks presenting, "Finding the Founders: 62nd U.S. Colored Troops."

All students, faculty, staff, alumni and community members are welcome!

Presented by the Division of Student Affairs and University Advancement.

Michelle Brooks has been studying the local history of Jefferson City and Lincoln University for more than 20 years, first as a reporter for the Jefferson City News Tribune and today as a published author. Her books include Hidden History of Jefferson City and Lost Jefferson City with The History Press and Interesting Women of the Capital City and Buried Jefferson City History through Kindle Direct Publishing. She is a research analyst at the Missouri State Archives.

All but a handful of the surviving soldiers of the 1st Missouri Infantry of African Descent, later the 62nd U.S. Colored Troops, had some degree of literacy. Fighting in the last battle of the Civil War – The Battle of Palmito Ranch – may have been their military accomplishment, but they made an immense impact in their Missouri communities as preachers, teachers, farmers and political leaders. They also influenced the future of all Black Missourians by founding Lincoln Institute in 1866 in Jefferson City. They trusted Richard Baxter Foster, a white lieutenant with the 62nd, with their dream and their significant contributions. Foster was a school teacher who rode with John Brown in Kansas before the war and returned their to found several pioneer Congregationalist churches after establishing the school. Sgt. Major John Jeffries, who earned the highest non-commissioned rank among the 62nd soldiers, was among Lincoln Institutes first students and then an early instructor. He then moved to Rolla to establish a school there and then opened his own business. He is the epitome of the 62nd USCT’s story. Meet these individuals who were freed from slavery by military service and returned from war to build their communities.