Lincoln University - Lion Yearbook (Lincoln University, PA)

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joseph newton hill clean „ tLcolt. e9c Dear Friends: Time, after its own quiet but certain fashion, has at last made a significant academic unit out of you. Yet, as soon as you appear as a unified class, you must face an hour of separation. This condition should not seem odd. It suggests the state of the world that you must now walk boldly out to meet. When fortuitous circum- stances—and they abound beyond campus grounds—make you wince, do not exclaim along with our fateful hero: “The time is out of joint. You will he called upon to make the so-called accidents of life conform to care- ful planning. You will probably doubt many things after today: the future of your own minority group, the tenor of the times, the reason for your very existence. Yet these doubts represent the very kind of skepticism, healthy skepticism, that real education engenders. Keep it healthy. For out of such doubts can come the challenge to create a genuine philosophy of life. I have faith in you. This is one aspect of my philosophy. Yes, in spite of all the nugatory events which may have crowded the past few years, the preachings and promptings I have given, the discipline I have applied, the advice regarding study, manners, dress, punctuality, language, the vain admonitions of old age, in spite of all these—I want you to know that I have faith that you will succeed. I do not refer to material progress, but to matters of real hu- man merit. Notwithstanding Cooper, Carter, McCoy, Tom, Dick, and Harry, this aspect of faith in human beings is firmly rooted. Were it not so, my night would indeed be dark and I should find myself hopelessly far from home. You are a unit destined to do good. This is at once prophetic and real. I shall eagerly await each harbinger of glad tidings which, during the ensuing years, brings proof of your achievements. May you take this hour of graduation to trim your tapers so that the light of your good deeds may shine upon the darkness of this naughty world. Dean of the College

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 Dear Mid-Century Class of 1950: In an old, historic institution like Lincoln, every graduating class can find a link to our storied past in some allusive distinction. The class of 1950 graduates in the year di- viding the Twentieth Century. A half-hundred years of war and mass murder and hatred, un- prccedented in human history, lie behind you. During this same period growing scientific knowledge has so extended the span of human life expectancy that it is assured that a goodly number of your class will be able to foregather here at Commencement time in the year 2000, for your fiftieth reunion. Lincoln University rests many hopes in you: the hope for a long and happy life; the hope that you may find the success of satisfaction in your chosen career; the hope that you may enjoy a happy family life, that sons and daugh- ters may arise to experience with you the unfolding wonders of the rest of the Twentieth Century and that portion of the Twenty-first many of you will live to see. Our fondest hope, of course, is that the next half-century will be a better one than that just passing; and that the class of 1950 will be fore- most in seeing that this is brought to pass. With the perennial reawakening of joyful confidence in the future each Commencement justly summons, we turn our backs on the past and view a better future wrought for all hu- manity by Lincoln University men of the class of 1950. Horace Mann Bond. President of the University

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To the Class of 1950: You arc launching the hark of your career on the sea of life at the mid-point of as turbu- lent a century as humankind has ever witnessed. You arc leaving the comparatively safe harbor of your Alma Mater to battle the buffeting winds of change and chance. Unless your courage and fortitude hold firmly the tiller, these winds would upset your frail craft. It is to be hoped that you will take on board the seaworthy principle that the genius of Amcr- ica is hostile to the supremacy of a few voca- tions and that all work which is necessary for the common good is honorable. It is our wish that you have developed in these four years at L'ncoln the strength and courage and skill to steer your career on an even keel in spite of wind and weather. Carefully planned ingenuity may keep you abreast of the winds of change, and the winds of chance arc never very formidable to a g x d helmsman. Dean of Students