This Goodly Land

C. Eric Lincoln (June 23, 1924–May 14, 2000)

Other Names Used

• Charles Eric Lincoln: full name

Alabama Connections

• Athens, Limestone County: birthplace, childhood residence

Selected Works

• Lincoln, C. Eric. The Black Muslims in America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961. Rpt. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Erdmans and Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1994.
• Lincoln, C. Eric. My Face Is Black. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964.
• Lincoln, C. Eric. The Negro Pilgrimage in America. New York: Bantom Books, 1967.
• Lincoln, C. Eric. The Avenue: Clayton City. New York: Morrow, 1988.
• Lincoln, C. Eric, and Lawrence H. Mamiya. The Black Church in the African-American Experience. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990.
• Lincoln, C. Eric. This Road Since Freedom: Collected Poems. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Wren Press, 1990.
• Lincoln, C. Eric. Coming Through the Fire: Surviving Race and Place in America. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996.

Literary Awards

• Lillian Smith Book Award, Southern Regional Council, 1988, for The Avenue: Clayton City

Biographical Information

C. Eric Lincoln was born in Athens, Ala., where he was raised by his grandparents. He graduated from Trinity School, a private high school for blacks run by Protestant missionaries. After graduation, Lincoln moved to the Chicago area where he took night classes at the University of Chicago. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1944 to 1945. After his discharge, Lincoln enrolled in LeMoyne College (now LeMoyne-Owen College) in Memphis, Tenn., and graduated in 1947 with an AB in sociology and philosophy. He had several jobs after graduation including a brief time as one of the managers for the Birmingham Black Barons baseball team. In 1954, Lincoln graduated with an MA in philosophy from Fisk University in Nashville. He earned his BD from the University of Chicago Divinity School and was ordained as a minister in the United Methodist Church. He also earned an MEd and a PhD in social ethics from Boston University in 1960. His doctoral dissertation was published in 1961 as The Black Muslims in America.

During his academic career, Lincoln was on the faculties of Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University), Portland State College (now Portland University), Union Theological Seminary in New York City, Fisk University, and Duke University in Durham, N.C., from which he retired in 1993. In his last two years at Duke, Lincoln was the William R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture. Most of Lincoln’s published books were scholarly in nature and on subjects related to religion and the black community. In 1988, however, he published a novel that he had been working on for over thirty years, The Avenue: Clayton City. A collection of his poems, This Road Since Freedom, was published in 1990. The following year, a fire destroyed his home in Durham, N.C., destroying his personal library and the journals he had been keeping for more than fifty years. He was in poor health in his final years, suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart problems. Lincoln’s last book, Coming Through the Fire, published in 1996, was a collection of essays about race in American culture.

Interests and Themes

C. Eric Lincoln’s novel, The Avenue: Clayton City, is a portrait of small town Southern life between the two World Wars. It is set in a fictional version of Athens. Lincoln also published poetry and nonfiction about the black experience in America.

For More Information

Please check your local library for these materials. If items are not available locally, your librarian can help you borrow them through the InterLibrary Loan program. Your librarian can also help you find other information about this author.

There may be more information available through the databases in the Alabama Virtual Library. If you are an Alabama citizen, AVL can be used at your public library or school library media center. You can also get a username and password from your librarian to use AVL at home.

Reference Articles

• "Charles Eric Lincoln 1924-2000". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 28. (2000): 38-39.
• Ochillo, Yvonne. "The Universal Black Experience: An Interview with C. Eric Lincoln". The Journal of Negro History 75.3/4. (1990): 112-119.

Reference Book Chapters and Encyclopedia Entries

• "Lincoln, C(harles) Eric 1924-"; Something About the Author. Vol. 5. Detroit: Gale Research, . 111-112.
• Lincoln, C. Eric. "Coming Through the Fire"; The Remembered Gate: Memoirs by Alabama Authors. Ed. Jay Lamar and Jeanie Thompson. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, . 1-17.

Location of Papers

• Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center

Photo courtesy of the C. Eric Lincoln Collection, Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center.

Last updated on Jun 03, 2008.