Leon County Schools

Black churches had an earlier beginning in Tallahassee than did schools. Organized by black religious leaders, churches served as educational centers even when there were laws making such activities illegal (Groene, Bertram H. Ante Bellum Tallahassee. Tallahassee: Florida Heritage Foundation, 1971). On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. With this freeing of enslaved Africans, over 160,000 across the State of Florida, added momentum to the education movement throughout the South.

Newly freed slaves were leaving plantations in droves seeking greater freedom (Bullock, Henry Allen; A History of Negro Education in the South, from 1619 to the Present. Cambridge, Mass: Texas Southern University, Harvard University Press, 1967). Leon was a substantial slave holding county (Larry E. Rivers; Slavery in Florida 1950). Post slavery, benevolent societies and church groups provided food, clothing, money and teachers while Union Army distributed money and supplies post the Civil War and emancipation of the enslaved; these however were only indirectly related to education needs (Groene, Bertram H. Ante Bellum Tallahassee. Tallahassee: Florida Heritage Foundation, 1971).

The various organizations supplying relief also required that schools and churches be provided. Many northerners were commissioned at this point as teachers for freedmen schools. Relief programs were officially coordinated through the federal government. Northern teachers educating southern Negroes were given military protection, which often was challenged by rebellion. This protection remained until the freedmen’s school system became an institutional part of the South.

By 1865, Northern benevolent associates: the African Civilization Society, the Home Missionary Society of the African American Episcopal Church, the New York Branch of the American Freedmen’s Union Commission and other organizations began to distribute emergency relief and establish schools for newly freed slaves throughout the South. The following year a law was enacted that provided common schools for freedmen and a superintendent to oversee them. The Freedmen’s Bureau supervised all of these schools, public and private. By the close of the year, the number of schools increased to 65, 35 which were day schools, with the remainder night schools. Sixty to 100 Sunday schools were reported, and many schools were opened on plantations where a number of freedmen remained because they had nowhere else to go (Bush, George Gary. History of Education in Florida; Bureau of Education Circular of Information, No. 7, 1888 Washington: Government, Printing Office 1889).

In 1887, General Superintendent of Schools, J.W. Alford said “Teaching of adult freed people will, I am satisfied, of necessity be mainly conducted upon plantations. The colored people are too poor as a class to expend the time to attend public schools. In fact, any general system of education for the body of free people in this State must be mainly carried on through plantation schools. The freedmen are too much isolated for any other system”. E.B. Duncan, Superintendent of Schools for Freedmen, noted in 1866, “a general desire among the planters to have day schools. They were eager and willing to provide or build schoolhouses (Education in Florida Past and Present. Florida State University, 1954).” The State Superintendent to Freedmen’s Schools, L.M. Hobbs, said, “There is great demand for schools, not only by freedmen but by former masters. They say that it is as much to their interest as to the freedmen that the freedmen be educated; that as free laborers they will do better by being able to read and write and will be more contented on the plantation… many of the planters offered to pay one-half of the expense of the schools ((Education in Florida Past and Present. Florida State University, 1954).”

In 1866, Negro, John Wallace, conducted a school for former slaves on the plantation owned by William D. Bloxham in Leon County. The families of the white plantation owners supplied some teachers. Duncan reported, “These school have been taught by the whole people-ladies and gentlemen of our country, who have regarded it truly as a noble work and no loss of position to instruct these ignorant people who have served us faithfully. These schools have been marked by a most earnest perseverance on the part of the teachers, while the pupils take the liveliest interest, and numbers who have only gone four month read and spell readily, and take great delight in learning; show great proficiency in figures. To what extent their minds can be improved, I cannot say, but feel satisfied that they will receive a practical education that they may be able to read the word of God, understand clearly their moral duties, have a better basis for their religion; for a religion they will have whether right or wrong and be made better citizens, better neighbors and better men”. Negro teachers also joined the teaching ranks as Duncan also reported. There were 56 schools in 1867 and 54 in 1868. A majority was entirely or partly self-sustained by the freedmen (Education in Florida Past and Present; Florida State University, 1954).

In 1868 through the state constitution and the School Laws of 1869, the public school system as we know it today was established. This occurred despite the fact that schools were segregated by practice, not by law, at that time. Charles H. Pearce, a Negro, who served as the county superintendent of public instruction in 1869-1870, opposed the proposed law of 1868 because of an amendment that prohibited integrated schools. Pearce exhorted that he would rather have no schools at all than to support a bill requiring segregation of the races. Because of his opposition, a school law could not be passed in the 1868 legislative session, but one was approved on January 30, 1869. This law permitted, but did not compel, segregation (Richardson, Joe; The Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida 1865-1877. 1965).

Under Pearce, rural schools for blacks and whites began appearing throughout the county. Throughout this process of emancipation and freedmen’s schools was passing of a law that provided for Negroes to have the opportunity to not only attend but help to build schools. White philanthropists Julius Rosenward and Anna Jeanes funded several schools built in the south for newly freed slaves and their descendants, including Leon County. The 52 one-room schools that were existence were surveyed and photographed in the mid-late 1950s by former African American educator, Thelma Lawrence, wife of longtime educator and principal, Freeman Lawrence, commissioned by Jeanes Supervisor Dorothy Holmes, an African American school administrator in the 1940’s-50s as follows:

Concord, Cotton, Horseshoe, Lake Hall, Lake Lafayette (also referred to as North Arm), Lake McBride, Macon, Mt Zion, Raney, St Stephens, Turner Grove, Hammock, Patton, Centenary, Crenshaw, Jones, Ward, St. Peters, Bellaire, Roberts,

Ochlocknee, Pleasant Grove, Kirksey, Johnson Branch, Woodville, Station One, St Paul, Greenhowe, Poplar Springs, Tuskeena, Barrow Hill, Moseley, St. Mary’s, Long Pond, Sheppard, Norris, Copeland, Gum Pond, Bell and Rock Hill.  A majority were on former plantations and a few on private farmlands in Leon County, now owned by some Blacks as well as Whites. By the 1950’s, many of these rural schools, after serving the Black population for many years, closed and were consolidated, busing students into city schools, including the Lincoln School located on West Brevard Street in Tallahassee and Griffin High School that was located on Abraham Street in Tallahassee. This was driven primarily by the need to reduce the cost of educating all of the children of Leon County while also anticipating laws that would require school desegregation {John Gilmore Riley Archive photographic collection of Leon Negro schools donated by Thelma Lawrence - 1998).

 A Florida law passed in 1866, stated that schools should be established for newly emancipated slaves.  Due to the large numbers of rural blacks, Leon County already had numerous one-room public school houses often located on plantation land.

In 1868, through the state constitution and the School Laws Act of 1869, the public school system as we know it today was established. Charles H. Pearce, a Negro (*was appointed by Governor Reed) to serve as Leon County Superintendent of public instruction in 1869-1870. (Richardson, Joe:The Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida 1865-1877. 1965. *Was appointed by Governor Reed* is not in the quote from the Richardson source, but came from Dr. Rivers book in the Bibliography.) 

The first Leon County Superintendent of Public Instruction, Charles H. Pearce, an African-American, began work when the Board of Public Instruction organized on April 16, 1869. Under Pearce, rural schools for blacks and whites began appearing throughout the county (Hamburger, Susan, Teaching Tenant Farm Children: Rural Education in Leon County Florida In the Early 20^th Century.) The Board of Public Instruction for Leon County (later to become the Leon County School Board) established separate schools in 1869 for both Blacks and Whites.

The first Lincoln Academy or Lincoln Graded School, later known as Lincoln High School, was erected in 1869 at Lafayette and Copeland Streets. The Freedmen aided in the building of the school, a two-story structure valued at $8,000, which included the furnishings. The first staff consisted of one white man and one white woman. (Richardson, Joe. The Negro During Reconstruction 1865-1877; U.S. Commissioner of Education Report for the Year 1875, 65.; Pyburn, op.cit 115; C.E. Williams to E.M. Cravath, January 22, 1874, In American Missionary Association Archives; The American Missionary, XIX-February 1875, 37 ).

In 1872, an accidental fire burned the school to the ground. A new building took four years to rebuild but was finally finished in 1876 on the west side of Copeland Street at Park Avenue. Located close to the West Florida Seminary where white students received their education, the building and site were later exchanged by the county for a site on West Brevard Street, resulting in the third Lincoln structure, which was built in 1906 on the north side of Brevard between Boulevard and Macomb Street. It was a two-story white frame structure. The old site was taken over by the Florida State College for Women to be used as a music building. This third structure also burned to the ground. In 1929 a brick high school, the fourth building, was erected on the Brevard Street site. A major portion of $74,000, which had been spent on Leon County public schools in the 1929-1930 school year, was appropriated to construct this school. Through consolidation and desegregation efforts, Lincoln was closed as a high school in June 1867 and as an elementary school in 1970. Although the upper level students were transferred to the Griffin Middle School site, the classes of ’68, ’69 and ’70 received Lincoln High School diplomas (Minutes of Leon County Board of Public Instruction 1872-1878; Tallahassee Democrat, 1-27/1989. Oral Histories conducted by John Gilmore Riley Center/Museum 1996-2015).

On September 10, 1892, the Weekly Floridian noted that principal of the “Black Grade School” was J.J. Henley and the assistant principal was J.G. Riley. Thus, after 11 years of successful teaching in the Lincoln Black Grade School, also known as Lincoln Academy, and more than decade of continual self-improvement, Riley had convinced the county superintendent and school board that he deserved to be promoted to the position of assistant principal. The following school year, the Minutes of the Leon County Board of Public Instruction announced the death of J.J. Hendley. Riley was elevated to the principal position on September 5, 1893. John Gilmore Riley was the longest serving educator of the school, serving first as a teacher and assistant principal and from 1893 to 1926 as its principal. He is the recorded first Black principal of the school.

Other principals of Lincoln were: T.B. Dansby, W. Dansby, Noah Griffin, Cecile H. Walker, Gilbert Porter, James Abner, R. Frank Nims and Freeman D. Lawrence (Leon County School Board Minutes; Oral histories conducted by the John Gilmore Riley Center Museum). 

Another school named Lincoln High was built in Leon County on Trojan Trail in 1975. However, it bears no previous relationship to the original Lincoln.

Chaires Elementary School was mentioned as Station One School in the School Board minutes of 1870, and served a segregated school serving grades 1-10. By 1928, the original building was considered no longer suitable for white students as it was too small and tended to flood during heavy rains. In 1929, a new school opened and the Station One School was turned over to the Black community. Integration occurred in 1967, when the Station One School closed and the school, serving grades 1-5, was renamed as Chaires Elementary School.

In 1871, the county opened a new Leon Academy, a public school for White students.

The original Lincoln Academy was located at the corner of Lafayette and Copeland Streets. This two-story frame structure (valued at $8,000.00) burned in 1872 and in 1876, a new Lincoln was completed on the west side of Copeland Street at Park Avenue and Call Street, adjacent to the West Florida Seminary, where most White students finished their high school education.

In 1885, the Leon Academy, a $7,000 two-story brick building with four large main rooms, classrooms and six cloak closets was constricted on the south side of West Tennessee Street between Duval and Bronough Streets.

In 1887, the Lincoln Academy campus hosted some of the first classes of the Florida A & M College. Lincoln remained at this Part Avenue address until it was relocated to ’its final site on West Brevard Street, and by 1927 had a lovely brick building in the African-American neighborhood known as Frenchtown.

By 1890, the Leon Academy had grown to 155 students and five teachers and needed more space.