The Robert Hungerford Normal and Industrial School was founded in 1897 to provide education for black students in grades 6-12 and taught children for over 100 years.

Ten years after the Emancipation Proclamation, formerly enslaved people migrated to rural Central Florida, finding work in the citrus groves.

Mr. Lawrence has erected on this land a framed church 30x20 feet, a bell for which has been presented by the Congregational Sabbath School of Chelsea, Connecticut.

[1]In 1884, the Orange County Reporter wrote about the “colored village at Maitland, sometimes known as Lawrence, the name of its worthy founder”.

A year after incorporation, there were "discussions of separation as a peaceful, progressive-minded, mutually beneficial solution to the so-called 'race problem'.”[1] While sources seem to disagree on the exact date and year of the town's incorporation, the town's official site provides a detailed account of the process and the dates.

[2] Jim Crow laws enforced segregation, violence and racial discrimination in the Southern United States in the late 19th century.

Solve the Great Race Problem by Securing a Home in Eatonville, Florida, a Negro City Governed by Negroes.” The article describes Eatonville as a "thriving community of 200-300 people — all colored, and NOT A WHITE FAMILY in the whole city.” The newspaper also recounts a near-lynching in Sanford, nineteen miles away.

Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is set in the town and nearby communities, many of which have disappeared with the expansion of Greater Orlando.

Before the days of racial integration, Club Eaton was a popular stop on the Chitlin' Circuit, hosting performers ranging from B.B.

King to Aretha Franklin,Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, The Platters, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and James Brown.

Several are related to the town's establishment as a home for African Americans and to its most famous former resident, Zora Neale Hurston.

[32] The Robert Hungerford Normal and Industrial School was founded in 1897 for vocational education for Black students by Professor and Mrs. Russell C. Calhoun, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute.

The school was successful and more than 100 students were boarding in 1927, as well as local children attending and adult classes offered at night.

Ten years later, Orange County provided bus transportation for black children from nearby Winter Park to attend the school.

The school provided both vocational and college preparation, teaching English, Latin, history, general science, biology, algebra, geometry, industrial arts and home economics.

The campus included girls & boys dormitories, a dining hall, library, chapel, laundry, industrial training shops, home economics laboratory, equipment barn and farmland.

To keep expenses down, students were assigned various duties around the campus including jobs at the school's dairy, chicken coops, gardens and janitorial/maintenance of the institution's classrooms and buildings.

Existing residents claim the new development would wipe out the historic community and violate the land agreement, so locals are in a fight with the school board.