Union Academy (Gainesville, Florida)

The Union Academy was a school founded with the aid of the Freedmen's Bureau in Gainesville, Florida in 1867.

The Union Academy was eventually absorbed into the county school system, and remained in operation until 1923.

[1] At the end of the war, in May 1865, a company of the 3rd United States Colored Infantry Regiment were stationed in Gainesville.

At the same time black farm laborers were recruited from Georgia and South Carolina to help harvest what was expected to be a very large cotton crop, but heavy rain ruined the cotton, and the recently arrived blacks were left without work.

The Freedmen's Bureau agent in Gainesville, Joseph Durkee, reported that the ceremonies at the end of the school year in 1867 were attended by some prominent white leaders.

[6] In the fall of 1867 a group of blacks in Gainesville organized a board of trustees to open a school for freedmen.

Initial furnishings for the school apparently were sparse, although a parlor organ for music lessons was added in 1872.

The school was partially supported by the newly organized Alachua County Board of Public Instruction and by the Peabody Education Fund, and was serving 179 students, 8 of whom were above the primary level.

White students from families who could afford it attended the Gainesville Academy, a private school.

The Seminary had been established by the state in 1853 in Ocala to serve Florida students from east of the Suwannee River, but it had closed during the Civil War due to lack of funds.

[12] In contrast, the Union Academy had "well-educated teachers", was in session for eight months of the year,[a] and was the only public school in the county with students divided into grades and using standard textbooks.

By 1922 the Union Academy was serving 500 students in grades 1–9 with eleven teachers under Principal A. Quinn Jones.