The Union Literary Institute, located in rural Randolph County, Indiana, at 8605 East County Road 600 South, Union City, Indiana (at its founding, "two miles east of Spartanburg"), was a historic school founded in 1846 primarily for blacks by abolitionist Quakers and free blacks in three local communities.

This school was among the handful in the United States of the time that admitted both black and white students; it was the first in Indiana.

The school closed in 1864 during the Civil War, when its only teacher enlisted in the United States Colored Troops.

In 1924, after three decades of court challenges, the state acquired the building and the remaining 120 acres of the original site.

The county had operated the structure as a segregated public school in the late nineteenth century.

In the late 19th century, it was cited as the most successful and enduring of the manual labor schools,[6]: 77  but it was supported primarily by donations.

[8] Union and other manual labor schools educated hundreds of young men and women, liberally for the time, at little expense practically, and with wholesome views of life.

[12]An 1892 history of education in Indiana noted that the Institute was known as "the Nigger College",[6]: 72  and that it was "exclusively for colored people, and one of the most successful of its kind".

[6]: 77  A 1924 newspaper account said that the school had been established to educate poor black youths, and some indigent whites also enrolled, making it an early example of racial integration in the Midwest.

[15] The review ended publication during the American Civil War, after the school's only teacher and editor, Samuel H. Smothers, volunteered for the United States Colored Troops.

[16] (Smothers was an African-American man who had received nine months of formal education before starting to serve as a teacher.

[18]) Among the contents of the Repository: Founders' heirs continued to own title to the property in the name of the Institute.

[24] The William Henry Smith Memorial Library of the Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, owns the Union Literary Institute Recording Secretary's book, 1845–1890.