Orlando's first Black school

According to author and Jones High School graduate Leroy Argrett Jr., education for Black residents of Orlando dates to 1886 at a school called “Orlando Black.” The school, located at the southwest corner of Garland Avenue and Church Street was “not much of an organized school” but it set the precedent for formalized education for the Orlando African American Community. He lists four principals who oversaw the school from 1886 to 1894:

• P.T. Dodson (1886-87)
• S.A. Williams (1887-89)
• C. Jackson (1889-91)
• J. T. Shuften (1891-94)

In 1895, the school was relocated to the corner of Jefferson and Chatham streets and renamed the Johnson Academy.[1] According to the Jones High School Historical Society webpage, the Academy was named after Lyman Johnson, who was principal from 1895 to 1906, and supervised the move to the new location.[2]

Differing dates

There is some disagreement, however, in the date that the school opened. Mark Andrews, history columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, wrote in a 1994 article that according to William Blackman’s History of Orange County Florida, the first Black School in Orange County dates to 1877. He also notes that educator and historian Thelma Dudley asserted in her 1993 doctoral dissertation that in 1871 a school was created in Orange County for the education of Black youth.[3] But in another Andrew’s article citing Dudley’s research, he states that the “Orlando Colored School was founded in 1886.”[4]

Jim Robison clarifies that the first documented school in Orange County opened in 1877 near Sorrento at a settlement called Benton Prairie. He reveals that in 1877, all of Seminole County plus parts of Lake and Osceola Counties were part of then-Orange County. [5]

But according to a 1982 article about attempts to raise money to restore the old Callahan School, “the first Orlando Colored School was approved by the Orange County School Board” in 1882, four years before Argrett’s date of 1886.[6] A further contradiction appears in the notice about the Board of Public Instruction in the Orlando Evening Star from Dec. 1884 that notes that the “salary of assistant teacher of Orlando colored school was set at $35.”[7] It could be that the school board approved and set the salary a couple years before the school officially opened in 1886.

School board ledgers

The school board ledgers in the collection of the Orange County Regional History paints a compelling picture of the Orlando Colored School, which is abbreviated as “Orlando Cold” in the first volume. Designated School No. 35, the 1886 school year under P.T. Dodson went from October through March and averaged about 20 students a day. The following year principal S.A. Williams experiences a large increase in the number of students, rising to an average of 157 students over 7 months. As result total teacher salaries increases from $187 in 1886 to $1,400 in 1887. The first ledger goes through 1893 school year, while a second shows Lyman Johnson in charge in 1895. An 1893 entry shows that there were 6 teachers in addition to the principal teaching grades one through three. 

Masonic Hall on Garland and Church

The 1887 Sanborn fire insurance map confirms that there was a school at the time on the southwest corner of Garland Avenue and Church Street. The map also shows a Masonic Hall in the same space.[8]  E.H. Gore’s History of Orlando explains that the “first fraternal lodge in Orlando was Lodge No. 69 Free and Accepted Masons, which received its charter January 13, 1876” and their first Masonic Hall was located at Garland Avenue and Church Street. According to Gore, the lot was donated by Orlando pioneer William Patrick, and the hall was built “thereon April 1, 1882.”[9] According to the Lodge’s website, the structure was to be a 26’X40’ two-story building made of “rough lumber and unplastered interior walls.” The text on the website explains that the upper floor was used as the Masonic Lodge the lower floor was “given to Public Schools, where three grades met.”[10]

In the first volume of Orlando: A Centennial History, Eve Bacon wrote that the first floor of the Lodge was empty until it was loaned to the city for use as a schoolroom. “Three grades and three teachers were moved into the building” she writes, “all three grades occupied the same room, but were arranged in groups by grade.”[11]

According to the Lodge No. 69 website, the Masons sold the Church Street property in 1888 and moved to a new location on Pine Street.

Conclusions

Several contemporary newspaper articles reported that by 1884 “seven of Orange County’s 94 schools were dedicated to teaching black children.”[12] As mentioned before that the area of Orange County was much larger than it is today, as Lake and Osceola Counties were formed in 1887 from portions of Orange County, and Seminole was not created until 1913. Bacon states that in 1884 there were 292 students living inside the Orlando city limits and fifty-eight living outside of its boundaries.[13] Although that number seems high, Orlando experienced meteoric growth during this period due to the arrival of the railroad, going from a population of just 200 in 1880 to 2,000 in 1886. The ledgers at the History Center show that the Orlando Black/Orlando Colored School was operating in 1886. It moved in 1895 and renamed the Johnson Academy which would become Jones High School in 1921. 

Although none of the sources that connect the Masonic Hall to its use as a school mention that it was a school for Black children, there are multiple sources listing the location of Orlando Black/Orlando Colored School as Garland and Church, so one can conclude that the Masonic Hall was site of what may have been Orlando’s first school for African American children. 

Figure 1:

Photo from How Distant Seems Our Starting Place Black history exhibit at the Orange County Regional History Center

Figure 2: Page from a brochure in the collection of the Orange County Regional History Center shows the full uncropped photograph used in the How Distant Now Seems Our Starting Place Black History exhibit.

 

Figure 3: Detail of School Board Ledger showing entries for School No. 35 (Orlando Cold) for 1886 and 1887

Figure 4: Sanborn Map Company, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Orlando, Florida, showing the location of the “School” and  “Masonic Hall” at the intersection of Garland Avenue and Church Street

Figure 5: Screen capture from the history page of the website for Orlando Lodge No. 69 Free and Accepted Masons

Figure 6: J.T. Shuften, the fourth principal at the Orlando Colored School, was also the publisher of The Colored American, the first Black-owned newspaper in Georgia. He is one of the first Black journalists in Florida and was the first Black attorney to practice law in Orlando.

Figure 7: Notice from the Board of Public Instruction from the Orlando Evening Star published on Thursday, December 18, 1884 stating that the salary for assistant teachers at the Orlando colored school was fixed at $35.

Contemporary view of the intersection of Church and Garland

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[1] Leroy Argreet, Jr., A History of the Black Community of Orlando Florida, p. 30.

[2] https://joneshighschoolhistoricalsociety.org/principals/

 

[3] County’s earliest black schools were established on a shoestring, Orlando Sentinel, May 22, 1994, p. 210 

[4] Teacher researches the struggle of segregated Jones High, Orlando Sentinel, Feb. 28, 1993, p.81

[5] Educator’s legacy still thrives, Orlando Sentinel, Feb. 6, 2005, pK2

[6] Party to raise funds to restore Callahan School, Orlando Sentinel, April 28, 1982, p. 3

[7] Board of Public Instruction, Orlando Evening Star, Dec. 18, 1884, p.3

[8] http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3934om.g3934om_g013221887

[9] E.H. Gore, History of Orlando, p. 47

[10] https://orlandomasons.org/lodge-69-history/

 

[11] Eve Bacon, Orlando A Centennial History, Vol. 1, p. 114

[12] Establishing the 1^st school district was an education itself, Orlando Sentinel, p. 167

[13] Bacon, p.114

Celebrating Sacred Ground

Although Dr. Franklin Branch sought to build a health spa near the healing waters of Manatee Mineral Springs, conflict during the Third Seminole War kept that dream from coming to fruition. But the cultural and historical value of the spring was so great, I included it in my book "Florida's Healing Waters." This account of my visit to the Angola Festival at the spring did not make it into the final manuscript. 

On a steamy weekend in July 2018,  a three-day festival commemorated Manatee Mineral Spring’s connection to the community of Red Bays in the Bahamas. Residents of Red Bays, which is located on Androse Island, the largest island in the Bahamas, were on hand to give the gathering a distinctive Bahamian flair with island food, music, crafts, and performances by a colorful junkanoo band. it is very possible that these Bahamans were the descendants of Blacks who fled the area in 1821 when forces led by Andrew Jackson destroyed the settlement. 

Speakers from the different organizations who helped create the Angola Festival took turns at the microphone, expressing gratitude and taking a noticeably spiritual tone. A local politician marked the occasion as a new beginning built from the adversity of those who came before.

For me, the highlight of the event, however, was a panel discussion by the archeologists and historians who had worked so hard to uncover Angola’s past.  Historian Cantor Brown, Jr. set the tone for the discussion by proclaiming that the location of the festival should be considered sacred ground and that the Angola settlement was once a bright “beacon of freedom” for people fleeing persecution. Cultural anthropologist Dr. Rosalyn Howard offered observations from the year she spent in Red Bays while working on her book “Looking for Angola” – a study of the residents of a tiny town in the Bahamas that was created by fleeing residents of Angola. Anthropologist Sherry Robinson Svekis talked about the process of applying to the National Park Service for official recognition as an Underground Railroad site and New College Archeologist Uzi Baram revealed the discoveries made in the park that led them to the conclusion that the area surrounding Manatee Mineral Springs was the location of the Back Seminole settlement of Angola. The panel was skillfully moderated by “Looking for Angola” project director Vickie Oldham, who helped reveal that the discovery of Angola was a combination of high-tech science and providence. An underground mapping method called radar tomography was used to determine the “ground truth,” so that the archeologists knew where to dig. They found postholes that indicated they were in the right spot, and previous digs had discovered items from the early nineteenth century such as shards of British pottery and clay pipes. This was physical evidence of a settlement before settler Josiah Gates arrived. But the identification of Angola might not have occurred had Tampa-based Witten Technologies, the company that donated the radar tomography service, not been looking for a place to show-off its high-tech equipment. Their offer to demonstrate their services was “total serendipity” according to Svekis.

Dr. Brown asserted that early Seminole communities in Florida acted as trading posts for other Native American tribes who came south in the winter, much like modern-day Snowbirds. The colorful plumes worn in headdresses seen in portraits and photographs of other tribes were often collected from birds in Florida. It was fertile hunting grounds, rather than the healing waters that attracted these early visitors to the region.

I learned a great deal from this panel, but perhaps my greatest take away was that we have just scratched the surface in our understanding of this community located near present-day Bradenton. It will be exciting to watch for new developments at this small, out-of-the-way spring in Manatee County. Perhaps one day the spring itself will be restored, revealing the role this sacred water has played in our state’s history. 

Archival photograph from the Manatee County Public Library

Archival photograph from the State Archives of Florida

Archival photograph from the Manatee County Public Library

Archival photograph from the Manatee County Public Library