Black and white students at Industrial class. Orange Park school, 1898. Clay County Archives.
In a report to northern missionaries in 1894, an Orange Park Pastor, Rev. T.S. Perry, described a beacon of integration in the Jim Crow South:
"On this very spot, where less than a generation ago gangs of slaves toiled under the overseer’s lash, and within rifle-shot of the plantation whipping post, their children are now developing into worthy citizenship; and youth, both white and colored, are growing up into enlightened Christian manhood and womanhood."
Today, 124 years later, that spot, the former site of Orange Park Normal and Industrial school, was finally recognized with a historic marker.
The school's former campus occupied what is now the Orange Park town hall. The marker will note the significance of the site.
“I think it’s been a surprise and a shock to everyone to know that school even existed, and the mere fact that it was sitting there where our Town Hall is now,” Orange Park Town Council member Connie Thomas said in an interview with Jacksonville's Florida Times Union.
American Missionary Association founded the school in 1891 to educate the children of freed slaves. School leaders refused to deny admission to any student based on race and soon began to admit white students as well. Orange Park was ultimately desegregated about 75 years before Florida removed racial segregation from the state constitution.
In 1896 the school's leaders, teachers and donors faced arrest and imprisonment for violating a state law that prohibited white and black students from learning together. State law also barred white teachers from educating black students. The school would go on to win in court, helping to secure private school education for black students at a time when few, if any, public schools were available to them.
We profiled the school's history on the 120th anniversary of the school's legal victory against that racist state law. Read more of this school's fascinating history here.
