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This is Union Academy, the Freedman's school opened in Gainesville soon after the close of the Civil War. The school opened in January 1866, but the idea of educating colored was not popular. The two Northern schoolmarms, Harriet R. Barnes and Catharine R. Bent, wrote that: "The citizens are not in love with use or our employment, but we do not mind that. Our greatest trouble has been the assault of the boys from the white school upon us. They throw various kinds of missiles into our school room, in some cases aiming deliberately at the teachers and sometimes hitting them."

The school was erected by the United States government and was supported by contributions from the North, supplemented by funds from the George Peabody Fund. At a later date, the Board of Public Instruction took over some of the support. However, it continued to receive support from the North even after Reconstruction with the result that its school year was longer and its teachers better paid than was the case for white schools. Courses were offered at elementary and high school level, and a normal school was added in the 1880s. It started with an enrollment of 175 in 1866, and grew to almost 500 students by 1898. Modernized, it provided eleven classrooms and eleven teachers.