Florida Memorial University

Overview

Florida Memorial University is a private historically Black university in Miami Gardens, Florida, one of the oldest academic centers in the state, tracing its founding to 1879 as the Florida Baptist Institute in Live Oak, Florida, with support from the American Baptist Home Mission Society; its first president was J. L. A. Fish. In April 1892, after unknown persons fired shots into one of the school’s buildings, President Matthew Gilbert and staff fled Live Oak for Jacksonville, founding the Florida Baptist Academy in the basement of Bethel Baptist Church, with Sarah Ann Blocker as its main instructor, while the Live Oak campus continued operating separately. In 1896, Nathan W. Collier of Florida Baptist Institute and Blocker of Florida Baptist Academy combined the two schools into the Florida Normal and Technical Institute. Faculty member J. Rosamond Johnson and his brother James Weldon Johnson wrote the words and music to “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” later known as the “Negro National Anthem,” at the school in 1900.