Union Academy

Union Academy. Built Circa: 1916 Moved: 2000. , A Hand-Me Down School , This building, probably built as a World War I barracks, was a portable classroom at the all white Tarpon Springs Elementary School for about 20 years. In 1942 school officials moved the building to the Union Academy campus, the established elementary school for 'colored' students in Tarpon Springs. While there, the flexible building served as a classroom, cafeteria and home economics room for more than 20 years., Separate But Unequal Education , By the end of the Reconstruction in 1877, laws required racial segregation throughout the South including Florida. Schools for black children lagged behind their white counterparts. Black students attended shorter terms, occupied crowded classrooms and used outdated textbooks discarded from white schools. Tarpon Springs had a one room school for African American children and by 1917 the class size swelled to 73 students. To relieve overcrowding, officials approved and built a new four room structure named Union Academy on a small plot of land where classes began in 1919., Better Boys , In 1964 school officials improved the Union Academy campus. Leaders in the black community purchased this building and moved it down the street to become home to the "Better Boys Club" for 15 years. Heading the club's motto, "Building Boys is Better than Mending Men," club leaders nurtured African American boys and teenagers who gathered here when few organizations welcomed them. By the late 1970s, the deteriorated structure was an eyesore with few remembering its once important role in the community., Tidbits from Time , Union Reunion , At a Union Academy reunion, students reminisced that families and friends gathered at the school to watch movies in the auditorium, play basketball and hold barbeques and fish fry cookouts behind the school. It was a gathering place for community events like May Day with a May pole and Emancipation Day that celebrated the end of slavery., Chicken Coops , Students at the all white Tarpon Springs Elementary School nicknamed their portable classrooms 'chicken coops.', Government Issue , This building was probably a World War I barracks, office or warehouse. The Pinellas County Board of Public Instruction purchased World War I government surplus property in 1918 including some structures to use as portable classrooms. This was likely one of those buildings.