to found "Florida Normal and Technical Institute" in 1896. Collier was president of the college from 1896 to 1941, and Blocker Dean of Women and vice-president from 1896 to 1944.
Brothers James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson (faculty member), wrote the words and music in 1900 to "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" (known as the "Negro National Anthem").
Florida Normal and Industrial Institute moved to St. Augustine in 1918 and operated in buildings on a 110-acre (0.45 km2) tract of land, the site of the "Old Hanson Plantation". It had been based on the forced labor of enslaved African Americans.
In 1941, the Live Oak and St. Augustine institutions merged, changing their limited offerings from a junior college classification to a four-year liberal arts institution; it graduated its first four-year class in 1945. The young author Zora Neale Hurston taught at the school in 1942; she lived on the second floor of a two-story house at 791 West King Street, just east of the campus.
The school's name was changed in …
