TheBuckman Act was a Florida law passed by the state legislature in 1905. It reorganized the state's institutions of higher learning and created aFlorida Board of Control to govern the system. The act, named for legislatorHenry Holland Buckman, consolidated the state's six institutions of higher education into three: one for white men, one for white women, and one forAfrican Americans.
Four institutions—Florida Agricultural College inLake City (called University of Florida in 1903–1905), theEast Florida Seminary inGainesville, theSt. Petersburg Normal and Industrial School inSt. Petersburg, and theSouth Florida Military College inBartow—were merged into the new University of the State of Florida for white men.Gainesville was chosen for the location of the new school among several competing cities, and the UF campus opened in 1906.
The Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes (the futureFlorida A&M University) in Tallahassee servedAfrican Americans, and the Florida Female College, later named theFlorida State College for Women (the futureFlorida State University), also in Tallahassee, served white women.[1] A fourth school inSt. Augustine provided specialized training and education for the deaf and blind (theFlorida School for the Deaf and Blind).
The Buckman Act was discontinued afterWorld War II, when theGI Bill provided a college education for returning U.S. military veterans, the overwhelming majority of them male. It was replaced by a Board of Regents. Single-gender provisions of the Buckman Act at the University of Florida (UF) and the Florida State College for Women (FSCW) were officially eliminated in 1947. FSCW returned to coeducational status asFlorida State University, while UF became coeducational for the first time. Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes, the futureFlorida A&M University, taught both genders from its founding. Civil rights efforts andfederal legislation in the early 1960s also led to all three institutions becoming racially integrated during that decade, although FAMU remains ahistorically black university, with over 87% of its student body African-American as of 2014.
Armstrong, Orland K. (1928).The life and work of Dr. A.A. Murphree. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida. p. 41. Retrieved20 April 2019.