Gibbs Junior College was created in 1957 by the

Pinellas County Pinellas County (, ) is a county located on the west central coast of the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2020 census, the population was 959,107. The county is part of the Tampa–St. Petersburg– Clearwater, Florida Metropolitan Statistical ...

Board of Public Instruction to serve African-American students in

St. Petersburg, Florida St. Petersburg is a city in Pinellas County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 258,308, making it the fifth-most populous city in Florida and the second-largest city in the Tampa Bay Area, after Tampa. It is the ...

. It was the first and most successful of Florida's eleven new African-American junior colleges, founded in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid the racial integration mandated by the unanimous 1954 Supreme Court

Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...

decision. It was named for the minister and

abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...

Jonathan C. Gibbs, who opened a private school for freed slaves after the Civil War, and was later Florida's Secretary of State (1868–1872) and then Superintendent of Public Instruction, the first African-American member of the Florida Cabinet. The founding president was John W. Rembert, who was principal of Gibbs High School. It opened with 245 students and in its last year as an independent institution had 901 students. During its first year it used the facilities of Gibbs High School, but in 1958 it moved into its own adjacent facility, on the corner of 9th Avenue South and 34th Street South in

. Free bus transportation was provided to the college by Hillsborough,

Manatee Manatees (family Trichechidae, genus ''Trichechus'') are large, fully aquatic, mostly herbivorous marine mammals sometimes known as sea cows. There are three accepted living species of Trichechidae, representing three of the four living speci ...

, and

Sarasota Sarasota () is a city in Sarasota County on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The area is renowned for its cultural and environmental amenities, beaches, resorts, and the Sarasota School of Architecture. The city is located in the sou ...

counties. It was the first African-American junior college to become fully

accredited Accreditation is the independent, third-party evaluation of a conformity assessment body (such as certification body, inspection body or laboratory) against recognised standards, conveying formal demonstration of its impartiality and competence to ...

by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. In the middle of the 1964-65 school year, amid charges of fraud and possible embezzlement, Rembert was relieved of the presidency, the institution was placed under the supervision of St. Petersburg Junior College (today

St. Petersburg College St. Petersburg College (SPC) is a public college in Pinellas County, Florida. It is part of the Florida College System and one of the institutions in the system designated a "state college," as it offers a greater number of bachelor's degrees th ...

), and its name was changed to the Gibbs campus of St. Petersburg Junior College. The bus service ended, and enrollment plummeted from 901 students in 1964-65 to 597 in 1965-66 and 366 students in 1966-67. In view of the decline in enrollment, and the pressures for integration that caused Florida's other black junior colleges to close in the mid-1960s, the Pinellas County Board of Public Instruction, on the recommendation of St. Petersburg Junior College, closed the campus in 1967.Gibbs Junior College Alumni, "History", http://www.gibbsjuniorcollegealumni.org/History.htm , consulted September 11, 2015. In 1992, St. Petersburg Junior College named its St. Petersburg campus (unrelated to the facilities of Gibbs Junior College) the Gibbs campus.

References

{{authority control Historically black universities and colleges in the United States Educational institutions established in 1957 Educational institutions disestablished in 1967 Education in Pinellas County, Florida Education in St. Petersburg, Florida Education in Sarasota County, Florida Education in Manatee County, Florida Education in Hillsborough County, Florida Two-year colleges in the United States St. Petersburg College 1957 establishments in Florida 1967 disestablishments in Florida Florida's black junior colleges

See also

References