An Early School for Blacks in Indiana
Blacks were prohibited from attending public schools in Indiana after an 1843 law was enacted by the State Legislature. That’s why Union Literary Institute was started in rural Randolph County, Indiana near the Ohio state line.
With the help of abolition-minded Quakers in Newport, Indiana, three Black communities came together in 1846 to purchase land and build the school, which became one of the few racially integrated secondary education institutions in the country. It also served as a vital stop along the Underground Railroad.
The school educated many of the nation’s most renowned African American leaders and dozens of teachers. Among them: James Sidney Hinton, the first African American elected to the Indiana House of Representatives; Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first African-American U.S. senator and ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and some white students, such as Amanda Way, a founder of the Indiana Women's Suffrage Association and a Society of Friends minister. More than three-fourths of the 300 who attended the school were Black.
Support of the school came from Black communities known as Cabin Creek and Snow Creek in Randolph County, and Greenville, which straddled the Indiana-Ohio line into Darke County, Ohio, now known as Longtown.
To attend Union Literary Institute, students were allowed to defray tuition and room and board costs by working four hours a day on the 174-acre farm operated by the school. There was a boarding house with rooms for 40 students and a school for 100 students.
By 1850, total enrollment was 131 students – 97 Black and 34 white.
The school closed in 1864 during the Civil War, when its only teacher enlisted in the United States Colored Troops. It reopened but closed again in 1880.
After court cases for control of the property for decades, the property was turned over to the state of Indiana.
A historical marker at the site was erected in 2016 by the Indiana Historical Bureau and the Union Literary Institute Preservation Society.
