Full length view albumen stereoview. Mitchell, N.D. [c.a. 1868] Publisher's identification and imprint to mount verso. Modern pencil identification to mount verso reads: "Stanton Institute." 

Seated before a building are five rows of children, flanked by three adults who are likely teachers. All gaze directly toward the photographer’s lens, several with books spread across their laps. The group likely represents students of the Stanton Institute, the first public school established for Black children in the state of Florida, and it is probable that the photograph was taken in front of the school itself.

The Stanton Institute was founded in 1868 by a group of recently emancipated residents of Jacksonville who formed an education society and purchased the land upon which the school would be built. With assistance from the Freedmen’s Bureau, the building was erected approximately a year after the property was acquired and was named in honor of General Edwin McMasters Stanton, Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of War and a steadfast advocate of free formal education for Black children in the United States. Though it remained under the guidance of the Freedmen’s Bureau for several years, the school continued to flourish, providing free education to Black children within the Jacksonville community. Today, Stanton is regarded as one of the leading academic institutions in the nation.

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