 Originally known as Florida Baptist Academy, then Florida Normal, and then Florida Memorial College, it was a historically black institution and had a wide impact on St. Augustine while it was located there.During World War II it was chosen as the site for training the first blacks in the U. S. Signal Corps.Among its faculty members was Zora Neale Hurston; a historic marker is placed at the house where she lived while teaching at Florida Memorial (and where she wrote her autobiography "Dust Tracks on a Road".)