Early Black Schools in Lee County

WILLIAMS ACADEMY (1912) First government funded school for Black students in Fort Myers.

SANIBEL COLORED SCHOOL (1924) The school was located at the corner of Tarpon Bay Road and Island Inn Road. It was the home of a Baptist church in 1917.

PAUL LAWRENCE DUNBAR SCHOOL (1927) An atypical Rosenwald school, Paul Lawrence Dunbar School in Fort Myers, Florida, was built as Lee County’s only four-year secondary school for African Americans in 1927 and was the only High school in southwest Florida for African Americans.

It was built at a cost of $99,000.00 and partly financed by black citizens in Lee County. It was named for the renowned black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. The buildings layout was copied from architectural plans prepared for a white school built across town called Edison Park Elementary.