In 1900 William Merida Hubbard opened a school with seven students in the Kynette Methodist Church in the city of Forsyth. Like many schools in the Jim Crow South, churches presented the only option for educating black children. In 1902, Hubbard and five white men from Forsyth successfully petitioned the Superior Court of Monroe County to incorporate the Forsyth Normal and Industrial School with one small building on ten acres of land.
Hubbard’s mission was to prepare teachers to educate African American youth. By 1916 Hubbard had developed a curriculum that extended classes to the 10th and 11thg grades, and the Forsyth Normal and Industrial School became one of a handful of senior high schools that existed in Georgia for African Americans.
