History of Florida State University - Buckman Act

Buckman Act

The 1905 Buckman Act reorganized the existing six Florida colleges into three institutions, segregated by race and gender - a school for Caucasian males, a school for Caucasian females, and a school for African Americans. As a result the coeducational Florida State College was reorganized as the Florida Female College, which accepted only white female students. By 1909, the name was again changed to the Florida State College for Women after the initial title was generally rejected.

Under the Buckman Act the State Normal School for Colored Students (now Florida A&M University) became the college serving African Americans, while the state's remaining four institutions were merged into a school for white males known as the University of the State of Florida (now the University of Florida), located in Gainesville. White males who had previously attended Florida State College were subsequently required to attend the university in Gainesville, and took with them the fraternity system and the football team. The Buckman bill was the brainchild of Henry Holland Buckman, a legislator from Duval County, Florida. It was hotly debated, with one legislator saying in debate: "I believe in coeducation. Statistics prove satisfactory to me that separate institutions for male and female is detrimental (sic) to both--physically, mentally and morally." Further, according to Shira Birnbaum, the Buckman Act:

...didn't merely standardize, consolidate and narrow opportunities for public higher education in Florida. It also inaugurated an era of new school gender practices. Right from the start, in fact, the Buckman Act's message to Florida's women was that the highest levels of educational attainment--the advanced degrees and professional schools of a "university education"--would be reserved for white males attending the new all-male University of the State of Florida. White women, by contrast, had to settle for a "college."

Furthermore, the Buckman Act mandated that the university would "teach...the fundamental laws and...the rights and duties of citizens ..." to its male students. The college, by contrast, would "teach...all the useful arts and sciences that may be necessary or appropriate." A dual discourse had been laid out--one that framed education for white men as a matter of "citizenship" and education for white women as a matter of "usefulness".

A residence hall currently on the campus of the University of Florida bears the name Buckman Hall in honor of the legislator. No equivalent building to date exists on the campus of Florida State University. Despite the impact of the Buckman Act, Albert A. Murphree, then President of the Florida State College, determined to stress liberal studies and academic performance. Florida State was the largest of the original two universities in Florida, even during the period as the college for women (1905 to 1947) until 1919. By 1933, the Florida State College for Women had grown to be the third largest women’s college in the United States. In 1935, the College was awarded the Alpha Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in Florida. The Florida State College for Women was the first state women's college in the South to be awarded a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, as well as the first university in Florida to be so honored for academic quality.