The Seneca Institute, later Seneca Junior College, educated African American children of this region from 1899 to 1939. It was founded and sponsored by the Seneca River Baptist Association, which acquired eight acres here in 1898. Its first home, a frame three-room building, was built in 1899. Its first principal, Dr. John Jacob Starks, served from 1899 to 1912 before serving as president of Morris College and then Benedict College. The school taught academic courses to primary and secondary students and industrial courses to secondary students. Its campus featured a two-story frame classroom building, a two-story frame boys’ dormitory, and a two-story brick girls’ dormitory and chapel. It expanded its curriculum to become Seneca Junior College in 1930, struggled through the Depression, and closed in 1939.