The Douglass Center stands on the site of a consolidated school complex that offered elementary, junior, and high school classes to African American students in Live Oak. Its origins reach back to the Reconstruction era, when public education for African Americans in Suwannee County began in 1869 with two schools, one in Live Oak and another in unincorporated Houston. The Live Oak school was renamed for Frederick Douglass and stood on the west side of South Houston Avenue in a two-story wooden building that operated only from June through September. In the 1920s, a second school named for Douglass was built on the east side of South Houston Avenue as a single-story brick schoolhouse financed by donations from the African American community and matching funds from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation. In 1939, it became the first African American school in Live Oak to offer high school classes. The school built on this site was the third in the district to bear Douglass's name; construction began in 1950 on a new 30-classroom facility for grades one through twelve, and it opened for the 1956/1957 school year. The campus included a music room, teacher's lounge, offices, clinic, cafeteria, library, chemistry lab, agricultural and homemaking departments, and physical education facilities with locker rooms, showers, and athletic programs in football, basketball, baseball, and softball. After school buses were acquired, many rural African American students gained access to a high school education. In 1965, a new gymnasium was completed, the first for an African American school in Suwannee County. After the integration of Florida's public schools, Douglass School graduated its final high school class in 1969, the last segregated class to graduate in Suwannee County. The campus then served as Suwannee Middle School until 1990, was renamed the Douglass Center and used as an alternative school until 2006, and was acquired by the Suwannee County Board of County Commissioners in 2008 for adaptation as a community center. It is the last publicly owned, historically African American school site in Suwannee County and remains a vital part of the Live Oak community.