Edward Waters College is a private college located in Jacksonville, Florida. It was founded in 1866 to educate freed former slaves and is the oldest historically black college in Florida. It is affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and is part of the Independent Colleges and Universities of Florida. Its current president is Nat Glover, the former Sheriff of Jacksonville. The first African Methodist Episcopal (AME) pastor in the state, William G. Steward, originally named the college Brown Theological Institute. The school went through some financial difficulties and closed for much of the 1870s. It reopened in 1883 as "East Florida Conference High School”, then changed to “East Florida Scientific and Divinity High School”. Over the next ten years, the curriculum was expanded and the school was renamed for the third bishop of the AME Church, Edward Waters. The original Edward Waters College campus was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1901, but by 1904 new land was obtained and work was started on the new facility. Edward Waters was accredited as a junior college in 1955 under President William B. Stewart and five years later had a restored four-year curriculum.