The school was founded by the American Baptist Home Mission Society. Henry Martin Tupper came south immediately after the end of the Civil War, establishing the Second Baptist Church of Raleigh (changed to Tabernacle Baptist Church in 1910, and now the Tupper Memorial Baptist Church.) Later Tupper and his Bible study students constructed a two-story church, with one story for the church, and one for the Raleigh Institute, where he taught freedmen. By 1915, supported by the American Baptist Home Mission, the school had 291 students, evenly divided between men and women.