Just six months after the end of the Civil War, and two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, John Ogden, Reverend Erastus Milo Cravath, and Reverend Edward P. Smith founded the Fisk School in Nashville, TN in 1865.
The new institution was located in former Union Army barracks near the present site of Union Station. Named in honor of General Clinton B. Fisk of the Tennessee Freedmen's Bureau, the school assembled its first classes on January 9, 1866. The new students ranged in age from seven to seventy and shared the mutual experiences of slavery and poverty, along with an exceptional hunger for learning.
Fisk University was the first in the United States to offer a liberal arts education to "young men and women irrespective of color." Despite this, five years later the school was in dire financial straits.
Fisk treasurer and music professor George L. White created a nine-member vocal ensemble of students and took them on tour to earn money for the university.
The world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers originated as this group of traveling students who, with the entire contents of the university treasury, set out from Nashville on October 6, 1871, praying that through their music they could somehow raise enough money to keep open the doors of their debt-ridden school.
Their first concerts were in small towns and they were greeted with disbelief and curiosity as audience members were shocked that these young black singers did not perform in the traditional "minstrel fashion."
An early concert in Cincinnati earned the singers $50, and was instead donated to victims of the 1871 fire in Chicago. The students were physically and emotionally drained when they reached the next city on tour; Columbus. To encourage hope, Mr. White named them "The Jubilee Singers," a Biblical reference to the year of Jubilee in the Book of Leviticus, Chapter 25.
On November 16, 1871, the singers arrived at Oberlin College in Ohio to perform before a national convention of ministers. After a few standard ballads the chorus sang spirituals and other songs associated with slavery. It was one of the first public performances of the music African Americans sang in the fields and behind closed doors for generations.
"All of a sudden, there was no talking," says musicologist and former Jubilee Singer Musical Director Horace C. Boyer. "They said you could hear the soft weeping, and I'm sure that the Jubilee Singers were joining them in tears, because sometimes when you think about what you are singing, particularly if you believe it, you can't help but be moved."
With their beautiful voices and continued perseverance, the singers began to change the critical attitudes among the predominantly white audiences. Eventually standing ovations and praised reviews replaced the skepticism. The students gradually earned enough money to cover their expenses and return to Fisk.
Their performances captivated audiences so much that they traveled throughout the United States and Europe, moving audiences to tears. These audiences included William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Ulysses S. Grant, William Gladstone, Mark Twain, Johann Strauss, and Queen Victoria.
The Jubilee Singers also performed at the World Peace Festival in Boston in 1872. At the end of the year President Ulysses S. Grant invited them to perform at the White House.
The group grew to eleven members in 1873. Funds raised that year were used to construct Jubilee Hall, the school's first permanent building. Today Jubilee Hall is designated a National Historic Landmark by the US Department of Interior and is one of the oldest structures on campus. The beautiful Victorian Gothic building houses a floor-to-ceiling portrait of the original Jubilee Singers that was commissioned by Queen Victoria as a gift.
The present day Jubilee Singers perform at the university convocation and also the day's ceremonies with a pilgrimage to the original singers' grave sites, where the old songs are commemorated as sung over their first performers. At Fisk University, October 6th is
Jubilee Day. Each year the students pause on this date to observe the anniversary of the singers' departure from campus in 1871.
The Jubilee Singers introduced the world to the spiritual as a musical genre, which
remains a vibrant musical tradition today. While entertaining the world, they raised funds that preserved their university and allowed construction of Jubilee Hall, the South's first permanent structure built for the education of black students. As a designated National Historical Landmark, today, Jubilee Hall remains the dramatic focal point of Fisk's campus.
