Celebrate Black History Month with the Fisk Jubilee Singers

​Gospel, jazz, blues, hip-hop, and rock’n roll all have a common ancestor—the “slave songs” sung by African Americans. The world might have been robbed of this rich musical heritage and all that grew out of it, had it not been for the Fisk Jubilee Singers.
            In 1866 one year after the end of the Civil War, Fisk University opened in Nashville—the first American university to offer a college education to people of color. It struggled financially. Five years in, it was on the brink of having to close its doors. In a last-ditch effort to raise money and save the university, a music professor formed a choir to perform on tour. He felt confident those who had been abolitionists along the former underground railroad route would have sympathy and donate to their cause.
            At first the choir, many of them former slaves, met with venomous racism. Innkeepers refused to rent them rooms. People boycotted their performances. They were making so little money they couldn’t afford to buy coats to keep warm in the cold northern states. But they persisted, and little by little their audiences grew until they were performing to sold-out crowds. Mark Twain said, “I am expecting to hear the Jubilee Singers to-night, for the fifth time. The reason it is not the fiftieth is because I have not had fifty opportunities.” President Grant invited them to perform at the White House. On world tour, they performed for Queen Victoria. She was so moved by their performance she commissioned their portrait and then gave it to Fisk University as a gift.
​           The Fisk Jubilee Singers broke racial barriers. When George Pullman discovered the choir had been denied berths on trains, he integrated his entire fleet. Owners of hotels and inns and boarding houses were inspired to integrate—then public schools. Yet arguably the choir’s greatest legacy is saving slave spirituals from being lost and forgotten. 

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​The portrait commissioned by Queen Victoria of the Fisk Jubilee Singers hangs in Jubilee Hall, a building built with money the choir earned, constructed out of stone so the Klu Klux Klan could not burn it down. Today’s Fisk Jubilee Singers rehearse beneath the portrait.