Fisk Jubilee Singers - History

History

The Singers were organized as a fundraising effort for Fisk University. The historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee was founded by the American Missionary Association and local supporters after the end of the American Civil War to educate freedmen and other young African Americans. The five-year-old university was facing serious financial difficulty. To avert bankruptcy and closure, Fisk's treasurer and music director, George L. White, a white Northern missionary, gathered a nine-member student chorus to go on tour to earn money for the university. On October 6, 1871, the group of students, consisting of two quartets and a pianist, started their U.S. tour under White's direction. They first performed in Cincinnati, Ohio. Over the next 18 months, the group toured through Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.

After a concert in Cincinnati, the group donated their small profit, which amounted to less than fifty dollars, to the relief to the victims of the Great Chicago Fire of October 1871. As soprano Maggie Porter recalled, "We had thirty dollars and sent every penny to Chicago and didn’t have anything for ourselves." The mayor of Chillicothe, Ohio expressed "thanks to these young colored people for their liberality in giving the proceeds of last evening’s concert to our relief fund for the Chicago sufferers." The group traveled on to Columbus, where lack of funding, poor hotel conditions, and overall mistreatment from the press and audiences left them feeling tired and discouraged.

The group and their pastor, Henry Bennett, prayed about whether to continue with the tour. White went off to pray as well; he believed that they needed a name to capture audience attention. The next morning, he met with the singers and said "Children, it shall be Jubilee Singers in memory of the Jewish year of Jubilee." This was a reference to Jubilee described in the book of Leviticus in the Bible. Each fiftieth Pentecost was followed by a "year of jubilee" in which all slaves would be set free. Since most of the students at Fisk University and their families were newly freed slaves,the name "Jubilee Singers" seemed fitting.

The Jubilee Singers' performances were a departure from the familiar "black minstrel" genre of white musicians' performing in blackface. As the tour continued, audiences came to appreciate the singers' voices, and the group began to be praised. The Jubilee Singers are credited with the early popularization of the Negro spiritual tradition among white and northern audiences in the late 19th century; many were previously unaware of its existence. After the rough start, the first United States tours eventually earned $40,000 for Fisk University.

In early 1872 the group performed at the World's Peace Jubilee and International Musical Festival in Boston, and they were invited to perform for President Ulysses S. Grant at the White House in March of that year. They gave a separate performance in Washington, D.C., for Vice President Schuyler Colfax and members of the U.S. Congress. They traveled next to New York, where they performed before enthusiastic audiences at preacher Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Church in Brooklyn and at Steinway Hall in Manhattan. They garnered national attention and generous donations. Staying in the New York area for six weeks, by the time they returned to Nashville, they had raised the full $20,000 White had promised the university.

In a tour of Great Britain and Europe in 1873, the group, by then with 11 members, performed "Steal Away to Jesus" and "Go Down, Moses" for Queen Victoria in April. They returned to the U.S. in May 1874. The following year, they sailed to Europe again, touring from May 1875 to July 1878. This tour raised an estimated $150,000 for the university, funds used to construct Fisk’s first permanent building. Named Jubilee Hall, the building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1975 and still stands.

The original Jubilee Singers disbanded in 1878 because of their grueling touring schedule. As Ella Sheppard, one of the original Jubilee Singers recalled, "our strength was failing under the ill treatment at hotels, on railroads, poorly attended concerts, and ridicule." Porter also said, "There were many times, when we didn’t have place to sleep or anything to eat. Mr. White went out and brought us some sandwiches and tried to find some place to put us up." Other times while the singers would wait in the railway station, White "and some other man of the troupe waded through sleet or snow or rain from hotel to hotel seeking shelter for us".

A new Jubilee Singers choir was formed in 1879 under the direction of George White and singer Frederick J. Loudin. This troupe, formed by White, consisted of Jennie Jackson, Maggie Porter, Georgia Gordon, Mabel Lewis, Patti Malone, Hinton Alexander, Benjamin W.Thomas, and newcomers R.A. Hall, Mattie Lawrence, and George E. Barrett. A. Cushing was the agent who managed their bookings.