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Saved by a Song
| Article
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10437 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1993 |
1,731 Words |
| Author
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Peggy Robbins
Peggy Robbins, a Tennessee native, is a free-lance writer
living in Gulfport, Mississippi. Over the past three decades,
she has written extensively about American heritage and
military history. |
The Fisk Jubilee Singers were the first internationally acclaimed group of black American musician. They attained first recognition then fame and, along the way, financed Fisk University. Their story is also the story of famous spirituals.
In 1866, the American Missionary Association of New York City and the Western Freedmen's Aid Commission of Cincinnati, assisted by Gen. Clinton Fisk, who was then in charge of the Freedmen's Bureau of Tennessee, founded Fisk School for Negroes in Nashville. It was a poor school housed in wooden barracks abandoned by Union soldiers after the War between the States. Originally intended as a high school, it accepted students of all ages, and, of the twelve hundred students it enrolled during its first two years, many came just to learn to read and write; some old people wanted only to learn to read the Bible.
From the beginning the school had problems just supplying the students with books, paper, and pencils, and buying fuel to heat the barracks. However, the determined spirit and ingenuity of the teachers--white missionaries from the North--enabled Fisk not only to survive but to expand. It was chartered as a university, and, in 1871, set up its first college courses and established a normal school to train elementary teachers. But, by then, it was desperately in need of funds.
On the Road
Fortunately, one of the teachers, George White, who was also the school's treasurer, was a musician. After serving in the war White has come from his home in Cadiz, New York, to teach in Nashville. A singer himself, he was amazed by the richness and beauty of the untrained voices of his Fisk students. He organized a chorus and taught his young students songs that were sung at concerts attended by whites--songs such as "Annie Laurie" and "Home Sweet Home."
In the meantime, he overheard his students singing the songs of their parents--"Nobody Knows the Trouble I've seen," "Steal Away to Jesus," "Roll, Jordan, Roll," and "Go Down, Moses." At his request they sang many old songs for him--songs so plaintively beautiful, he said, they made him cry. After his chorus sang a few programs of their newly learned songs taken from printed music, White suggested that they include some of the old Negro songs on their performances. They did not like the idea, afraid that white people outside the school would scorn the simple, poetic spirituals as slave music.
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