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FISK MEMORIAL CHAPEL.
CHAUNCEY HOLT, PRINTER, 27 VANDEWATER ST., N. Y.
iFtsk Hmumttg,
Naslnnllr, ®ptttt.
THE COLLEGIATE DEPARTMENT AND THE PRESIDENT AND PASTOR.
FISK UNIVERSITY AFTKR THIRTY-NINF YFARS.
BY REV. J. G. MERRILL, D.D., PRESIDENT.
Fisk University was founded by
the American Missionary Associ¬
ation in 1866. It was cradled in
the army barracks that had been
abandoned by the Federal army.
It received its name from Gen.
Clinton B. Fisk, who, at the time,
was stationed at Nashville to close
out United States Government af¬
fairs. At the very first, Chaplain
Cravath, who was the President of
Fisk for more than twenty-five
years, announced that the insti
tution would afford to the colored
youth all the education they would
show themselves able to acquire
and make use of. This policy time
has amply vindicated.
It soon became evident that the
institution must find a new and per¬
manent site. Fort Gillam, in the
northwestern part of the city, was the location chosen. It is a com¬
manding position and with its thirty-five acres of land affords an
ideal campus. But how were the buildings to be erected ? Prof.
George E. White solved the problem by sending out a company of
Jubilee Singers, as he christened them. They sang in all the northern
States, in the British Isles, and 011 the continent of Europe. They
were gone seven years and brought back to Fisk $150,000, with which
Jubilee Hall was builded, the balance due 011 the campus was paid,
and the institution gained an international reputation.
Since these early days the school has moved forward with an even,
constant growth. There are now upon its campus eight. substantial,
nearly all, commodious buildings. Its property is valued at $350,000.
It has an incipient endowment of about $60,000. It catalogues over
500 students, of all grades, from the primary school, which is utilized
as a "practice" school for the Normal Department, to the College De¬
partment, which last year enrolled nearly 100.
During its existence Fisk has sent out nearly 500 graduates from
its Normal and College Departments. It keeps a close tally of its
REV. JAMES G. MKRRILL, D.D.,
President of Pisk University.
FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS.
JUBILEE HALL.
Alumni, and is able to show that its graduates are working along the
lines that they have been educated to follow to a larger extent than is
true of institutions of like grade, north or south, where the student
body is made up of Caucasians. The reason for this is apparent to
those who recognize the inevitable working of the law of supply and
demand. The vocations for which the Normal and College courses fit
are not overcrowded in the case of the colored graduate, the demand
for his services is far in excess of the supply, and must be for years
to come. The social conditions of the South, separating the Negro
from the Caucasian, afford the Negro an opportunity among his own
that would have been denied him had he to come in competition with
the educated white man. As teacher, doctor, lawyer, dentist, drug¬
gist, business man, educated farmer and clergyman, he cannot fail to
secure a livelihood, and an opportunity to become a leader with large
following. To read each year the revised roster of Fisk graduates is
ample justification of the far-sighted statesmanship of its founders.
The curriculum of Fisk is such that its graduates from the College
FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS.
Department are admitted as post-graduates at Yale and Harvard with¬
out examination, and, in more instances than one, those who have en¬
tered the professional schools of Harvard and Yale have led their
classes. The chief aim at Fisk, however, is not scholarship. Manhood
is its goal. Christian men and women are its product. It is the pur¬
pose of the Faculty to send forth no one who is unworthy of confi¬
dence or incapacitated to be a leader of those who have never had the
opportunities afforded at Fisk.
As looking toward this end Fisk University has not to any large
extent adopted the elective system. It recognizes the fact that the
student body has not the advantage of scholastic training in high
grade preparatory schools, and does not come from homes where the
THE CLASS OF I904 AND PROFS. TALLEY AND WATERMAN.
parents can decide upon the courses of study best adapted to their
sons and daughters. The curriculum is, in the main, prescribed by
the Faculty, and is arranged so as to give a well-balanced training
such as will afford a secure foundation for professional study, particu¬
larly for the teacher.
Those College students who purpose to become teachers, moreover,
have an opportunity in Junior year to take a course in Pedagogy and
practice-teaching instead of German.
As the years go by the Normal Department is made stronger. It
FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS.
now covers five years instead of four, peculiar emphasis having been
laid upon the study of English, and each year the examinations in
this department are more rigid.
Drill under the eye of the principal of the Pedagogical school as¬
sists the young practice-teacher in handling classes and imparting
instruction.
Quite naturally, the number of graduates in this department is
fewer than when the requirements were less, but the fact that the
Negro common school in the South constantly demands a higher
PEDAGOGICAL SCHOOL.
grade of teachers has determined the Faculty of Fisk to meet these
demands.
The Music Department might be expected to be prominent at
Fisk. The Jubilee Singers gave the school so wide and so enviable a
reputation that applications come from all over the South to enter
upon the study of music at Fisk.
It is the policy of the University to require of each music pupil
the pursuit of two literary studies in addition to music. The theory
FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS.
that the training of the intellect is a sine qua non is true in music as
in every other work.
The course laid down in the Music Department requires eight
years of study. There are, as might be expected, very few who com¬
plete it. Those who do are in instant demand. Ten times as many
as are here fitted for places would be readily and profitably employed.
In connection with this department, recitals are given twice each
month under the leadership of the head of the Department.
A choir of seventy-five voices has a weekly drill in sacred music
for the use of public worship in the Sabbath services and the study of
COLLEGE CHOIR.
the works of the great masters. They have taken up the "Messiah,"
" Elijah," "Stabat Mater," "St. Paul," and for the last two years have
done hard work in connection with Coleridge Taylor's "Hiawatha."
Nearly every year noted musicians from the North, at a nominal
cost, afford the University the benefit of recitals upon the piano and
organ. He is a dull pupil who spends much time in the musical
atmosphere of Fisk University without rising above the frivolous, not
to say degrading, music that is popular North as well as South.
The teaching force of the institution has in the past been almost
FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS.
entirely from the North. Graduates of Amherst, Ann Arbor, Carl¬
ton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, Holyoke, Oberliu, Smith, Syra¬
cuse, Wellesley, Wesleyan, Yale and other well-known colleges have
been upon the Faculty. These teachers have, almost without excep¬
tion, been actuated by a missionary and philanthropic spirit which
has held subordinate the matter of emolument or the securing of re¬
nown. To shape character has been, with them, a higher aim than to
train the intellect. To keep, at the highest point attainable, the intel¬
lectual life of the school is a goal never lost sight of during the nine
-and a half months of school year, but never day, nor night, is the
moral and religious well-being of the student body ignored, the rather
is it strenuously but lovingly sought after.
LIVINGSTONE HALL.
Of late there has been added to the Faculty a re-enforcement made
up of Fisk's own graduates, men of ability and scholastic acquire¬
ments, who have made it evident that they possess the loftiest ideals
of their alma mater.
The student body of Fisk comes from a score and a half of States.
It is probably lighter in color than most Negro schools. Its dark-
skinned students, however, often excel. Owing to the music depart¬
ment, the young women are slightly in excess of the young men in
point of numbers. As the years go by the young people, more fre¬
quently than formerly, enter the advanced classes. The secondary
schools in the South are doing better work year by year, although, of
FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS.
course, those who are trained for college in the " Preparatory Depart¬
ment" fit into the college the better.
Quite naturally, the life of a student at Fisk is a very strenuous
one. He is usually poor—often very poor. He works from October
to the middle of J line at his books and the tasks assigned him by the
university. His vacation is, as one of the boys has said, a " worka-
tion." He is found as a porter on the sleeping or dining-car, a waiter
at a summer resort, working at some trade that he has knowledge of,
teaching school—in fact, anything that will afford him an honest
penny. To secure these "jobs" he usually has to incur the expense
of going North, as wages are exceeding low for unskilled labor in the
Souih. For this reason many a time a student at Fisk does not see
STUDENTS AT MORNING CHAPEL EXERCISES, LIVINGSTONE HALL.
his parents for five, six, and even seven years, a hardship peculiarly
trying to a race whose family ties are strong. Nothing is more de¬
lightful than the graduating days, when the pride of the parents, in
view of the son's honor, is matched by the devoted attention of the
child to parents who, in form and feature, are at so great a remove
from the young graduate. The receptiveness and docility of the
student body is a constant inspiration to the teacher. As in every
school, there are those who are slow to learn, and not a few have to
give up in despair before the course is finished. Many of these, how¬
ever, remain long enough to catch the spirit of the institution and go
out to do good work among their people. The university is dissatis-
FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS.
fied with its work unless each graduate has a distinct and avowed
purpose to bless his race. The last Sunday before Commencement is
Senior Sunday, and, almost without exception, each graduate tells of
the plan he has formulated to carry out the underlying principle of
the school, " Not to be ministered unto but to minister," and that
other motto of the university, oftenest on the lips of President
Cravath, " Overcome evil with good."
Dr. Washington Gladden, who was Commencement orator in 1903,
after listening to the six representatives of a college class of twenty-
two, wrote: " I believe in the absolute necessity of the higher educa-
COLLEGE Y. M. C. A.
tion for the Negro ; and I believe that the higher education which he
receives should be the highest education—that the equipment which
we give to the leaders of the Negro race should be the best possible.
Their scholars should be good scholars ; their doctors should be just
as well trained as white doctors ; their lawyers should know just as
much law and just as much logic and just as much history and politi¬
cal science as white lawyers know ; their preachers should be men of
power and their journalists men of breadth. The kind of men that
Fisk is sending out will meet this demand, as I believe. I have cer¬
tainly never heard a better Commencement programme in any college
than the one I listened to last summer in Nashville."
FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS.
Fisk has been maintained chiefly by the American Missionary
Association, an organization supported by the Congregationalists,
whose policy is thoroughly unsectarian and interdenominational. It
is by means of this organization that nearly all the buildings
have been erected and each year funds been granted to support the
university. It has appropriated more than a million of dollars for the
university.
Of late years the money received from tuition has increased, until
it is now nearly enough to pay one quarter of the cost of the school
department. The boarding department, with its nearly three hundred
a graduates' school.
boarders, is sufficient to pay for itself, and before the late rise in pro¬
visions afforded a slight revenue to the institution.
The incipient endowment adds slightly to the income of the
school, but more than one-third of the expenses connected with the
school must be solicited each year at the North. As at present man¬
aged, the university could be carried on independent of the American
Missionary Association did it have an endowment of $300,000.
If the Association were released from the support of its oldest and
largest institution, it would be able to devote more to its younger
growing schools.
Were the salaries at Fisk equal to those paid for like work in
similar institutions in the North, the above-named endowment would
FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS.
at least be one-third too small, while a greatly needed enlargement of
the work of the university would make an endowment of a million
dollars none too large.
The Negro problem is the perplexing question of the hour. In
the solution of this problem Fisk University has done a large share.
A map of the United States dotted by the names of places where
Fisk graduates are working is an interesting sociological study.
They are found most densely congregated where they are most
needed. The occupation of the graduates is significant.
Here it will be seen that the vocation which is most potent in
shaping communities is most often entered upon. It is estimated that
from 15,000 to 20,000 colored youth are yearly taught by those who
have received their equipment to teach at Fisk University. All
through the Southland are schools typed, as far as it is possible so to
do, after the alma mater that has given their ideals to the teachers of
these schools both in city and country.
Of late a large number of the young men have become physicians
or dentists and druggists. To scatter through the South, Christian
men of high ideals in any or all of these vocations promises the
best things possible for the people whom they serve—a promise which
has had large fulfillment.
/
THE DOTS SHOW WHERE FISK GRADUATES ARE WORKING,
FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS.
The ministers educated at Fisk University are found in all evan¬
gelical denominations. They hold no second place in their churches.
A writer in The Outlook, the son of its editor in-chief, after a care¬
ful study of church conditions in the South, wrote that he found
no better organized church than one presided over by a graduate of
Fisk, who was also an honor man at Yale Divinity School.
But perhaps the most pervasive and beneficient influence exerted
by Fisk University has come through the refined Christian homes
presided over by liberally educated men and women. Quite naturally
INDUSTRIAL BUILDING AND GYMNASIUM.
Erected through a legacy by Mr. Howard, of Nashville, and gift of Deacon A. J. Burrell,
of Oberlin, O.
those jvho are associated in college and school life form life alliances,
and greatly does Fisk rejoice in a son whose rank as a scholar
along sociological lines has world-wide recognition; in another who is
dean of an important department in a well-known university; in
others, who, as clergymen, have a large following and wield wide influ¬
ence ; in others who, as physicians, have a large practice, lucrative,
and, what is far better, on a high moral plane; of others who have
won success as lawyers; but even more than these are they who,
FISK UNIVERSITY AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS.
like the gifted wife of the Principal of Tuskegee, are at the head of
Christian homes. In no other way than through such homes is the
welfare of the Negro of America to be secured.
In the light of the life of the university it is not to be wondered
at that a leading Southern gentleman, the pastor of the largest South¬
ern Presbyterian church of Nashville, said, at the funeral of Presi¬
dent Cravath, our first President, "If the spirit which breathed in
President Cravath, lived in his work, and is represented by you who
constitute Fisk University, obtained throughout the South and North,
there would be no race question."
AS GOOD AS NEW.
ENDORSEMENTS.
The following persons, among others, endorse the movement now being
carried forward to endow our University :
JOHN B. FRAZIER, Governor of Tennessee.
A. S. WILLIAMS, Mayor of Nashville.
H. W. BUTTORFF, President Chamber of Commerce, Nashville, Tenn
A. S. COLYAR, Member of Confederate Congress from Tennessee.
ISIDORE LEWINTHAL, Rabbi, Nashville.
LYMAN ABBOTT, Editor of The Outlook.
W. H. WARD, Editor of The Independent.
J. B. DRURY, Editor of Christian Intelligencer, Dutch Reformed.
A. E. DUNNING, Editor of The Congregationalist.
IRA LANDRITH, D.D., Sec'y of the Religious Education Association.
HENRY VAN DYKE, Professor in Princeton University.
DAVID H. GREER Bishop Coadjutor of Protestant Episcopal Church,
New York City.
Our President would be glad to answer any inquiries concerning our work.
All checks in favor of the institution should be made out to J. F. Brodie, Treas¬
urer, Nashville, Tenn.
FORM OF A BEQUEST.
I give and bequeath to the Trustees of Fisk University, a corporation char¬
tered under the laws of Tennessee and situated in Nashville, Tenn., the sum
of dollars, which I direct my executors to pay
to the said corporation, or its proper officer, in after
my decease.
Attested by three witnesses.
AN ARRANGEMENT FOR ANNUITIES.
Some persons may desire to give money to the University who are deterred
because they cannot forego the income of the sum they purpose giving. The Uni¬
versity stands ready to pay to such persons a stipulated annuity and at the same
time set apart.the sum given according to the desire of the donor.
OUR NEEDS ARE URGENT.—The A. M. A. Association, which has
sustained us so generously, says that we must become an independent
institution at the earliest possible moment.
WHAT GIVEN SUMS OF MONEY WILL DO.
$50 pays an annual scholarship. $10,000 founds an Instructorship.
$500 pays an Instructor's salary for a year. $28,000 founds a Professorship.
$1,000 founds an annual scholarship. $300,000 would endow our present
teaching force.