ISK UNIVERSITY NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE FOUNDED 1866 2 FISK UNIVERSITY IN 1911 FISK UNIVERSITY IN 1911 "CMSK UNIVERSITY was founded by the American Mission- ary Association in 1866. It was cradled in the hospital bar¬ racks 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 as chief of the Freedmen’s Bureau for Tennessee and adjoining States. At the very first Chaplain Cravath, who later PRESIDENT GEORGE A. GATES was the President of Fisk for more than twenty-five years, an¬ nounced That the institution was designed to set the feet of young Negroes in the way of the highest education they might show themselves able to acquire and use. This policy time has amply vindicated. ft- CO *d GO p o' CO CD CO o rt- CD £ B O H cT p- 70. CD to bi o o cr o < CD Oh (—K l-*« •B Ou a r+ £ B CD CO B' CD c* r-h O* B CO i—* © o B p p. CD 03 CD 70. 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It is a commanding position on an eminence 150 feet above the Cumberland River, and 100 feet above the main city of Nashville. The ground slopes away on every side and the buildings are conspicuous from every direc¬ tion. Its thirty-five acres of land make an ideal campus. But how were these buildings to be erected? Prof. George L. 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 on the Continent of Europe. They were gone seven years and brought back to Fisk 8150,000.00, with which Jubilee Hall was builded. Jubilee Hall stands on the site of Fort Gillem. The date on its corner stone is 1873. THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM is such that the graduates are admitted as post-graduates at Yale and Harvard without examination, and in more instances than one those who have entered the professional schools of Harvard and Yale have been among the leaders of their classes. It is the purpose of the Faculty to send forth no one who is unworthy of confidence or incapable of becoming a leader of those who have never had such opportunities. TRAINING FOR TEACHERS For many years the Normal Department of Fisk University did good work in training teachers for the grammar grades. The development of the general system of education through the South demands that Fisk should take a step in advance. The former Normal Department has been merged in the College and its courses of study lengthened by three years. But students de¬ siring to teach as early as possible may arrange their work in the later preparatory years and early college years, so that at the end of the Sophomore year they may obtain a Normal Diploma. Those who continue two years more win the Bachelor Degree. 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 appli- 4 FISK UNIVERSITY IN 1911 cations come from all over the South to enter upon the study of music at Fisk. It is the policy of the University to require each music pupil to take one or two literary studies in addition to music. The study of Music at Fisk is held up to intellectual academic stan¬ dards. This is true of all departments of music study; but “the inimitable singing of the Fisk students” is very widely known, even world-wide. Visitors to Nashville from all parts of the world take pains not to miss the unique experience of hearing them. These songs at Fisk are never sung for entertainment; they are always worship. STUDENTS AT CH/.PEL SERVICE The course laid down in the Music Department requires eight years of study. There are, as might be expected, very few who complete it. Those who do so are in constant demand. Ten times as many as we can furnish 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 depart¬ ment. A choir of seventy-five voices has a weekly drill in sacred music for the use of public worship in the Sunday services and the study of the works of the great masters. They have rendered the “Mes- FISK UNIVERSITY IN 1911 5 siah,” “Elijah,” “Stabat Mater,” “St. Paul,” Coleridge Taylor’s “Hiawatha,” and many others. Nearly every year noted musicians from the North at a nomi¬ nal 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. Indeed “coon song” and “rag time” are virtually never heard on the Fisk campus. LIVINGSTONE HALL THE TEACHING FORCE Graduates of Amherst, Ann Arbor, Carlton, Columbia, Dart¬ mouth, Harvard, Mt. Holyoke, Oberlin, Smith, Syracuse, Well¬ esley, Wesleyan, Yale and other well-known colleges have been upon the Faculty. These teachers have been actuated by a mis¬ sionary and philanthropic spirit, which has held subordinate the matter of emolument. There are also upon the Faculty a number of Fisk’s own graduates, men and women of such character, abil¬ ity, scholastic acquirements and pedagogic qualification, that they hold high place in the body of teachers. 6 FISK UNIVERSITY IN 1911 THE STUDENT BODY of Fisk comes from a score and a half of States. The secondary schools in the South are doing better work year by year, so that new students more frequently than formerly enter Freshman or advanced preparatory classes. The life of a student at Fisk is a strenuous one. He is usually poor—often very poor. He works from October to the middle of June at his books and the tasks assigned him by the University. During his summer “vacation” JUBILEE HALL he is found as porter on the sleeping or dining car, a waiter at a summer resort, working at some trade with which he may be familiar, coal mining, teaching school—in fact, anything that will bring him an honest penny. To secure this work he usually has to incur the expense of going North, as wages are exceedingly low for unskilled labor in the South. For this reason many a time a student at Fisk does not see his parents for six or seven years, a hardship peculiarly trying to a race whose family ties are FISK UNIVERSITY IN 1911 7 so strong. The pride of humble parents, who by great self-denials are able to see their sons and daughters take their Bachelor Diplo¬ mas at Fisk University, is beautiful. The receptiveness and re¬ sponsiveness 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, however, remain long enough to catch the spirit of the institution and go out to do good work among their people. The University is dissatisfied with its work unless each graduate has a distinct and avowed purpose to help his fellow men. CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP In fact, the efforts of the whole faculty are focused on the de¬ velopment of strong Christian character and fitness for leader¬ ship. With this in view the Boarding Department is conducted as nearly as possible on the lines of a Christian home. The dis¬ cipline, as far as possible, is that of a family. The student or¬ ganizations are also used for this purpose, including not only the Literary Societies, but the Christian Associations. In the final religious meetings before Commencement each senior, almost with¬ out exception, 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 the other motto of the University, oftenest on the lips of President Cravath: “Be not overcome of evil, but 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 education for the Negro; and I believe that the higher ed¬ ucation 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. The scholars should be good scholars; their lawyers should know just as much law and just as much logic and just as much history and political 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, as I believe, will meet this demand. I have certainly never heard a better Commencement programme in any college than the one I listened to last summer in Nashville.” 8 FISK UNIVERSITY IN 1911 FOUNDATION AND SUPPORT Fisk was founded by the American Missionary Association and has been largely sustained by it. Although this Association is sup¬ ported chiefly by Congregationalists, the policy of Fisk is thoroughly unsectarian; it is formally and actually undenominational. The Association has erected nearly all the twelve buildings, and each year a substantial appropriation from its funds is made for the support of the University. The receipts from tuition fees increase each year, but still they pay only about 20 per cent of the cost of carrying on the work. Negro youths are not usually able to pay large tuition fees. CHASE HALL AND GYMNASIUM The boarding department, with nearly three hundred boarders, virtually supports itself. The Endowment Fund is about $75,000. About one-third of our annual expenses, that is $20,000, must be solicited at the North. IN GENERAL The Negro problem is the perplexing question of the hour. In the solution of this problem Fisk University has a large share. A map of the United States dotted by the names of places where FISK UNIVERSITY IN 1911 9 Fisk graduates are working is an interesting sociological study. They are found most densely congregated where they are most needed. DISTRIBUTION OF GRADUATES During its existence Fisk has sent out 850 graduates from its different departments. We keep in close touch with our Alumni and so are able to show that our graduates are working along the lines for which they have been educated, to a larger extent than is true of institutions of like grade, North or South, where the student body is made up of white men and women. The reason for this is apparent to those who recognize the inevitable work¬ ing of the law of supply and demand. The vocations to which the College and Education courses lead are not overcrowded in the case of Negroes. The demand for their services is far in ex¬ cess of the supply, and must be so for years to come. The social conditions of the South, separating the Negro from the white, 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, druggist, business man, educated farmer, and clergyman, he easily succeeds in se¬ curing a livelihood, and has an opportunity to become a leader 10 FISK UNIVERSITY IN 1911 to the measure of his ability. To read each year the revised ros¬ ter of Fisk graduates is to find ample justification of the far¬ sighted statesmanship of its founders. GRADUATES Up to July 1, 1911, there had been graduated from all depart¬ ments 850 individuals. Of these there have been: Teachers_545, 64% of all graduates. Ministers_ 25 Doctors_ 54 Lawyers_ 17 In business_ 24 Of these 54 have been in the same occupation from 25 to 30 years, and six over 30 years. Of the class of 1911, 34 in number, 10 are taking graduate work in Northern universities. 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 Uni¬ versity. All through the Southland are schools, both in city and country, patterned, as far as possible, after the alma mater that has given its ideals to the teachers of these schools. The ministers educated at Fisk University are found in all evangelical denominations. They hold no second places in their churches. A writer in the “Outlook,” the son of its editor-in-chief, after a careful 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 beneficent influence ex¬ erted by Fisk University has come through the refined Christian homes presided over by liberally educated men and women . Quite naturally those who are associated in college and school form life alliances.! Greatly does Fisk rejoice |in a son whose ran k as a scholar along sociological | lines has> 4 world-wide ^recognition; in another who is dean of /an important department in a well-known university; in others who as clergymen have large following and wield wide influence; in others who as physicians have large prac- FISK UNIVERSITY IN 1911 11 tice and are maintaining high ethical standards in a noble pro¬ fession; in others who have won success as lawyers; but even more than these are they who, 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 Amer¬ ica to be secured. Many such there are which will bear compari¬ son with the homes of any people on earth. Toward the ultimate status of the Negroes in America Fisk is constantly a real contribution. SEVENTEENTH AVENUE LOOKING TOWARD JUBILEE THE NEW ERA OF FISK UNIVERSITY [An editorial in the “Outlook,” April 16, 1910.] Agreement of Southern and Northern opinion upon the equal need of the higher education for the White and the Negro was amply evidenced at the inauguration, on March 31st, of Dr. George A. Gates as President of Fisk University, at Nashville, Tennessee, the oldest and best known of the twenty negro col¬ leges. “I am glad/' said Mayor Howse, of Nashville, “that the time has come when the white race is ready to take the colored race by the hand and build it up, educationally and financially. In this Republic we must live for each other under one God and one flag.” Addressing President Gates, he said: “President Cravath and President Merrill, your predecessors, have done much for Nashville. You are Nashville’s President as well as Fisk’s.” Speaking for the Nashville Board of Trade, Mr. James Palmer followed him, saying, “We will extend a helping hand to you when you need it.” Especially significant was the testimony quoted by President Gates, in his inaugural, from leading jurists 3 0112 1 05725110 a 12 FISK UNIVERSITY IN 1911 of Tennessee, including Judge Lurton, recently made Justice of the Federal Supreme Court: “We hold it our duty to give the Negro all the education he can take and use. Then, if we white people cannot keep ahead of him as he moves forward, it will be¬ come us to follow after on the level suited to lower capacities.” The common interest for which intelligent promoters of industrial and of higher education, sometimes misrepresented as antagon¬ istic, co-operate like scissor blades was effectively demonstrated by Dr. Washington. With the greeting he brought from the Tuskegee Institute he presented from an Alabama benefactor of Tuskegee a gift of a thousand dollars to Fisk. Representatives of some twenty colleges and universities, Northern and Southern, were present, for whom Chancellor Kirkland, of Vanderbilt Uni¬ versity, Nashville, spoke with rare elegance of form as well as solidity and breadth of thought. The inimitable feature of the day was the vocal music of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. It was out of the earnings of the Jubilee Singers—over a hundred thousand dol¬ lars—that the Jubilee Hall was built on the Fisk campus in 1875. Fisk needs and deserves a generous endowment to crown its his¬ tory of patient work and sacrifice. The coming of Dr. Gates, a man of broad vision, warm heart, cool head, high courage, and genial humor, with twenty years of successful experience as col¬ lege president in Iowa and California, hopefully initiates a new and prosperous era.