Philadelphia

Sunday, September 26th.

Immediately after the close of the Civil War, four men, all of whom had seen service in the Union Army, found themselves together in Nashville, Tennessee. Out of their talks grew the idea that Nashville would be a strategic center in which to locate a school for the higher education of the newly emancipated slaves.

Three of these men made themselves individually responsible for the purchase price of $16,000. for a site. The exact purpose for which the site was to be used was not divulged, except as it could have been implied from the statement:

"Our undertaking will be one in which we propose to take

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in the raw material and turn out the finished product."

The site which was bought was chosen because it was already occupied by a group of one-story buildings that had been Union Army hospital barracks and which could be utilized as school buildings.

The officers' quarters of the barracks were converted into a home for the small but earnest band of teachers; the sick wards were fitted up as schoolrooms, and the dead-house was turned into a storeroom of supplies for the ragged and hungry pupils.

In the work of getting established, a pile of rusty handcuffs and fetters were turned up, relics of the abandoned slavepen that once stood on the spot. These were sold as old iron, and the proceeds were used to buy Testaments and spelling-books.

This school opened in January, 1866; and that was the beginning

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of Fisk University.

Among the four men who made this beginning were General Clinton B. Fisk, for whom the University was named, and the Rev. E. M. Cravath, who became the University's first president, and who was the father of Mr. Paul D. Cravath, the present chairman of the Board of Trustees.

During the first year of the school the attendance of pupils, at that time made up of children, youth, adults, and even old people, averaged more than a thousand daily. In the following year the school was chartered as a university. Some of the students who were enrolled in the primary grades that first year remained in attendance until they were graduated years later from the college course.

For sheer romance the founding of Fisk is unmatched by that of any educational institution in the country. But what I have related does not

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constitute the whole of this romantic story.-

Year by year, after the founding, the financial problems of the young university grew greater and greater. The supply of money did not keep pace with the demands of the work. The vision of the founders had far outreached their resources. The financial situation finally reached the narrowest possible margin between survival and death for the enterprise.

Furthermore, after four or five years the buildings that were being utilized and which had been constructed only for temporary purposes began falling into decay. More money, a more suitable location, and permanent buildings became urgent necessities.

At this point begins that chapter in the romance in which the

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Jubilee Singers played their part.

The treasurer of the struggling school was George L. White. Mr. White, born in New York, had been a young school teacher, but at the outbreak of the Civil War he enlisted in the Union army; and the close of the war found him stationed in Nashville. As treasurer he had the overwhelming problem of an empty treasury. It was George L. White who brought forward what looked like a very impracticable, indeed like a wholly impossible plan for getting the needed money.

In addition to his qualifications for keeping debits and balances correctly, he was a fine natural musician, and had begun the training of a chorus the first year of the school.

The plan he suggested for getting the money that was needed was to

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take a band of a dozen selected and trained voices on a concert tour
through the North. Here was a plan that no practical-minded person
could be expected to take any stock in. The Administration of the school
had less than faint-faith in it. But even with implicit faith, the
school itself could give no assistance; for at the time for launching
the plan there was just one dollar and a half in the treasury.

Mr. White, however, had all the faith that was necessary. He
raised $500. on his own note in a Nashville bank, and his wife sold some
jewelry she possessed. With this money he outfitted his little band and
payed railroad fares to their first point of destination beyond the
Ohio River.

The historic group consisted of eleven students-- seven female and

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four male. Nine of them were emancipated slaves.

The singers opened in Cincinnati, and worked their way east, meeting at times with lukewarm success and at other times with downright failure. Frequently there was barely enough money to get them from one town to the next. In addition, they encountered all the hardships of color discriminations and racial antagonisms.

One night while they were huddled in a railroad station waiting for a late train, they found themselves surrounded by a crowd of whites who were at first curious, then maliciously mischievous, then insulting, then menacing. Mr. White sensing the impending danger said quietly to his little group-- "Sing, children, sing!" And they did sing. They began softly, then in fuller and fuller volume sang their songs of sorrow, of faith, and of triumph until the hostility of their tormentors was melted

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down and changed into wonder, delight, and friendliness.

This incident illustrates the truth that for generations the Negro has used these beautiful and noble songs both as a sword and a shield.

On this tour the Jubilee Singers met with their first great success when in New York Henry Ward Beecher threw Plymouth Church open to them. After that their way led from success to success, from ovation to ovation.

At the end of the two concert seasons in the North they had raised in cash for their school the sum of $40,000. Their return to Fisk University was made amidst hosannas of thanksgivings.

Twenty-five acres of land on a hill overlooking Nashville were bought as a permanent location. This hill had been crowned by Fort

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Gillem, originally one of the Confederate fortifications that had defended Nashville during the war. On the spot where the fort had stood was begun the erection of Jubilee Hall, named for the Jubilee Singers. It was finished at a cost of a hundred thousand dollars. It was the University's first permanent building, and still stands, majestic and beautiful, the heart of the University community.

For the purpose of securing money for the completion of Jubilee Hall, the Singers, in 1873, sailed for England on a singing campaign for ten thousand pounds-- fifty thousand dollars. They sang in England, Scotland and Ireland. Their success in these countries was instantaneous. The Earl of Shaftesbury became their sponsor. He affixed his name to the invitation that brought together the first English audience to hear them.

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Gladstone listened to them with undisguised emotion. They gave a concert at Argyll Lodge. Before the concert began, their hosts, the Duke and Duchess of Argyll, informed them that Queen Victoria had been invited to come. The Queen did come, and after hearing them sing, personally complimented and thanked them. But they sang not only for royalty and the nobility; they were received with unbounded enthusiasm by all classes of people. In their travels from place to place, they were literally trailed by clouds of glory.

When the tour was over they had reached the goal that had been set; thus in their first three concert tours bringing the amount in cash they had raised for the school up to ninety thousand dollars.

And they had done more than raise ninety thousand dollars. They

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had to an inestimable degree melted down hostility, had opened the minds
and hearts of thousands of people, and changed their attitudes toward
the Negro in America. Furthermore, they had done more than any agency
before or since to preserve and make known to the world the beautiful
religious folksongs of the Negro, a noble mass of music, which
constitutes the finest distinctive artistic creation that America can
offer the world.

The tradition has continued. Since the first group, other groups
of Fisk Singers have toured the United States, Great Britain and the
Continent. The singers here this afternoon are of the third generation
of Fisk Jubilee Singers. Under the excellent training and direction of
Mrs. Myers they maintain the high artistic standard originally set. I
consider them the finest combination of male singers in the United States
today.

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Now, this chapter of the romance of the founding of Fisk University I have related not merely as history, not merely as a matter of curious information. I have related it because it is one of the most significant traditions of Fisk, and because the significance of it applies so concretely to the aims and purposes of this very meeting.

In those early days the school was in great need, those in charge in charge of it were at the extremity, the question was actually one of surviving or perishing. It was then that that brave little band of singers rose to the rescue. They succeeded. They achieved financial success. They placed their school squarely on the road that has led to its present greatness. They made Fisk famous.

Indeed, it can be said that they made Nashville famous. They made

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the name of that city, then a small town, a familiar word in the mouths
of millions of people in the United States-- and they made it known to
hundreds of thousands of people in Europe who, otherwise, would not have
known even that there was a State of Tennessee. For half a century
Webster's Dictionary and other reference books referred to Nashville as
the capital of Tennessee; population ______; site of Fisk University.

The tradition of the Jubilee Singers gives to Fisk the distinction
of Negroes themselves playing an important *financial* part in the
establishment and development of one of the greatest institutions for
the education of their own race.

I hear a great deal about the Fisk spirit from students and graduates. It seems to me that the mainspring, the inspiration, the soul of the Fisk spirit should be in the example of that little band that

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rallied to the call in the dark days of 1871. Test of that spirit lies in the
answer to the question-- Will the living alumni rise to the height of
the spirit manifested by those early students?

But the importance, the influence, the benefits of Fisk extended to a wider circle than only those to whom she has given an education. The influences of Fisk have directly or indirectly benefitted every colored man, woman, and child in the United States. They have been of incalculable value to the white South; indeed to the whole nation.

The highest piece of statesmanship that came out of the Civil War
was not the handing to us of a slip of paper, with nothing behind it,
and being told that it was the ballot. The highest piece of statesman-
ship was wrought by those courageous and consecrated souls who, following

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after the Union armies, established Fisk and the other Negro liberal arts colleges in the South.

These schools constitute the cornerstone of all that the race has reared since Emancipation. It is these schools that have made possible the generating of the internal motive power that has kept us going. Without that power we might have been pulled along a pace or two by outside powers, but there could not have been any spontaneous and determined move forward on our own part.

In other words, these schools accomplished the work of providing from within, intellectual leadership for a group so isolated that, lacking such leadership, it would have remained leaderless altogether.

After making allowance for all the short-comings of the Negro liberal arts colleges, there remains the fact that it was from the men

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and women who were brought under the influence of these schools there
was formed the vanguard of racial progress. And those men and women
have not only formed the vanguard of racial progress for the past half
century and more, they have also been the lump of leaven in the whole
racial mass.

I am not setting up education as a universal panacea-- in fact,
there is no universal panacea. After decades of education the problem
of race has not yet been abolished. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding
all the talk we hear today about economics, a good deal of which is
sheer nonsense, education remains the basic factor in racial advance-
ment.

At first, the white South was, on the whole suspicious or contempt-

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uous of these Negro liberal arts colleges-- and the larger part of the white South has not yet gotten away entirely from that attitude. There are many white Southerners-- and for that matter, many white Americans who hold that the sole education for Negroes ought to be that which fits in with lower caste status.

But there is an increasing realization of the inestimable value of these schools to the South and to the whole country. A generation ago there was a universal attitude of hostility or aloofness on the part of the white people of the communities in which these schools are located. But one of the most encouraging factors at Fisk today is the cooperation, both moral and financial, that President Jones has been able to secure from the enlightened white citizens of Nashville.

Enlightened white people in the South are today acknowledging the

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truth that the South could not have survived the chaos left by the Civil
War had it not been for the work done by these schools; had it not been
for the influences and forces they created and set in motion. The South
alone and without those influences and forces could not have sustained
the load. It would have gone down under it.

The Negro liberal arts colleges have performed a vital work-- a
vital work for the entire race, for all the South, for the whole country.
But the work must go on. It cannot be allowed to stop, or even slow
down.

Among these liberal arts colleges Fisk stands preeminent. Fisk has
not only continued to carry out the fundamental functions for which it
was established, she has kept pace with the times. She has not stood

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pat on her excellent record, she has kept in the front ranks of the educational movement. Fisk is today not only a great Negro university, she has under the administration of President Jones developed into a great American university. President Jones has not been satisfied with anything short of the highest standards. And in carrying out the intention of gaining and maintaining those standards he has gathered around him a faculty which in quality is unsurpassed by that of any school of like size in the country.

And now, in order to guarantee the high standards that have been achieved and to insure their further development, he is consuming every ounce of energy and devotion he possesses to make the University financially secure.

The present situation is comparable to that which the original

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Jubilee Singers helped the University to meet. It calls for the same sort of courage, faith, and wisdom as was exercised by the founders, and the same sort of loyalty, earnestness, and sense of responsibility as was exercised by that band of early students.

Fisk must be saved. Fisk must be made secure. Fisk must go forward in growth and development. This situation appeals not only to the students and graduates of the University, not only to the people of Tennessee and the South, it appeals to America, and in maximum degree to all Negro American citizens.

President Jones is striving to secure a permanent endowment of three million dollars, a sum that will insure the maintenance of the institution and provide for future growth. The General Education Board

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will match every dollar the University raises, up to one million and a
half. Therefore to reach the goal of a three million dollar endowment
the University must raise at least a million and a half.

The Administration's plan is to raise, at least, one-tenth of that
amount-- $150,000 -- from the colored people of the United States.

Does that sound like a lot of money? It is, but considering the
purpose for which it is being asked, it is a mere pittance.

I said a moment ago that the white South is beginning to estimate
properly the value of the Negro schools to that section. It is time for
Negroes themselves to more fully estimate that value, and to demonstrate
their appreciation of it not merely in students' cheers, or alumni
banquets, or in orations on the progress of the race made through educa-
tion, but in sound financial support.

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For more and more, and rightly so, the financial support of schools
like Fisk will depend upon the ability and the willingness of Negroes to
give.

Dr. Kelly Miller once made a statement which sounds funny but which
is true, tragically true. He said, "The Negro pays for what he wants
and begs for what he needs." Our first reaction is to laugh at the
statement, but think it through to its furthest implications, and it is
nothing to laugh at-- "The Negro pays for what he wants and begs for
what he needs." I should like to see action taken in this instance
that would make Kelly Miller take back those words. And I know he'd be
glad to do it.

President Jones is seeking to secure $150,000. in endowment gifts

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from the colored people of the United States, one-tenth of the
$1,500,000. he must raise in order to reach his goal.

I recently read in the New York Times that the Chinese in the
United States had within the past few weeks raised for China more than
one million five hundred thousand dollars. Do you know how many Chinese
there are living in the United States? There are a bare 75,000!

And I tell you that the defense of China against Japanese invasion
is no more vital to the Chinese living in the United States than is the
maintenance of these schools in the South to Negro American citizens.

Fisk University is appealing to 12 million Negroes in the United
States to do at least one-tenth as much for her as 75,000 Chinese living
here have done for China. Does that sound unreasonable?