The Jubilee Singers consisted of seven women and four men. Initially, reaction to them ranged from curiosity&nbsp;to hostility, especially since they were not a minstrel group. Gradually, they began to win over their audiences, who were primarily white. In 1872, they performed at the World Peace Festival in Boston and President Ulysses S. Grant invited them to the White House that same year. They toured Europe the following year. The group's manager and university treasurer and music professor, gave the group its name—after a reference to the book of Leviticus in the Bible—to encourage the exhausted group to keep going.

Jubilee Hall was built in 1876 thanks in large part to the efforts of the Jubilee Singers who helped raise funds for its construction. It is the oldest building on campus.

Fisk University was founded in 1866 by the American Missionary Association to provide a liberal arts education for African Americans after the Civil War. It was one of the first such schools established after the war. Completed in 1876, this building, Jubilee Hall, is the oldest structure on campus. Designed by Stephen D. Hatch, it is an excellent example of Victorian Gothic architecture and is the oldest building on campus. Notably, it is also the oldest remaining building constructed for the higher education of African Americans in the country. Jubilee Hall is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a National Historic Landmark. Today the building serves as a dormitory. It is named after a student vocal chorus called the Jubilee Singers, who toured the United States and Europe to help raise funds for the university and the building's construction. The interior features a floor to ceiling mural of the singers commissioned in 1873 by Queen Victoria, who was impressed by their performance. The group continues to perform today.

Jubilee Hall, Fisk University

Established just one year after the end of the Civil War, this institution trained thousands of teachers and in 1930 Fisk became the first black institution to be accredited by the Southern Association for Colleges and Schools. Highlights of the campus tour include Jubilee Hall which is a National Historic Landmark and  Cravath Hall, home to world-famous murals by Aaron Douglas. The tour also includes one stop at neighboring Meharry Medical College along the route. 

In late 1865, a location for a new school for African-Americans was established at a former&nbsp;Army barracks in Nashville by Clinton B. Fisk, an ex-Union officer in the Civil War and a commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau of Tennessee; the school was named in Fisk's honor. The first classes took place there&nbsp;in January, 1866. Within the African-American community, the soon-to-be university would become a leader in higher education, art and music. Among its faculty, board and graduates would be&nbsp;such luminaries as W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, John Lewis and Aaron Douglas. In the late 19th Century, the University possessed a library, but this was at first&nbsp;located in a wing of the campus' main building, Jubilee Hall, as&nbsp;there was not yet a separate building to house the collection. It was later moved to a floor in a men's dormitory.&nbsp; Because of the expansion of the university, of the needs of its students and of the library collection itself, the institution in 1905 requested a grant for a new building from noted philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie approved a grant of $20,000 (a very large sum at the time) on the condition that the University provide matching funds for the library's upkeep. The commission to design and construct the new building was given to Moses McKissack III, the grandson of a slave from West Africa. That slave, also named Moses McKissack, was trained by his master as a builder, and he passed on his knowledge to his son, Gabriel, who in turn trained his son, Moses. Moses McKissack III also worked for an architect in Pulaski, Tennessee, before moving to Nashville,&nbsp;and completed a correspondence course in architecture. The library was to be&nbsp;one of the first major structures designed by a Black architect anywhere in America; it is particularly significant that McKissack was able to build it in the segregated South. In the year before McKissack began construction of the library, he was listed in the city directory as a "contractor." In the year the library opened, 1909, he was listed in the same source as a "colored architect."&nbsp; The ground for the building&nbsp;was broken in May 1908, and the&nbsp;cornerstone was laid later that month by Secretary of War (and future President) William Howard Taft. The library officially opened on February 25, 1909; at the time, it was considered "one of the South's finest" university libraries.&nbsp;The new two-story brick building was designed in what the NRHP's nomination form calls "a restrained Neo-Classic style," included a&nbsp;stone-columnned porch, a stone belt course and a large hipped roof of clay tiles and bracketed eaves. The interior contains a two-story light well which provides illumination. The interior walls were of polished oak, and the furniture at the time was made of the same hard wood, while the floors were lined with cork to muffle noise. The library's collection of nearly 9000 volumes were housed in modern steel shelves. In addition to its function as a library, parts of the building were used as a women's gym, as rooms for seminars, and even as residences for female boarders. A former boarder has described the extreme difficulty of maintaining quiet for the benefit of those who had come to the library merely to study. Extensive interior modeling was done on the structure in 1926-1927, which improved the building both for practical purposes and aesthetically. However, only a few years later, the entire collection was moved to a new location, Cravath Hall.&nbsp;(The John Hope and Aurelia Elizabeth Franklin Library, completed in 1969, currently houses Fisk's entire collection.) The former library is still in use as the Academic Building of Fisk University.&nbsp; As for Moses McKissack III, he was soon joined by his younger brother Calvin, who together launched McKissack and McKissack, the first architectural firm in the United States owned by African-Americans and organized and staffed by Black architects and draftsman. Although no longer located in Nashville, McKissack &amp; McKissack exists today: one of Moses McKissack III's granddaughters, Cheryl McKissack Daniel,&nbsp;is currently its&nbsp;President and CEO.&nbsp;

The Fisk University Academic Building (formerly Fisk University Carnegie Library) is located on the campus of Fisk University, a historic Black college in Nashville. The Fisk University Carnegie Library was constructed in 1908 partly through a grant by millionaire philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. It was the very first large building designed and built by Moses McKissack III, one of the first professional African-American architects in America, and was constructed in the so-called Classic Revival style. McKissack would later be a co-founder of the firm of McKissack and McKissack, the first Black-owned architectural firm in the United States. This and three other buildings in the Nashville area were designated by the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) as the most important structures designed and built by McKissack between 1908 and 1930, the years in which he established his reputation. Along with the three other Nashville buildings designed by McKissack, it was entered in the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. 

Fisk University Academic Building (formerly Carnegie Library)

<h3>Thomas Talley</h3>Thomas Talley was born on October 9, 1870 in Shelbyville, Tennessee to formerly enslaved parents, Charles and Lucinda Talley. He was one of nine children. Talley attended public schools growing up and attended Fisk University, earning his B.A. in 1890 and his M.A. three years later. His teaching career began in 1891 when he was hired by Alcorn A&amp;M College, which is located in Mississippi. He next taught at Florida A&amp;M from 1893 to 1900, and then at the Tuskegee Institute until 1903 when he joined Fisk. In 1896, he obtained a doctorate of science degree from Walden University and participated in post graduate summer programs at Harvard in 1914 and 1916. He later earned his Ph.D. in 1931 from the University of Chicago.Talley was always interested in music. While an undergraduate at Fisk, he sang with the First Jubilee Singers, which went on tour in 1890. He also sang in a quartet, was a member of a classical music group called the Mozart Society, conducted the Fisk choir, and was active in the music activities at Fisk Union Church. He also wrote a Christmas song called "Behold That Star."Talley began collecting rural African-American folksongs when he was about 50 years old. Negro Folk Rhymes was the first collection of African-American folksongs compiled by a black scholar. Talley never published his collection of African-American folk stories, which he titled "Negro Traditions," but it was published in 1993.Talley left Fisk in 1942 then worked for the War Department during World War II. After living for a time in Jefferson City, Missouri, he came back to Nashville where he remained for the rest of his life. During that time he continued to write about science topics. He died on July 14, 1952. He married his wife, Ellen, in 1899 and they had two daughters, both of whom had successful music careers.<h3>Saint Elmo Brady</h3>Brady was born on December 22, 1884 in Louisville, Kentucky. He attended Fisk and graduated in 1908 then began teaching at the Tuskegee Institute, where he befriended its founder, Booker T. Washington. Four years later, Brady enrolled in graduate school at the University of Illinois where he earned his master's in chemistry in 1914 and his Ph.D. in 1916. During that time he became the first African American admitted into the chemistry honor society, Phi Lambda Upsilon. For his achievement of becoming the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry, the NAACP monthly magazine, The Crisis, named Brady the November 1916 issue's "man of the month."Brady returned to the Tuskegee Institute and remained until 1920 when he was hired by Howard University. Seven years later, he joined the chemistry faculty at Fisk and taught until he retired in 1952. However, he came out of retirement to establish the chemistry department at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi. He died on December 25, 1966 in Washington D.C. He and his wife, Myrtle, had two sons, Robert and St. Elmo Brady, Jr.

Talley-Brady Hall on the Fisk University campus is named after two notable African-American chemistry professors, Thomas Talley (1870-1952) and Saint Elmo Brady (1884-1966). Talley earned his B.A. and M.A. at Fisk and spent most of his career here from 1903 to 1942. He taught chemistry and biology and served as chair of the chemistry department for 25 years. He was also a noted collector of African-American folk music and stories. In 1922, he published the first scholarly work of secular folksongs in Tennessee called Negro Folk Rhymes. Brady was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry (1916) and, like Talley, also served as chair of the Fisk University chemistry department.

Talley-Brady Hall

Meharry Medical College began in the nineteenth century as a medical training school for African Americans. It was funded in 1876 by Samuel Meharry and his four brothers and was established as the medical department of Central Tennessee College. Dr. George Whipple Hubbard, a White physician, founded the dental department in 1886 and headed the medical school for many decades. By the early 1910s, Meharry graduates made up about half of all African Americans practicing medicine in the Southern states. The medical school was a part of Walden University in this era. Campus buildings were south of downtown Nashville near Chestnut Hill; the house built for Dr. Hubbard survives and is a Clio entry ("Hubbard House" at 1109 1st Ave. S.).Hulda Margaret Lyttle was born in Nashville in 1889. She was a member of the first class of nurses at the Hubbard Hospital Training School for Nurses at Meharry and was one of the first three students to complete the training in 1913; the others were Miss Rhoda A. Pugh from Mississippi and Mrs. Lula Woolfolk of Nashville. The nurses were joined at Meharry's commencement ceremonies at Ryman Auditorium in April 1913 by a large class of 90 physicians, 25 dentists, and 20 pharmacists. Lyttle worked elsewhere for a few years and returned to Nashville in 1915. She became the first African American nurse to pass the Tennessee state board nursing exam in 1915. She became head nurse at Meharry's George W. Hubbard Hospital. Meharry Medical College received its own charter in 1915. Meharry graduated eight nurses at their 41st annual commencement ceremonies in May 1917.Nurses Hall on the new campus of Meharry Medical College was originally used in 1930 as a dormitory and classroom space. Hulda Margaret Lyttle became Dean of the School of Nursing in May 1938; she was the school's first African American female dean of an academic division. Nurses Hall was renamed in honor of Lyttle on June 23, 1946. The building later served as office space for Meharry Medical College, which is still in operation. Although Lyttle Hall is three stories tall, the down sloping terrain leaves the basement at ground level on the south and west sides of the building. Many of Lyttle Hall's original finishes were still intact in the 1990s, including marble tile in the lobby, when it was rehabilitated. Meharry received a large government grant in 2009 to renovate Lyttle Hall. Lyttle Hall is one of the oldest of 21 buildings on the campus and includes 32,100 square feet.

The brown brick, three-story building at 1005 Dr. JB Todd Jr Blvd. is Lyttle Hall on the campus of Meharry Medical College. Originally named Nurses Hall, the collegiate Gothic style building dates to 1930. The building is named in honor of Hulda Margaret Lyttle (1889-1983), who served Meharry as Head Nurse, and dean of the nursing school. Lyttle Hall was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998 for its significance in architecture, education, and medicine. It now houses Meharry Medical College offices and medical offices, including Meharry Family Practice.

Lyttle Hall at Meharry Medical College

The Union forces occupying Nashville built what later became the Little Theater in the 1860s as part of two buildings of Army hospital barracks. It came to be known as "Railroad Hospital." They were converted into use for the Fisk School in January 1866, which became Fisk University in 1867. The two buildings were moved to this location along what is now Dr. JB Todd Jr Blvd. The buildings and an adjoining chapel made up the campus buildings until Jubilee Hall was built in 1876 on land that formerly held a Civil War fort, Fort Gillem.The wings of the building were arranged slightly differently in this spot on campus on an 1897 Sanborn map, where the building was being used as a printing office. The entrance was on the south end of the narrow wing, northwest of the gymnasium building. By 1914, the building was in use as a carpentry shop and was in the same orientation as in 1897. In 1935, the combined building was reconfigured to its present orientation and renovated to become a theater, with seating for 90. The Fisk Stagecrafters, the university's drama group, call the Little Theater their home base. Performances have been held in the Little Theater for visiting notables, including Sidney Portier, Miles Davis, and Cicely Tyson.The T-shaped building features a projecting front vestibule, facing east toward campus, leading to the central segment of the building, with two, asymmetrical rear wings on the west end. The vestibule, central portion, and rear wings have gable roofs.The exterior of the Little Theater building was covered in sewn-together used jute and burlap sacks in the spring of 2021 as part of "Leaves of Grass," an art intervention project by Ghanian-born artist Ibrahim Mahama. The sacks are manufactured in Asia and used as part of the cocoa and coffee export trade of Ghana with Europe and the Americas. The installation related to the sociopolitical and economic forces that oppress workers in a capitalistic economy, while also reflecting a universal skin. The material was resown by volunteers and students in Nashville in 2021 with yarn or twine and then draped over the Little Theater for the month of May. A similar process took place in a variety of urban spaces during the exhibition's travels beginning in 2012.

The building on Dr. DB Todd Jr. Blvd. opposite the Albion Street intersection is the Little Theater at Fisk University. The one-story, wood-frame building was built in the early 1860s by the Union Army as "The Railroad Hospital," making this the oldest building on campus. The building originally stood on West Church Street in Nashville and was moved here in 1873. It was repurposed as a classroom building for Fisk, opened in January 1866 as Fisk Free School, named after General Clinton B. Fisk of the Freedman's Bureau of Tennessee. The official charter was granted in 1867, creating Fisk University. The building was remodeled into a theater in the 1930s and housed the Fisk University Speech and Drama Department. The Little Theater is one of a number of buildings that make up the Fisk University Historic District, listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

Little Theater at Fisk University

The Carl Van Vechten Gallery building was erected in large part to the effort of student William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, who is better known as W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) and became one of the country's eminent African-American intellectuals of the first half of the 20th century. He graduated from Fisk in 1888 with a bachelor of arts degree. That year he also led the effort, in conjunction with the Fisk Alumni Association, to raise funds for a new gym. The red-brick building was completed in 1889 and also served as a mechanical arts building. When a new gym building was constructed in 1948, the 1888 building was converted into the art gallery in 1949 and named after Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964), who was a music critic, author, photographer, and art collector from New York. He was also a Fisk University benefactor. His suggested to acclaimed painter Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), who was married to noted photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), that she donate 19 of her late husband's photographs and dozens of paintings in his collection to the university. O'Keeffe donated two paintings as well. The gallery building was renovated in 1984. In 1987, the state legislature created an endowment for the gallery which made it free for anyone to visit.

The Fisk University Galleries consists of two galleries, the Carl Van Vechten Gallery and the Aaron Douglas Gallery. The Carl Van Vechten Gallery is housed in this building, which was built in 1889 as the university's first gymnasium. The Aaron Douglas Gallery is located on the third floor of the John Hope and Aurelia Elizabeth Franklin Library. The Galleries' collection contains more than 4,000 works of art, the oldest of which are three hundred years old. Several world-renowned artists are represented in the collection including Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, Diego Rivera, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Alfred Stieglitz.

Fisk University Galleries

&nbsp;About Cravath HallUntil Andrew Carnegie funded Fisk University's first dedicated library building (opened in 1909), the predominantly African American school made do with reading rooms and collections in residential buildings. By 1924, the university had outgrown the Carnegie library, in spite of expansions, and was striving to prove itself as a leading American college. University President Thomas Jones acquired a grant from the General Education Board, while Fisk's head librarian, Louis Shores, consulted national library experts including Ernest J. Reese of Columbia University. Reese suggested the new building, which would be shared by both Fisk and the Meharry Medical College, including reading rooms, seminar rooms, spaces for undergraduate and graduate students, and a special collections room dedicated to books about African Americans.&nbsp;Henry C. Hibbs designed the nine-story neo-Gothic building, as well as the furniture within it. The library featured Reese's suggested spaces, as well as classrooms for library science, a special room for collections on Fisk University history, a periodical room, and a browsing room with two fireplaces. The building was equipped with a pneumatic tube, a gravity chute, and an elevator. Harlem Renaissance painter Aaron Douglas was hired to paint murals on the lobby walls and the walls of two reading rooms, featuring themes including the African American transition from Central Africa to contemporary America; music, religion, drama, poetry, science, and philosophy; and a depiction of Fisk's Jubilee Hall, which was built using funds raised by the Jubilee Singers. Later, in 1939, Douglas returned to Fisk University to found the art department. In 1930, the building opened as the Erastus M. Cravath Memorial Library, named for the university's first president.The university worked to expand its collections and received donations from the General Education Board, the Carnegie Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation, and worked with Meharry Medical College to provide a medical reading room and medical library assistant. Frances L. Yocum became the head librarian in 1933, and her cataloging of materials on African Americans became the basis for the Library of Congress' subject heading on the topic. Gradually, the library once again outgrew its facilities, and in 1969 the Franklin Library opened (so named in 2000 in honor of historian John Hope Franklin and his librarian wife, Aurelia, both alumni of Fisk).&nbsp;Cravath Hall underwent a major renovation and restoration project from 2001-2003, including work by I. C. Thomasson Associates, Inc. to update the building's utilities; repair the exterior features including windows, roofing, and masonry; restore the reading rooms and original wood bookcases and paneling; and create administration offices; as well as restoration of the Aaron Douglas murals by Cunningham-Adams Fine Arts Painting Conservation of Washington, D.C. The murals suffered from water damage, humidity, sunlight, general aging, and even removal or theft of sections of the wall. Some had even been painted over. Douglas himself had done the restoration to the murals in 1965 and 1969, and conservators found that he had altered the color palette to convey a more somber outlook. The Cunningham-Adams restoration received the National Trust for Historic Preservation's National Preservation Award in 2004.A brief biography of artists Aaron Douglas: Once dubbed the "Father of African American Art," Aaron Douglas was a painter, illustrator and educator who was at the forefront of the Harlem Renaissance movement during the 1920s. Beginning his study at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Douglas went on to enjoy an iconic career in the creation and the education of African American art. Born in 1899 in Topeka, Kansas, Douglas' family encouraged him to pursue his interest in artistry. He graduated from Topeka High School in 1917. He went on to study at the University of Nebraska, where he noticed:&nbsp;"I was the only Black student there. Because I was sturdy and friendly, I became popular with both faculty and students." After receiving a B.F.A. he went on to receive a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Kansas.&nbsp; He moved to Harlem, New York in 1925, a time where the realization of the&nbsp;Harlem Renaissance was underway.&nbsp;The Harlem Renaissance was a&nbsp;cultural, social, and artistic explosion beginning in the mid-1920s. The movement saw an increased appreciation of Black music, writing, and art among whites. Intellectuals such as W. E. B. Dubois and Marcus Garvey expressed ideologies that would be debated for years to come, and Black expression in its entirety exploded.&nbsp;Upon his arrival, Douglas&nbsp;immediately began working as an illustrator for&nbsp;The Crisis&nbsp;and&nbsp;Opportunity,&nbsp;two of the most significant magazines in the Harlem Renaissance.&nbsp;He also began working with Winold Reiss, a German painter known for compassionate pieces depicting ethnic diversity. Weiss influenced Douglas to develop his modernist style which&nbsp;would characterize his work for decades. He continued to illustrate and saw his work featured in&nbsp;several significant books in the period such as;&nbsp;James Weldon Johnson's&nbsp;God's Trombone&nbsp;(1927), a 1927 reprint of Johnson's&nbsp;The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and Langston Hughes's&nbsp;Fine Clothes to the Jew&nbsp;(1927). in 1931, he went&nbsp;to Paris to&nbsp;study&nbsp;traditional French painting at the&nbsp;Academie Scandinave, prior to which he studied&nbsp;African and Modern European art at the&nbsp;Barnes Foundation in Marion, Pennsylvania in 1928.&nbsp; Douglas was known for using his African heritage as inspiration, which garnered attention from important individuals in the African American intellectual community, W. E. B. Dubois, for example. One of his mural series,&nbsp;Aspects of Negro Life, was completed in 1934 for the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library and is depicted above.&nbsp;Douglas' paintings presented a&nbsp;strong theme of African individuality; representing Blacks' contributions to society using signature elements&nbsp;such as geometric symbolism. Douglas' work is considered unique&nbsp;for fusing modernism with ancestral African images. Never wanting to be the "Father of African-American arts," a moniker that&nbsp;led him to say: "Do not call me the Father of African American Arts, for I am just a son of Africa, and paint for what inspires me."&nbsp; While attending the University of Columbia Teacher's College in 1939, Charles S. Johnson, a longtime mentor and the&nbsp;first Black president of Fisk University, invited Douglas to develop the&nbsp;art department at the historically Black college. Still working toward his master's degree that he would complete in 1944, he joined the faculty at Fisk.&nbsp;Having worked as a high school&nbsp;teacher briefly in&nbsp;Missouri after graduating from the University of Kansas, a return to education was a meaningful experience for Douglas. He retired from Fisk in 1966. Once a leader in the Harlem Renaissance, a moving muralist, Douglas' career as a painter finished at Fisk where he passed his years of education on to many young, Black students&nbsp;for 27 years.&nbsp;

This nine-story neo-Gothic structure was completed in 1930 as the Erastus M. Cravath Memorial Library and replaced a previous library that had been partially funded by Andrew Carnegie. In that same year, Fisk became the first African American institution to gain accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. The building is named in honor of Fisk University's first president. The building is best-known today for a series of murals by the artists Aaron Douglas. These murals can be found on the building's second floor. The nine-story building was recently restored and renovated by I. C. Thomasson Associates, Inc., and the murals were restored by Cunningham-Adams Fine Arts Painting Conservation of Washington, D.C

Cravath Hall and Murals by Aaron Douglas

The Harris Music building started out as a private residence for Richard Harris, Sr., the owner of Harris Furniture Company, around 1876. Harris was born a slave in Hanover County, Virginia in 1832. Harris was allowed to work for wages and saved enough money to buy the freedom of himself, his mother and a brother. Once Harris moved to Nashville around 1850, he became a successful businessman. Harris spoke at the opening ceremonies of Fisk University in January of 1866. The furniture company also began in the 1870s on Cedar Street. Harris married Lavinia Tate, a sister of one of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, Minnie Tate. Richard and Lavinia had nine children, seven of whom attended Fisk University, literally in their backyard. The house is located across the street from the Fisk Memorial Chapel, the home of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Descendants of Richard Harris, Sr. visited Nashville in 2017 for a reunion and toured their ancestor's home. Thirty-five Harris family members over five generations have attended Fisk University. The L-shaped, one-story brick structure features bracketed eaves; hooded, narrow windows; and a denticulated wood cornice. The projecting arched entrance porch leads to a finely paneled entrance door facing 17th Avenue North. A later owner, a Fisk University professor named W. G. Waterman, transferred the house and property to the university in 1909. A one-story clapboard wing was added in the 1920s. The building became the Music Annex in 1927. In 1991, the building became known as the Harris Music Building. The building is a contributing resource to the National Register of Historic Places Fisk University Historic District, which was added to the Register in 1978. The deteriorated one-story wood frame wing was removed sometime after 1977.

Fisk University's Harris Music Building was constructed around 1876. At that time, it was a one-story brick home designed in the Italianate style and the property of Richard Harris, a local African American entrepreneur. The home was built on the future location of the university. Mr. Harris was born a slave and became the first African American trustee of Fisk University in the 1880s. Harris gave one of the speeches at the dedication of Fisk University in January of 1866. A professor at Fisk, W. G. Waterman, later owned the house and transferred its ownership to the university in 1909. The building became the Music Annex in 1927 and the Harris Music Building in 1991.

Harris Music Building

The Carl Van Vechten Art Gallery at Fisk University resides
in an 1889 Victorian building constructed as the college's gym. The building
became an art gallery in the 1940s, when New York art collector, photographer,
author, and critic Carl Van Vechten gave Fisk 400 of his photographic
portraits, and convinced artist Georgia O'Keeffe to donate a collection of
works by (and collected by) her late husband, the photographer and art
collector Alfred Stieglitz. The collections feature both American and European
modern art, including works by Picasso, Cezanne, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, and O'Keeffe,
as well as African art [2; 4; 5]. The gallery features both permanent collections
and traveling exhibitions and will accommodate school and tour groups with
prior notification [2].



History of the
Building and Collections



A group of students raised money to fund the Fisk Gymnasium,
initially by asking for donations from Nashville businessmen. When they came up
short, a fundraising quartet was formed by four students, with another two
students serving as agent and manager for the group. In addition to raising
money, the group also brought the attention of Northern donors to the effort.
The Gymnasium was constructed, and opened its doors in 1889; it was the first
gymnasium on any predominantly African American college campus in the United
States [3; 4].



New York philanthropist Carl Van Vechten made a donation of
a different kind to the university in the 1940s. Van Vechten—a dance and music
critic, racially controversial novelist and agent to Gertrude Stein, and art
collector—was also a portrait photographer of New York society members,
artists, and theatrical celebrities. He was also a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and a strong supporter of African American culture, and donated
400 of his portraits to Fisk University in 1946 [1; 2; 5]. Furthermore, he
encouraged his friend, painter Georgia O'Keeffe, to donate to Fisk. O'Keeffe,
executor of the estate of her late husband, art collector and acclaimed
photographer Alfred Stieglitz, donated works to six institutions, including the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, The
National Gallery of Art in Washington, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the
Library of Congress, and, thanks to Van Vechten's suggestion, Fisk University. In
1949, the university received its Stieglitz Collection, including African art
as well as works by Picasso, Cezanne, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Charles Demuth,
Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Diego Rivera, and Arthur Dove, as well as works by
Stieglitz and O'Keeffe themselves [2; 5]. The collection found its home in the
former gymnasium, which was renamed the Carl Van Vechten Art Gallery [2; 5]. Historic
Marker Inscription:

This building, completed in 1889, was the first gymnasium
built at any predominantly Black college in the United States. In 1949, it was
rededicated as an art gallery and named in honor of Carl Van Vechten, a New
York music critic, author, photographer, and art collector who encouraged
Georgia O'Keefe to donate to Fisk University part of the art collection of her
late husband, Alfred Stieglitz [4].

The Carl Van Vechten Art Gallery at Fisk University resides in an 1889 Victorian building constructed as the college's gym. The building became an art gallery in the 1940s, when New York art collector, photographer, author, and critic Carl Van Vechten gave Fisk 400 of his photographic portraits, and convinced artist Georgia O'Keeffe to donate a collection of works by (and collected by) her late husband, the photographer and art collector Alfred Stieglitz. The collections feature both American and European modern art, including works by Picasso, Cezanne, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, and O'Keeffe, as well as African art [2; 4; 5]. The gallery features both permanent collections and traveling exhibitions and will accommodate school and tour groups with prior notification [2]. 

Carl Van Vechten Art Gallery

The Fisk Memorial Chapel, near the center of the university campus, was designed by William B. Bigelow of New York City. It is the primary assembly location on Fisk University and has hosted many concerts, drama and dance performances. The chapel holds a weekly ecumenical, University Worship Service and a weekly prayer service. The chapel is used for weddings and memorial services as well. The chapel holds seating for about 800. The Hottkamp pipe organ was specially built for the chapel and is considered to be one of the finest of its type in existence. The massive stone and stucco structure features a distinctive Tudor style bell tower. The chapel serves as the home for the world famous Fisk Jubilee Singers. The choral group was formed at Fisk University in 1871 and began touring to raise funds for the institution. Jubilee Day is still celebrated on campus each October 6th, the anniversary of the first public performance. In 1872, the Fisk Jubilee Singers performed at the World Peace Festival in Boston and were invited later that year to sing in the White House by President Ulysses S. Grant. In 1873, the eleven-member choir toured Europe, raising funds to build Jubilee Hall on campus. The group is still very active, and describes themselves as an a capella ensemble that performs Negro spirituals originally sung by slaves before the Civil War. A video to one of their performances is linked below. A saying is inscribed over the chapel entrance: "Arise shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." Since what would become Fisk University was founded by two agents of the American Missionary Association in 1865, the educational and spiritual lives of the students have long been intertwined. A litany of famous people have visited the chapel and given performances, including Duke Ellington, Louis C. Armstrong and Nat King Cole. Langston Hughes has given a poetry reading here. Photographs taken at Fisk University in 1899 were reportedly exhibited in the "American Negro" exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1900. One photo (included in this entry) shows the choir in front of the pipe organ in the chapel. Photographs for the exhibit were gathered by W.E.B. Du Bois (a member of the class of 1888) and Thomas J. Calloway. If the interior of the chapel looks familiar, you may have seen it on television shows or movies shot here. The historic restoration of the chapel during its hundredth year in 1992 has won a number of preservation awards. The chapel is a contributing resource to the Fisk University Historic District, listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

Completed in 1892, Fisk Memorial Chapel continues to serve as the primary space on the Fisk campus for important events such as graduation ceremonies, lectures by guests of the university, and academic convocations. The chapel has hosted lectures by prominent historians such as John Hope Franklin and historic addresses by African-American leaders from Booker T. Washington to Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall and Jesse Jackson. The chapel's 40 rank pipe organ was designed by Walter Holtkamp Sr. and is estimated to be worth over $2.5 million. The chapel was restored in 1992 by the National Park Service with U.S. Congressional funding to celebrate the building's centennial. 

Fisk Memorial Chapel

Dr. Henry Alan Boyd (1876-1959) was a trustee of Fisk University and a Nashville entrepreneur. His father, Dr. Richard Henry Boyd (1843-1922) was born enslaved in Mississippi. The father and son started a number of Nashville businesses that catered to African Americans, including the National Baptist Publishing Board in 1896 (now R.H. Boyd Publishing), the Negro Doll Company, One Cent Savings (later Citizens) Bank, and a local newspaper, The Nashville Globe (1906). Dr. Henry Alan Boyd was married to Georgia Bradford (1884-1952), a suffragist and a leader in Nashville's Colored Women's Club. Henry Alan and Georgia were the original owners of and lived in the brick house at Meharry Blvd. and 16th Ave. N. Upon the elder Reverend Boyd's death in 1922, Henry Alan took over running the Baptist Publishing Company. Henry Alan was the first treasurer of The Nashville Globe and later served as editor of the newspaper until his death in 1959; the paper folded the following year. He also was a prominent member of the National Negro Press Association.The Boyd House was designed by McKissack &amp; McKissack, a Black-owned architectural firm. One of the McKissack brothers, Moses, was a graduate of Fisk University. The two-story, red brick house rests on a stone foundation. Its porch, one-story and supported by Doric columns, has been removed some time since the late 1970s. The house is a bit earlier than previously estimated (1915 to 1920). The 1914 Sanborn map of the neighborhood shows the house standing, as a wood frame house with brick veneer on the exterior, with a one-story front porch across the width of the building, facing Harding St. (now Meharry Blvd.). The distinctive bay windows are shown on the home. The rear of the dwelling featured a two-story porch along the western two-thirds of the south facade. There was a two-story wood frame stable/ garage in the southeast corner of the lot, near 16th Ave. N., with a one-story wing to the west.In the late 1970s, Boyd House was used as an Honors Center at Fisk. The building has also served as a guest house for Fisk and the home of the Race Relations Institute. By 2001, Boyd House contained Fisk's Admission and Financial Aid offices. Fundraising is underway to be able to restore the Boyd House and turn it into Fisk classrooms and a lecture hall. R.H. Boyd Publishing, now headed by Dr. Ladonna Boyd (a great-great niece of Henry Alan), is involved in the effort along with Fisk University to raise the $1.1 million needed.

The red brick building near the southwest corner of Meharry Blvd. and 16th Ave. N. is Boyd House, on the Fisk University campus. The two-story building dates to around 1910 to 1914 (it is standing on a 1914 map), when it was the residence of Dr. Henry A. Boyd, a leading African American local entrepreneur. Fisk University purchased the house in October 1938 to become a dormitory for women. Boyd House was most recently used at Fisk as a Living-Learning Center but has been vacated to be renovated after a fire and water damage. It was almost demolished in 2020 but was saved after a petition drive. Boyd House is one of numerous buildings that make up the Fisk University Historic District, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

Boyd House at Fisk University

Both John Wesley Work III (1901-1967) and his father, John Wesley Jr. (1871-1925) spent time as the director of the Jubilee Singers at Fisk University. John Jr.'s father was born enslaved in Kentucky and became a church choir director in Nashville. John Jr. graduated from Fisk in 1895 and was one of the first African Americans to study and collect African American folk songs and spirituals; he married Agnes Haynes in 1899. John Jr. was hired as a Latin and history instructor by Fisk in 1904. The Song and Story Club was founded at Fisk in 1917 with John Jr. as its director and John III as vice-president. The plan for the club was to tell the story of a good man's life at each meeting, or for inspiring songs to be sung and their meaning explained. The boy's club met in John Jr.'s home on Fridays at 4:30. at the Training School, or in Livingstone Hall. The club's slogan was "Be Kind, Be Brave, Be Good, Be Truthful, Be Clean." John Jr.(age 47) and his wife, Agnes (42) lived at 1607 Harding St. in 1920, with their children John III (18), Merrill C. (14), Helen E. (11). Julian C. (9), and Frances S. (2). A widowed roomer, Philip Horner (77) also lived in the home, which was owned by John Jr. In 1923, John Jr. left his position at Fisk to serve as president of another Nashville school, Roger Williams University. He died in 1925.John Wesley Work III was born in Tullahoma, Tennessee in 1901. His mother also was involved in music; she helped her husband train the Jubilee Singers. A graduate of the Fisk University class of 1923, Work III received a master's degree from Columbia University in New York City in 1930. His thesis was on American Negro Songs and Spirituals. He began teaching music at Fisk in 1937 and moved into the house at the corner of 17th Ave. N. and Meharry Blvd. He later became chair of the University's Department of Music. Work III created over 100 musical compositions, mainly in choral and solo-voice music. He directed the Fisk Jubilee Singers from 1948 to 1957. The group is credited with funding the financially struggling college through its performances across America and Europe in 1871. The singing group returned to Europe in 1956 and gave 54 concerts in nine countries.During the summers of 1941 and 1942, Work III and two colleagues from Fisk - sociologists Lewis Jones and Charles L. Johnson - collaborated with the Library of Congress to conduct a study of folk culture of African Americans in a part of the Mississippi Delta. One of the Blues singers was a then-unknown who went by the nickname Muddy Waters. Work III also gathered recordings of vocal performances he titled Negro Folk Songs of the American Southeast at the Fort Valley Music Festivals in Georgia. Since folk songs were often performed a little different each time, it was a challenge to transcribe the lyrics and notes; Work III considered the process to be collecting variants of a song. In 1963, Fisk awarded Work III an honorary doctorate. He retired three years later and passed away in 1967.The sons of John W. Work III, John and Frederick, lived in this 17th Ave. N. house when they were growing up. In 1940, John was 7 and Fred was 4; their father was 38 and their mother, Edith M., a South Carolina native, was 37. John III owned the house in 1940, which was valued at $6,000. Frederick Work is notable for being one of the first students of color at nearby Vanderbilt Law School. In 1977, the house was still owned by John III's widow, Edith, who resided there. The 2.5-story house was covered with asbestos shingle siding and featured stacked porches (added after 1914, based on the Sanborn map of a one-story brick house with a wooden porch facing south). A 2011 restoration project involved replacing the roof and repairing the crumbling stone foundation and brick chimney. The building is still part of the Fisk campus; there's an historical marker on the front lawn.

The Queen Anne style house at 1030 17th Avenue N. is the John Wesley Work House, a historic building on the Fisk University campus. The 2.5-story residence dates to 1878 and was built next to the Fisk campus by a dean, Adam K. Spence; the upper story and a half date to after 1914 and the porch used to be on the south side of the building. Decades later, the house became the residence of John W. Work III, a music teacher at Fisk beginning in 1937 and director of the Jubilee Singers. Work was a composer who specialized in the study of rural African American folk music. An award-winning restoration of the building was conducted in 2011 by a major African American owned and operated architectural firm, Moody-Nolan of Columbus, Ohio. The John Wesley Work House is one of the historical buildings that make up the Fisk University National Register Historic District, listed in 1978.

Fisk University Campus History Tour

Jubilee Hall, Fisk University

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources