Fisk Jubilee Singers

The original nine were Isaac Dickerson, Ben Holmes, Greene Evans, Thomas Rutling, Ella Sheppard, Maggie Porter, Minnie Tate, Jennie Jackson and Eliza Walker. Their first concert on the October 1871 tour was in Cincinnati, and their early profits went to relief after the Great Chicago Fire. In 1872 they sang at the World's Peace Jubilee in Boston and at the White House for President Grant. The group disbanded in 1878, and other groups kept the name. Their 1909 recording of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot entered the National Recording Registry in 2002.

What the plaque says

Fisk Jubilee Singers In 1871 Fisk University, established for emancipated African Americans in 1866, faced closure due to financial exigency. George Leonard White, the school's treasurer and music teacher, organized a small choral group composed of student singers, which performed several concerts in Nashville and throughout the South. On October 6, 1871, White and his nine-student choral ensemble departed on a Northern tour. On tour, the singers performed mostly popular tunes, sacred anthems, and patriotic songs, interspersed with "slave songs" or spirituals. Later in 1871, White named the group Jubilee Singers in memory of the Jewish year of Jubilee, a moniker that resonated with a biblical call for freedom. In 1873 the Jubilee Singers traveled to England and performed before Queen Victoria. By May 1874, the singers raised enough funds to purchase land for a campus and to construct the imposing Jubilee Hall. Confounding critics who questioned the fitness of African Americans for higher education, the contributions of the Jubilee Singers to the university and to the establishment of the spiritual as an authentic musical expression are immeasurable.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fisk University and Jubilee Hall — steps away
  The 1866 school for freed people whose Jubilee Singers paid for Jubilee Hall, a National Historic Landmark, and whose students helped start Nashville's sit-ins.
• Tennessee State Capitol — 1.2 mi
  William Strickland's Greek Revival capitol on Nashville's Capitol Hill, finished in 1859 and built from the bottom up with the labor of enslaved men.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 1.4 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.
• National Museum of African American Music — 1.5 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.

More markers nearby

• Jubilee Hall — steps away
• The John Wesley Work Home — steps away
• Fisk Memorial Chapel — steps away
• Charles Spurgeon Johnson / Robert E. Park — steps away