Fisk University

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Fisk University
Established:	1866
Type:	Private
President:	Hazel R. O'Leary
Undergraduates:	850
Location:	Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Campus:	Urban, 42 acres
Colors:	Gold and Blue
Nickname:	Bulldogs
Website:	www.fisk.edu

Jubilee Hall, Fisk University
(U.S. National Historic Landmark)
Location:	17th Ave., N. Nashville, Tennessee
Architect:	Stephen D. Hatch
Architectural style(s):	Gothic
Designated as NHL:	December 2, 1974
Added to NRHP:	December 9, 1971
NRHP Reference#:	71000817
Governing body:	Fisk University

Fisk University is a historically black university in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. It was established by John Ogden, Reverend Erastus Milo Cravath and Reverend Edward P. Smith and named in honor of General Clinton B. Fisk of the Tennessee Freedmen's Bureau. Fisk opened to classes on January 9, 1866. Fisk heralded its first African-American president with the arrival of Charles Spurgeon Johnson in 1947. Johnson was a premier sociologist, a scholar who had been the editor of Opportunity magazine, a noted periodical of the Harlem Renaissance. Fisk University is directed by its 14th president, the Honorable Hazel O'Leary, former Secretary of Energy under President William Jefferson Clinton. She is the second female president of the university.

Fisk University features the world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers. They started as a group of students who traveled to earn enough money to save the school and to raise funds to build the first permanent structure in the country built for the education of newly freed slaves. They succeeded and funded construction of the renowned Jubilee Hall. Recently restored, it is the oldest and most distinctive structure of Victorian architecture on the 40-acre (160,000 m²) Fisk campus.

Fisk University is also the home of a music literature collection founded by the noted Harlem Renaissance figure Carl van Vechten, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Among many other notable firsts, in 1952 Fisk University was the first historically black college or university to earn a Phi Beta Kappa Charter.

On March 12th, 2008, Nashville's Metro Council passed a resolution declaring March 19th Fisk University Day. [1]

[edit] Georgia O'Keeffe Collection and Financial Crisis

In 1949, Georgia O'Keeffe made a donation to the school of a number of paintings that had belonged to her husband. These were displayed at the university until deteriorating conditions in the gallery required moving the paintings to storage for protection. In 2005, mounting financial difficulties led the University trustees to vote to sell two of the paintings, O'Keeffe's "Radiator Building" and Marsden Hartley's "Painting No. 3". (Together these were estimated to be worth up to 45 million U.S. dollars).

However, legal proceedings brought on by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (the legal guardians of her estate) and others, stopped the sale on the basis that the original bequest did not allow the art to be sold. At the end of 2007 a plan to share the collection with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art to earn money was being fought in court by the O'Keeffe Museum. The University remained in dire financial straits.[2]

[edit] Notable alumni

• Marion Barry, 2nd and 4th mayor of Washington D.C.
• St. Elmo Brady, first African-American to earn a doctorate in chemistry.
• Joyce Bolden, first African-American woman to serve on the Commission for Accreditation of the National Association of Schools of Music
• Cora Brown, first African-American woman to be elected to a state senate
• Hortense Canady, past national president of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated
• Johnnetta Cole, anthropologist, former President of Spelman College and Bennett College
• Aaron Douglas, painter, illustrator, muralist
• W.E.B. DuBois, sociologist, scholar, first African-American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard
• John Hope Franklin, historian, professor, scholar, author of landmark text, From Slavery to Freedom, graduate of the class of 1935
• Nikki Giovanni, poet, author, professor, scholar
• Louis George Gregory, Hand of the Cause in the Bahá'í Faith
• Alcee Hastings, U.S. Congressman and former U.S. district court judge
• Roland Hayes, concert singer
• Robert James, former NFL cornerback
• Ted Jarrett, R&B recording artist and producer
• Percy Lavon Julian, first African-American chemist and second African-American from any field to become a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
• James Weldon Johnson, author, poet and civil rights activist, author of the "Negro National Anthem" "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing"
• John Lewis, politician, civil rights activist, former President of SNCC
• Alma Powell, wife of Gen. Colin Powell
• Kay George Roberts, orchestral conductor
• Martha Lynn Sherrod, Presiding District Court Judge, first African American to win an at-large election in North Alabama since Reconstruction
• Kym Whitley, actress, comedienne
• Matthew Knowles, Father and manager of Beyoncé Knowles
• Ida Wells, American civil rights activist and women's suffrage advocate

[edit] Notable faculty

• Lee Lorch, mathematician and civil rights activist. Fired in 1955 for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
• Hon. Hazel O'Leary, Secretary of Energy during the Clinton Administration
• Nikki Giovanni, author, poet, activist
• John W. Work III, Choir Director, Ethnomusicologist and scholar of Afro-American folk music

[edit] Gallery

University namesake Clinton B. Fisk	A class circa 1900	Theological Hall, circa 1900	Cravath Hall
Fisk Memorial Chapel

[edit] External links

• Fisk University
• Fisk University (College History Series)

Part of the Tom Joyner Foundation for HBCUs.

• BlackAmericaWeb.com Official Web Site