Fisk University

Fisk University is a private, historically Black university located at 1000 17th Avenue North in North Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1866, shortly after the end of the Civil War, Fisk University is the oldest institution of higher learning in Nashville. One of the most notable historically Black colleges in the United States, it is affiliated with the United Church of Christ. From its origins as a school for formerly enslaved people in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, Fisk has grown into an internationally recognized liberal arts institution whose alumni and students have shaped American history, culture, and civic life for more than 150 years.

Founding and Early History

John Ogden, superintendent of education of the Freedmen's Bureau in Tennessee, arrived at the bureau's Nashville headquarters in 1865 to begin his duties. The Reverend Edward P. Smith of the American Missionary Association and the Reverend Erastus M. Cravath met with Ogden and agreed that Nashville was a suitable site for a normal school for African Americans. In late 1865 the organizers purchased a site on the fringe of downtown Nashville, and General Fisk used his influence to secure the former Union army hospital barracks to house the school.

The school was named in honor of General Clinton B. Fisk of the Tennessee Freedmen's Bureau, who provided the new institution with facilities in former Union Army barracks near the present site of Nashville's Union Station. In these facilities, Fisk convened its first classes on January 9, 1866. The first students ranged in age from seven to seventy, but shared common experiences of slavery and poverty—and an extraordinary thirst for learning. The work of Fisk's founders was sponsored by the American Missionary Association, later part of the United Church of Christ, with which Fisk retains an affiliation today.

Enrollment rose to 900 in the first several months following the school's opening, indicating the strong demand for education among local freedmen. Student ages ranged from seven to 70. During the nation's Reconstruction era, the Tennessee General Assembly passed legislation to enable free public education, which created a need to increase teacher training. In 1867 the Fisk Free Colored School was reorganized and incorporated as Fisk University to focus on higher education.

In 1875, James Dallas Burrus, John Houston Burrus, and Virginia E. Walker graduated from Fisk and became the first African-American students to graduate from a liberal arts college south of the Mason–Dixon line.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers

By 1871 the decay of the school's buildings and rising enrollment presented an urgent need for a larger campus. With possible closure looming, the student choir embarked upon a fund-raising concert tour to save Fisk University. The nine-member ensemble gained fame as the Fisk Jubilee Singers while introducing the world to the melodious Negro spiritual as a musical art form.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers originated as a group of traveling students who set out from Nashville on October 6, 1871, taking the entire contents of the University treasury with them for travel expenses, praying that through their music they could raise enough money to keep the doors of their debt-ridden school open. The singers struggled at first, but before long their performances electrified audiences throughout the United States and Europe, moving to tears audiences that included William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Ulysses S. Grant, William Gladstone, Mark Twain, Johann Strauss, and Queen Victoria.

After a year-long concert tour of Europe, the Jubilee Singers returned to Nashville in May 1874, having raised nearly fifty thousand dollars for construction of a new building—to be christened Jubilee Hall—on the new Fisk University campus. The Fisk Jubilee Singers introduced much of the world to the spirituals as a musical genre and, in the process, raised funds that preserved their University and permitted construction of Jubilee Hall, the South's first permanent structure built for the education of Black students. As a designated National Historic Landmark, Jubilee Hall remains the dramatic focal point of Fisk's campus today.

To this day, each October 6, Fisk pauses to observe the anniversary of the singers' departure from campus in 1871. The contemporary Jubilee Singers, a Grammy recipient group, perform in a University convocation and conclude the day's ceremonies with a pilgrimage to the grave sites of the original singers.

Campus and Historic Designation

Fisk's 40-acre campus was dedicated in 1876. It sits on a small hill approximately two miles northwest of downtown Nashville on a site that was previously Fort Gillem, a Union fort during the Civil War. The campus lies on Jefferson Street, a historic center of Nashville's African-American community.

In 1978 Fisk's campus was recognized as a National Historic Landmark. The Fisk University Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Notable structures on campus include:

• The Carl Van Vechten Gallery, built in 1888, served as the school's gymnasium before becoming an art gallery. The building houses Fisk's renowned Stieglitz Collection of modern art and is named for photographer Carl Van Vechten.
• Carnegie Hall was originally built as a library in 1908. It is the first major building by Moses McKissack III, co-founder of the first African-American owned architecture firm in the United States.
• The art collection also includes works donated by Georgia O'Keeffe from the collection of photographer Alfred Stieglitz, including paintings by O'Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, and Paul Cézanne.

The campus underwent significant restoration in the 1990s through assistance from a U.S. Congressional Grant.

Academics and Rankings

Fisk offers undergraduate degree programs in business administration; humanities and fine arts, including religion and philosophy; natural science and mathematics, including computer science; and social sciences, including psychology and public administration. Master's degree programs in biology, chemistry, physics, general or clinical psychology, sociology, and social gerontology are also available, and a master's in business administration can be earned through a joint program with Vanderbilt University.

In 1952 Fisk became the first historically Black college or university to be granted a chapter of the prestigious honor society Phi Beta Kappa. Even before regional accreditation was available to African-American institutions, Fisk had gained recognition by leading universities throughout the nation. Then, in 1930, Fisk became the first African-American institution to gain accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

The Center for Photonic Materials and Devices, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Molecular Spectroscopy Research Laboratory are research units of the university.

In the 2026 edition of Best Colleges, Fisk University is ranked No. 156 in National Liberal Arts Colleges and No. 35 in Top Performers on Social Mobility by U.S. News & World Report. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 1,035 (fall 2024), and the campus size is 47 acres. The student-faculty ratio at Fisk University is 8:1.

The university's varsity sports teams, nicknamed the Bulldogs, compete in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).

Civil Rights Legacy

Fisk University occupies a central place in the history of the American Civil Rights Movement, particularly through the activism of its students during the pivotal Nashville sit-ins of 1960.

In 1960, Fisk students joined other Black leaders in the Nashville sit-ins, nonviolent protests against segregation at lunch counters in the city. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the institution in May 1960 in response to the civil rights movement in the city. Fisk students John Lewis and Diane Nash were leaders during the protests, which led to Nashville becoming the first major city in the South to desegregate lunch counters. The two became early leaders of the national Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Using the tenets of nonviolent direct action, student activists, including Diane Nash, Marion Barry, and John Lewis, silently occupied the "white only" sections of local stores, while white onlookers attacked them with rocks, cigarettes, and fists. Local authorities jailed over a dozen demonstrators, but Nashville mayor Ben West released the students and formed a bi-racial committee on integration. Downtown stores began serving African American customers in May of that year.

Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was among the early participants in Charles S. Johnson's famous Race Relations Institute at Fisk.

Notable Alumni and Faculty

Fisk University has produced an exceptional array of alumni whose contributions have spanned scholarship, literature, politics, law, and the arts.

Writer, Civil Rights activist, and NAACP co-founder W.E.B. Du Bois graduated from Fisk University in 1888, and later taught at the school. Other famous faculty and alumni include Ida B. Wells, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, Diane Nash, and Nikki Giovanni.

Among notable Fisk alumni is Robert McFerrin, Sr., who was the first African-American male to perform at the Metropolitan Opera. John Hope Franklin, one of the most eminent historians of the African-American experience, is also a Fisk alumnus.

Among the collections at the university library are the papers of John Mercer Langston, George Gershwin, W.C. Handy, and alumnus W.E.B. Du Bois.

See Also

• Jefferson Street
• Vanderbilt University
• Meharry Medical College
• Nashville sit-ins
• North Nashville