Fisk University

History

In 1866, six months after the end of the American Civil War, leaders of the northern American Missionary Association (AMA) – John Ogden, Reverend Erastus Milo Cravath, field secretary; and Reverend Edward Parmelee Smith – founded the Fisk Free Colored School, for the education of freedmen. AMA support meant the organization tried to use its sources across the country to aid education for freedmen. Enrollment jumped from 200 to 900 in the first several months of the school, indicating freedmen's strong desire for education, with ages of students ranging from seven to seventy. The school was named in honor of General Clinton B. Fisk of the Tennessee Freedmen's Bureau, who made unused barracks available to the school, as well as establishing the first free schools for white and black children in Tennessee. In addition, he endowed Fisk with a total of $30,000. The American Missionary Association's work was supported by the United Church of Christ, which retains an affiliation with the university. Fisk opened to classes on January 9, 1866.

With Tennessee's passage of legislation to support public education, leaders saw a need for training teachers, and Fisk University was incorporated as a normal school for college training in August 1867. James Dallas Burrus, John Houston Burrus, Virginia E. Walker, and America W. Robinson were the first four students to enroll at Fisk in 1867 and upon graduation Broughton and the two Burrus' were the first African Americans to graduate from a liberal arts college south of the Mason-Dixon line. Robinson graduated as well and became a member of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Walker became a noted missionary while the Burrus brothers were both prominent educators and, during their careers, professors at Fisk. Cravath organized the College Department and the Mozart Society, the first musical organization in Tennessee. Rising enrollment added to the needs of the university. In 1870 Adam Knight Spence became principal of the Fisk Normal School. To raise money for the school's education initiatives, his wife Catherine Mackie Spence traveled throughout the United States to set up mission Sunday schools in support of Fisk students, organizing endowments through the AMA. With a strong interest in religion and the arts, Adam Spence supported the start of a student choir. In 1871 the student choir went on a fund-raising tour in Europe; they were the start of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. They toured to raise funds to build the first building for the education of freedmen. They raised nearly $50,000 and funded construction of the renowned Jubilee Hall, now a designated National Historic Landmark. When the American Missionary Association declined to assume the financial responsibility of the Jubilee Singers, Professor George L. White, Treasurer of the University, took the responsibility upon himself and started North in 1871 with his troupe. On April 12, 1873, the Jubilee Singers sailed for England where they sang before a fashionable audience in the presence of the Queen, who expressed her gratification at the performance.

During the 1880s Fisk had an active building program, as well as expanding its curriculum offerings. By the turn of the 20th century, it added black teachers and staff to the university, and a second generation of free blacks entered classes.

From 1915 to 1925, Fayette Avery McKenzie was President of Fisk. McKenzie's tenure, before and after World War I, was during a turbulent period in American history. In spite of many challenges, McKenzie developed Fisk as the premier all Black university in the United States, secured Fisk’s academic recognition as a standard college by the Carnegie Foundation, Columbia University and the University of Chicago, raised a $1 million endowment fund to ensure quality faculty and laid a foundation for Fisk’s accreditation and future success. McKenzie was eventually forced to resign when his strict policies on dress code, extracurricular activities and other aspects of student life led to student protests.

In 1947 Fisk heralded its first African-American president with the arrival of Charles Spurgeon Johnson. Johnson was a premier sociologist, a scholar who had been the editor of Opportunity magazine, a noted periodical of the Harlem Renaissance.

In 1952, Fisk was the first predominantly black college to earn a Phi Beta Kappa charter. Organized as the Delta of Tennessee Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society that December, the chapter inducted its first student members on April 4, 1953.

From 2004 to 2013, Fisk was directed by its 14th president, the Honorable Hazel O'Leary, former Secretary of Energy under President Bill Clinton. She was the second woman to serve as president of the university. On June 25, 2008, Fisk announced that it had successfully raised $4 million during the fiscal year ending June 30. It ended nine years of budget deficits and qualified for a Mellon Foundation challenge grant. However, Fisk still faced significant financial hardship, and said that it may need to close its doors unless its finances improve.

H. James Williams, served as president from February 2013 to September 2015. Williams had previously been dean of the Seidman College of Business at Grand Valley State University in Michigan and, before that, an accounting professor at Georgetown University, Florida A&M and Texas Southern University. Williams stepped down in September 2015.

Campus

Jubilee Hall, which was recently restored, is the oldest and most distinctive structure of Victorian architecture on the 40 acre (160,000 m²) Fisk campus.

Music, art, and literature collections

Fisk University is the home of a music literature collection founded by the noted Harlem Renaissance figure Carl Van Vechten, for whom the campus museum is named, and a substantial collection of materials associated with Charles W. Chestnutt.

Alfred Stieglitz Collection

In 1949, Georgia O'Keeffe donated to Fisk of a number of paintings that had belonged to her husband, the photographer and art patron Alfred Stieglitz. The collection consists of 101 works by important artists, including European modernists Paul Cezanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso and Diego Rivera, as well as American artists Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove and Charles Demuth and works by O'Keefe.

In 2005, mounting financial difficulties and deteriorating conditions in the gallery led the University trustees to vote to sell two of the paintings, O'Keeffe's "Radiator Building" and Hartley's "Painting No. 3," together estimated to be worth up to 45 million U.S. dollars. The sale was challenged by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, the legal guardians of her estate. As a compromise, a joint agreement was established between Fisk University and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. The two museums now share ownership of the Stieglitz collection, which rotates between them every two years. In 2016, as part of the university's sesquicentennial celebration, the collection was displayed at the newly-renovated Carl Van Vechten Gallery.

Science programs

Fisk University has a strong record of academic excellence: it has graduated more African Americans who go on to earn PhDs in the natural sciences than any other institution.

Fisk-Vanderbilt Bridge Program

Started in 2004, the Fisk-Vanderbilt bridge program helps underrepresented groups gain access to Ph.D. programs in STEM fields. The partnership between a small, historically black college and a major research university aims to diversify doctoral study. The program, which has received money from NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship, provides a scholarship for a Master's degree at Fisk University and close mentorship for students who go on to a Ph.D. Since 2004, 21 students in the program have completed a Ph.D., with another 56 currently pursuing graduate study. The program has a success rate far higher than the national average for completion of Ph.D. programs, which is about 50%.

Ranking

U.S. News and World Report ranks Fisk University as one of the Best National Liberal Arts Colleges: their ranking for 2016 was number 7 among historically black colleges and universities and 171 overall. The Princeton Review ranks Fisk University as one of America's best colleges in the southeast, and Fisk appears on Parade magazine's "A List" of colleges and universities that offer combined bachelor's and master's degree programs. Forbes annually places Fisk on its "America's Top Colleges" list.

Athletics

Fisk University teams, nicknamed athletically as the Bulldogs, are part of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) Division I level, primarily competing in the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference (GCAC). Men's sports include basketball, cross country, tennis and track & field; women's sports include basketball, cross country, softball, tennis, track & field and volleyball.