I don’t know how I had missed the book, possibly because it was hidden in one of the many boxes of outdated books up for auction. Someone with a quick eye had located it and handed it to the auctioneer to be sold separately.
When I heard the title mentioned, I jerked to attention. No way someone other than me would take that book home. The bidding started at $5 in a nod to the man who had retrieved it from the box. I took the next bid, he took the next, and it went on that way until he just gave up.
We chatted later, and I told him that the book had gotten past me but I really wanted it for myself (not to sell as he most likely would have done). He seemed happy that I had won the bid. Not as happy as me, though.
The book, a rather small volume in size, was titled “The Story of the Jubilee Singers with their Songs,” with a blue hardback cover and a gold-leaf illustration of Jubilee Hall at Fisk University in Nashville, TN, centered on the front. Written by J.B.T. Marsh and published in 1880, the book was in very good condition, with minor wear on the upper and lower edges of its spine and at the tips of its corners.
Inside near the front was a photo of the Jubilee Singers, six of whom were original members. Near the back of the book were personal histories of each of the original nine members plus pianist and singer Ella Sheppard.
The Jubilee singers came into being soon after the Fisk Free Colored School was founded in 1866 to educate people who had formerly been slaves, with students aged 7 to 70 being taught in an old Union Army barracks. George White, the school’s white treasurer, was asked to offer music instruction in his spare time. He began training some of the best voices there, encouraging them to sing the spirituals that grew out of the pain, suffering and joy of their own people, along with classical tunes.
With the university suffering financial difficulties, the chorus embarked on a tour to raise money to help pay for new buildings. White, his assistant Sheppard and nine students set out from Nashville on tour on Oct. 6, 1871, a date that is still acknowledged at Fisk University each year. They sang for congregations along the route of the Underground Railroad headed North.
Marsh wrote in the book:
“It is the story of a little company of emancipated slaves who set out to secure, by their singing, the fabulous sum of $20,000 for the impoverished and unknown school in which they were students. The world was as unfamiliar to these untraveled freed people as were countries the Argonauts had to pass; the social prejudices that confronted them were as terrible to meet as the fire-breathing bulls or the warriors that sprang from the land sown with dragons’ teeth; and no seas were ever more tempestuous than the stormy experiences that for a time tested their faith and courage.”
“Yet in less than three years they returned, bringing back with them nearly one hundred thousand dollars.” And the school was able to build Jubilee Hall in 1876.
The group set out on its tour at a time when minstrel shows were the musical entertainment of the day, complete with its blackface and stereotypical portrayals of African Americans. The chorus – which got its new name during the tour – had none of that; the members sang classical songs as they were written to be song and spirituals as they were sung to be felt. The singers dressed formally and presented themselves as very different from the images that society has ascribed to them. In some cases, they punctuated their performances with political messages about the ill treatment of black people.
Their music, though, was what moved people. Their renderings of such tunes as “Home, Sweet Home,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Go Down, Moses” were like nothing that white listeners had heard before. The singers were not immediately embraced by all, but their performance at a world peace jubilee in Boston in 1872 sealed them as a powerful new voice. Their U.S. tour then extended beyond the ocean, where they sang before heads of states and commoners in Europe.
“They had been turned away from hotels, and driven out of railway waiting-rooms, because of their color,” Marsh wrote. “But they had been received with honor by the President of the United States, they had sung their slave-songs before the Queen of Great Britain, and they had gathered as invited guests about the breakfast-table of her Prime Minister. Their success was as remarkable as their music was unique.”
Soon, other black schools began creating their own spiritual choruses to raise money. And the Fisk singers receded, but never entirely went away. By the late 19th century, the chorus became the Fisk Jubilee Quartet and from 1909 to 1916 recorded more than 40 songs. Today, it is again the Fisk Jubilee Singers and still singing.
The author of the book at auction was a white abolitionist whose full name was James Brainerd Taylor Marsh, who was manager of the chorus in the 1870s. He was said to have compiled the book while traveling with the singers through Europe and other locations. It looks as if the book had been published as early as 1875, or even earlier.
The history of the chorus had already been captured in the 1873 book “The Jubilee Singers of Fisk University and Their Campaign for Twenty Thousand Dollars” by Rev. G.(Gustavus) D. Pike, its business manager who spoke at the dedication of Jubilee Hall. Marsh acknowledged that his book, a revised edition (fifty-ninth thousand, it noted), was abridged from Pike’s history.
