Fisk University

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Fisk University
Image:FiskUniversityLogo.gif

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

Fisk University Historic District
(U.S. Registered Historic District)

Location:	Roughly bounded by 16th and 18th Aves., Hermosa, Herman and Jefferson Sts. Nashville, Tennessee
Architectural style(s):	Italianate; Queen Anne
Added to NRHP:	February 9, 1978
NRHP Reference#:	78002579
Governing body:	Fisk University

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

Image:Fiskuniversity-class.jpg

A class circa 1900

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 currently under the direction of 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.

Image:Fisk uni theo hall.jpg

Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, 1900 - Theological Hall

Fisk University features the world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers, originally a group of traveling students who set out from Nashville to earn enough money to save the school and raise sufficient funds to build the first permanent structure in the country solely built for the education of newly-freed slaves, the renowned and recently-restored Jubilee Hall. 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 article on Carl van Vechten.

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

1 Georgia O'Keeffe Collection and Financial Crisis
2 Notable alumni
3 Notable faculty
4 External links

[edit] Georgia O'Keeffe Collection and Financial Crisis

In 1949, Georgia O'Keeffe made a donation of a number of paintings that had belonged to her husband to the school's collection. These were displayed at the university until deteriorating conditions in the gallery led to removal of the paintings into storage to protect them. 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 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 the original bequest did not allow the art to be sold. At the end of 2007 another plan to share the collection with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art was being fought by the O'Keeffe museum in court, while the University remained in dire financial straits.[1]

[edit] Notable alumni

Image:GenCBFisk.jpg

University Founder Clinton B. Fisk

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
Kaye 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

[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