Fisk University is a historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. It is the oldest college in the city. 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 University features the world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers , a group of traveling students who set out from Nashville to earn enough money to pay for some of the school's expenses.

Notable alumni

• Aaron Douglas, painter
• W.E.B. Du Bois, a well known social critic
• John Hope Franklin
• Nikki Giovanni, poet
• Alcee Hastings, U.S. Congresswoman
• Roland Hayes, concert singer
• James Weldon Johnson, author, poet and civil rights activist
• Lewis Wade Jones, sociologist and educator
• John Lewis, U.S. Congressman
• Hazel O'Leary, former U.S. Secretary of Energy
• Booker T. Washington, educator and founder of Tuskegee University
• John Wesley Work III, professor, composer and musicologist

External link

• Fisk University