Marsh, J. B. T. The Story of the Jubilee Singers; With Their Songs . Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co, 1880. [format: book], [genre: history; travelogue]. Permission: Northern Illinois University
Persistent link to this document: http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/file.php?file=Jubilee.html

UNDER God's blessing their labors had saved the University from suspending, or even curtailing, its work. But their success, so far, in raising money was chiefly valuable as evidence that a way had been found for obtaining the much larger sum that the necessities of the growing work required. The Singers had received an invitation to participate in the second World's Peace Jubilee, to be held in Boston in June. Stopping in Nashville little more than a week, they again took the field. Giving a few concerts in Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio, they went on to Boston. Parts had been assigned them on the programmes of several days' exercises. The immense audience of 40,000 people was gathered from all parts of the land, and the color prejudice that had followed the Singers everywhere reappeared here in the shower of brutal hisses that greeted their first appearance. But the air of that radical New England city is not kindly to colorphobia, and a deluge of applause answered and drowned the insult, and a day or two after, the Singers had a proud revenge.

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe's stirring lyric, "The Battle-hymn of the Republic," was on the programme,

to be sung to the air of "John Brown." The first verses were to be taken by some colored singers of Boston. But for some unexplained reason the key was given to the orchestra in E-flat, cruelly high under such circumstances, and the first verses were a painful failure. The Jubilee Singers were to come in with the verse beginning

Fired by the remembrance of their reception on the previous day, and feeling that to some extent the reputation of their color was at stake, they sang as if inspired. Mr. White's masterly drill had made easy to them the high notes on which the others had failed. Every word of that first line rang through the great Coliseum as if sounded out of a trumpet. The great audience were carried away on a whirlwind of delight; the trained musicians in the orchestra bent forward in forgetfulness of their parts; and one old German was conspicuous, holding his violoncello above his head with one hand, and whacking out upon it his applause with the bow held in the other.

When the grand old chorus, "Glory, glory, hallelujah," followed, with a swelling volume of music from the great orchestra, the thunder of the bands, and the roar of the artillery, the scene was indescribable. Twenty thousand people were on their feet. Ladies waved their handkerchiefs. Men threw their hats in the air, and the Coliseum rang with cheers and shouts of "The Jubilees! The Jubilees forever!" Mr. Gilmore brought the Singers from their place below, and massed them upon his own platform, where they sang the remaining verses.

Mr. White has never quite forgiven himself that he did not answer the thunderous encore that followed with "John Brown"Page Image in the original version! Musically speaking, it was the greatest triumph of their career, and they never recall it yet without a gleaming eye and quickened pulse. It was worth more than a Congressional enactment in bringing that audience to the true ground on the question of "civil rights."

The number of the Singers had been increased to fourteen, with a view to division into two companies when it was desired to visit the smaller places where it would not pay to take the full number, and the rest of the summer was spent in rest and drill at Acton, Mass. A faithful trial, during the fall, of the experiment of two small companies little more than paid expenses; and, at New Year's Day the troupe was reorganized, to consist of eleven members as follows: Ella Sheppard, Maggie L. Porter, Jennie Jackson, Mabel Lewis, Minnie Tate, Georgia Gordon, Julia Jackson, Thomas Rutling, Edmund Watkins, Benjamin M. Holmes, and Isaac P. Dickerson.

A busy and successful campaign of three months followed. The Singers received a letter, drawn up at the suggestion of their distinguished and faithful friend, Hon. George H. Stuart of Philadelphia, and signed by such representative citizens as Mr. Stuart, Jay Cooke, Rev. Dr. Hawes, Bishop Simpson, Rev. Dr. Newton, John Wanamaker, etc., inviting them to visit that city.

The Academy of Music, one of the finest halls in the United States, had been refused a few months

before for an address by a United States senator because he was a black man. But the names of the distinguished citizens by whose invitations the Singers came to the city were sufficient to secure it for their concerts; and the fact that they were the first representatives of the colored race to occupy that platform gave a special significance to the occasion. The great building was thronged night after night, and it was one of the most profitable series of concerts ever given by the Singers.

Application had been made to several of the leading hotels for the entertainment of the party. But no hotel-keeper had been found with the convictions and courage to risk the odium he might incur if he admitted colored guests, and they had been compelled to take up inconvenient and insufficient quarters in a small boarding-house. This fact being mentioned at one of the concerts, the proprietor of the Continental, the best hotel in the city, who was absent when application was made at his office, at once announced that the Singers were welcome to as good accommodations as his house afforded. Subsequently he entertained them in the best manner, and at a generous reduction from regular rates.

While stopping at the Continental, the housekeeper one day kindly escorted the party on a semi subterranean tour through the kitchen and other working departments of the great hotel. They were much interested in the novel sight, and asked permission to invite the working force of the hotel to their dining-room, that they might sing for them. Word came to the guests of the hotel of what was going on, and they gathered about the doors of the

crowded room, begging that the concert might be adjourned to the larger dining-room. The Singers acquiesced on condition that their invited hearers, white and black, should have the front places. There probably was never a Jubilee concert that gave more pleasure to the occupants of the "reserved seats;" nor to the rest of the audience, for that matter.

At a concert to be given soon after, in the Masonic Hall, Baltimore, a city noted for its intense pro-slavery feeling, the ticket-seller, acting in accordance with Baltimore usages, had taken upon himself the responsibility of refusing to sell reserved seats to colored people. This came to the ears of the company when they reached the city the day of the concert, and one of the Singers was sent incognito to the ticket-office to buy a reserved seat, and test the truth of the story. His application for a seat to hear himself sing was refused!

Here was evidently a call to do a little missionary work, as well as furnish some entertainment for the people of Baltimore. The ticket-seller was relieved from further duty, and notice was immediately given that any well-behaved person could have any seat in the hall by paying the advertised price for it. A few colored people occupied reserved seats here and there on the main floor, but it was never heard that any one received harm from such a radical innovation in Baltimore customs. The audience were apparently so interested in the singing that they forgot to study the color of their neighbors' faces.

The Singers were accustomed to being refused entertainment at hotels because of their color. This was not always, however, for fear merely of offending

other guests. In one case, in Illinois, the hotel servants squarely refused to wait on the "nagurs," as they pronounced the word, and the Singers were their own boot-blacks and chamber-maids. At another hotel the landlord met a similar refusal by paying the mutineers their wages and sending them en masse into the street.

But the most offensive manifestation of caste prejudice that ever flaunted itself in the face of the party occurred during this campaign, at Princeton, N. J. They had been invited by President McCosh, and other members of the Faculty of Princeton College, to visit the place, and one of the churches had been tendered them for their concert. A little while before it was time for the concert to begin, they learned that an out-of-the-way corner of the church had been set aside for colored people, and that they were refused admission to any other part of the house. An estimable lady, who was a teacher in a colored mission school, had bought reserved seats for her class; but they, too, were compelled to take their place in the colored quarter under the gallery, regardless of the contract involved in the tickets which they held. The Singers were so indignant that they would gladly have given up the concert. The fact that so many old friends of the slave had come from long distances to hear them alone persuaded them to go on.

During two seasons of concerts they had never before been subjected to this indignity, even in a public hall; that it should be offered in a church of Christ was a grievance not to be passed over in silence, and Mr. White took occasion, in an interval

of the concert, to characterize it in the terms it deserved. It was plainer preaching on that subject, probably, than had ever been heard in that church before. And most of those who greeted it with their angry hisses have doubtless already lived long enough to be heartily ashamed of them.

A tract of twenty-five acres, on a commanding site overlooking the city of Nashville, had been purchased for the permanent location of Fisk University. During the war the eminence had been crowned by Fort Gillem, one of the encircling line of fortifications that had defended the city in the memorable contests that had raged around it. The students had worked with the laborers to level the earthworks, and the foundations had been laid for a noble building for university purposes, to be called Jubilee Hall.

The project of visiting England with a view to raising funds for its completion, had been for some time under prayerful consideration. During the winter campaign it was decided to start early in the spring, and the closing work of the season took the shape of farewell concerts in New York, Brooklyn, Boston, Providence, and elsewhere. One given in Boston, March 26th, in response to a request signed by Governor Claflin, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Rev. E. E. Hale, Dr. Kirk, Phillips Brooks, and several other eminent citizens, was the most successful, financially, that the Singers had ever given in that city.

And so the winter's work drew to a close. Its net result was the addition of another $20,000 to their fund, making $40,000 that they had now secured.

With exultation and thankfulness as they thought of past success, and with high hopes for the future, preparations were at once made for the visit to Great Britain. Very cordial letters of introduction, commending the music and mission of the Singers, were given by the governors of five of the New England States, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, Hon. George H. Stuart, George MacDonald, — then on a lecturing tour in America, — and other influential friends. An open letter from Governor Brown of Tennessee, bespeaking favor for their work, was especially valuable as coming from the chief magistrate of a commonwealth that was so recently a slave State.

They were not to get away, however, without still another conflict with caste prejudices. Cabin accommodations were refused the party by one after another of the leading ocean steamship lines. At last an application to the Cunard agents at Boston met with ready success; and when the Singers stepped on the deck of the good steamer Batavia, it was to enter upon a year's experience where such annoyances were to be unknown.

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