Tell Them We Are Singing for Jesus

Starting in 1871, the Fisk University Jubilee Singers played an important role in American history in several respects. They pioneered the concert performance of African American spirituals, bringing a then-controversial but later widely beloved body of music to wide public consciousness; Mark Twain was among their earliest boosters. They were successful fund-raisers, ensuring the survival of Fisk University and aiding the construction of college buildings through their substantial earnings. They overcame tremendous adversity, successfully struggling for recognition at the beginning of their travels and later struggling against pervasive discrimination in railway travel and public accommodations. The daunting schedule set by their managers wore them down physically, although they tried valiantly to have their managers set a more humane and manageable concert pace. Toni P. Anderson builds on these widely accepted points by exploring the degree to which the tours of the Jubilee Singers were not simply concert performances but were rather evangelical Christian ministry. She casts them as ambassadors, not only for freedpeople but also for the “Christian Reconstruction” of the South. They were sponsored by the American Missionary Association (AMA), the most active agency in the education of freedpeople, and the AMA also reaped financial benefits from their concert success. She explores the interest of some of the Jubilee Singers and their sponsors in the evangelization of Africa. One Jubilee Singer, Ella Hildridge, and her spouse became missionaries to Africa, and six of the approximately twenty-seven persons who had been Jubilee Singers for some time during the 1870s “engaged in some form of Christian ministry after leaving the company” (p. 257). Noting that the singers were dedicated “water drinkers,” temperance societies in England and America happily sought their assistance, and the group stayed, when possible, at temperance hotels. In her final analysis, Anderson describes their evangelical work as part of an “acculturation process” and an affirmation of “the Protestant ethic of Victorian America,” locating the greatest significance of the Jubilee Singers in a more secular realm: they opened “the door to the Western concert stage for future generations of African American artists” (pp. 214–15

Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Art · Christian ministry · Flourishing · Geography · Management · Pace · Political science · Singing · Social science · Sociology · History · Law · Music History and Culture · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society · Social Psychology · Theater, Performance, and Music History