Fisk University.html



Fisk University
Fisk University Logo (Trademark of Fisk University)
Established:	1866
Type:	Private, HBCU
President:	Hazel R. O'Leary
Undergraduates:	850
Location:	Nashville, Tennessee, United States
Campus:	Urban, 42 acres
Colors:	Gold and Blue
Nickname:	Bulldogs
Website:	www.fisk.edu

Fisk University is a historically-black university in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. In 1952, Fisk was the first historically-black college or university to earn a Phi Beta Kappa charter. The world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers started as a group of students who traveled to earn enough money to save the school and to raise funds to build the first permanent structure in the country built for the education of newly-freed slaves. They succeeded and funded construction of the renowned Jubilee Hall.

On March 12, 2008, Nashville's Metro Council passed a resolution declaring March 19th Fisk University Day. ¹

History

A class circa 1900

Fisk University was established by John Ogden, Reverend Erastus Milo Cravath, and Reverend Edward P. Smith. It was named in honor of General Clinton B. Fisk of the Tennessee Freedmen's Bureau. Fisk opened to classes on January 9, 1866.

University namesake Clinton B. Fisk

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 directed by its 14th president, the Honorable Hazel O'Leary, former Secretary of Energy under President William Jefferson Clinton. She is the second woman to serve as president of the university.

On June 25, 2008, Fisk announced that it had successfully raised $4 million during the fiscal year ending June 30, thus ending nine years of budget deficits and qualifying for a Mellon Foundation challenge grant.^{citation needed}

Campus

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

Jubilee Hall, which was recently restored, is the oldest and most distinctive structure of Victorian architecture on the 40 acre (160,000 m²) Fisk campus.

Theological Hall, circa 1900

Cravath Hall

Fisk Memorial Chapel

Music, art, and literature collections

Fisk University is also the home of a music literature collection founded by the noted Harlem Renaissance figure Carl van Vechten.

Alfred Stieglitz Collection

In 1949, Georgia O'Keeffe facilitated the exchange of 99 paintings from the estate of her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, and made an outright gift of two of her own paintings to the school in order to receive federal tax deductions. These were displayed at the University's Carl Van Vechten Gallery.

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 these were estimated to be worth up to 45 million U.S. dollars). However, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (the legal guardians of her estate) and others sued to stop the sale on the basis that the original bequest did not allow the art to be sold. At the end of 2007 a plan to share the collection with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art to earn money was being fought in court by the O'Keeffe Museum. ²

Notable alumni

Notable faculty

References

External links

• www.fisk.edu - Official web site