Fisk

Ah got shoes, yo' got shoes,

All God's chillun got shoes.

When Ah gets tuh Hebben

Gwine tuh put on mah shoes,

Gwine tuh walk all ober God's Hebben!

Hebben! Hebben!

Ev'body talkin' 'bout Hebben

Ain't a-goin' dere.

Hebben! Hebben!

Gwine tuh walk all ober God's Hebben!

Ah got a harp, yo' got a harp, Etc.

Ah got wings, yo' got wings, Etc.

Other folk-songs are Swing Low, Sweet Chariot; Juba; Oh, Doo Da Day; Polly-wolly-doodle. One hears them at college reunions, glee club concerts or when a few blithe spirits are assembled at a wedding, a banquet or, in the South, at any casual soiree. They constitute a much-cherished portion of our native melody.

Yet few of such songs are to be found in print. They have been perpetuated chiefly by touring companies of Negro singers. Of these companies the two most famed are those sent out from Tuskegee Institute, in Tuskegee, Ga., and from Fisk University, in Nashville, Tenn., to raise funds for the support of Negro education at these two places. Fifty years ago the original band of Fisk Jubilee Singers serenaded Queen Victoria. If King George and Queen Mary attend a garden party to be given by Lady Astor, they, too, will be serenaded by Fiskians now abroad on tour.

Many newspaper-readers recalled these facts last week when it was announced that Fisk University had completed the first million-dollar endowment fund ever to be established at a Negro college. The sum was made possible by matching scattered gifts with a conditional offer of $500,000 from the General Education Board of New York. From the Carnegie Corporation, of Manhattan, came $250,000; other contributions came from the John F. Slater fund, of Charlottesville, Va., and the J. C. Penny Foundation, of Manhattan. Individuals contributing: Julius Rosenwald, Cyrus H. McCormick, Harold H. Swift, Mrs. Emmons Elaine, all of Chicago; Samuel Mather and Mrs. Francis F. Prentiss, of Cleveland; Miss Fanny T. Cochran and Miss Juliana Wood, of Philadelphia; Joseph Lee, George Wigglesworth, Charles E. Mason, of Boston; Edward S. Harkness, George Foster Peabody, Paul D. Cravath (Chairman of Fisk's Board of Trustees, whose father was a Fisk founder and its President for 25 years), V. Everit Macy, Arthur Curtiss James, Dwight W. Morrow, James H. Post, all of Manhattan. Samuel Sachs, of Manhattan, a trustee, has established the Ella Sachs Piotz Memorial Professorship.

Citizens of Nashville organized to raise a supplementary $50,000, said to be the unprecedented contribution of a Southern city to Negro education.

Fisk was founded by Northerners in Nashville in 1866 as a school for emancipated slaves. A disused army barracks first sheltered its classes. General G. B. Fisk then Head of the Freedman's Bureau for Tennessee and adjoining States, took a lively interest in the founding; his friends named the school for him. In 1869, the American Missionary Association (sustained by Congregational churches in the North) took over the ownership-and administration, is still in control. The charter as a university was issued in 1867.

There are now 20 buildings, valued at $500,000. There are a high school (enrolment 261) and a college (266) -- both coeducational. Tuition and board come to $82.50 for each of the four semesters into which the twelve months are divided. The curriculum includes: accounting, agriculture, banking, business law, insurance, manual arts, home economics, in addition to the usual classical subjects. Graduate work and the M. A. degree can be taken.

Fisk's President is Dr. Fayette Avery McKenzie, Lehigh graduate, who has spent much of his time on the Red Indian as well as on the Negro problem.