3-053-773 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Jubilee Singers for the Fisk University College, 1873. 'These young men and women, all of n*gro or mixed race, whose portraits we have engraved, are Minnie Tate, Greene Evans, Isaac B. Dickerson, Jennie Jackson, Maggie Porter, Ella Sheppard, Thomas Rutling, Benjamin M. Holmes, and Eliza Walker, with two other girls. Only two, Jennie Jackson and Minnie Tate, were born free; the rest were brought up in slavery till the decree of emancipation issued during the [American] Civil War. They were selected at the Fisk College and trained as musicians by Mr. George L. White, a schoolmaster and choirmaster, of Ohio, who had served in the Quartermaster's Department of the Army and held a post under General Fisk in the Freedmen's Bureau at Nashville. Ella Sheppard is the pianist, and she, with two of the other young women, sings the soprano parts, while two of them have contralto voices; Dickerson and Evans sing bass; the other two young men are tenors; and the effect of their vocal concerts is very pleasing, as was acknowledged when they performed at Willis's Rooms in London'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.