History of African-American Celebrity: The Fisk Jubilee Singers

Abstract

Little research has been done on the making of African-American celebrity over the course of the nineteenth century. This research is part of a larger project to understand the business patterns and representational strategies of the first waves of black global figures, comprising the last chapter of a book that examines the expansion of African-American fame over time. For this section of the project, the Fisk Jubilee Singers and their concert touring schedule are taken into account. The Jubilee Singers originated from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, holding their first concert in 1871 and beginning their first tour later that year to raise money to fund their school’s endeavors. By examining primary sources, such as books, newspapers, and promotional pamphlets from that period, and secondary sources, consisting of modern scholars’ works on the Singers and their world, dates, reviews, and playbills can be collected to create a master chronology of their touring schedule in the late 1800s. As the chronology grows larger, strategic patterns may be seen in their business decisions, tour routes, uses of foreign markets, publics, media, and broader global positioning, thus, contributing to our larger understanding of how the first waves of African-American stars became visible to history. With this information, the question of why these celebrities went to the places they did can be answered and placed in larger transnational contexts. The goal of this section of the project is to map the global circulation and history of the Jubilee Singers and to use this information to understand how they worked to control the very terms of their public visibility in national and international markets. These results may suggest their methods, as well, to rethink the longer history of black celebrity from the early nineteenth century to the present.