The Jubilee Singers: Free or Enslaved?

Abstract

This paper intends to inform the reader about the great impact that the Fisk Jubilee Singers had on developing and understanding American music, specifically African American slave songs and culture, during their years of performance and travel. It also seeks to highlight the contradiction of the Fisk singers’ situation during that period of their lives; many of them were recently released from slavery, yet they were obligated to tour as a group for years after their education had ended. This resulted in most of the members altogether forfeiting their diplomas. This paper focuses on the difficulty which the Jubilee singers were subjected to and asks the question of whether or not they had been freed from slavery at all, or whether this attempt at freedom and education really became another form of slavery for the group of young students.