Fisk University

Fisk University is a historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. It was established by John Ogden, Reverend Erastus Milo Cravath and Reverend Edward P. Smith and named in honor of General Clinton B. Fisk of the Tennessee Freedmen's Bureau. Fisk opened to classes on January 9, 1866. 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 currently under the direction of its 14th president, the Honorable Hazel O'Leary, former Secretary of Energy under President William Jefferson Clinton. She is the second female president of the university.

Notable alumni

• Aaron Douglas, painter, illustrator, muralist
• W. E. B. Du Bois, sociologist, scholar, first Black to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard
• John Hope Franklin, historian, professor, scholar, author of landmark text, From Slavery to Freedom, graduate of the class of 1935
• Nikki Giovanni, poet, author, professor, scholar
• Alma Powell, wife of Gen. Colin Powell
• Kym Whitley, actress, comedienne
• Hortense Canady, past national president of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated
• Alcee Hastings, U.S. Congressman
• Roland Hayes, concert singer
• James Weldon Johnson, author, poet and civil rights activist, author of the "Negro National Anthem", "Lift Every Voice and Sing"
• Fisk Jubilee Singers, first African American performers to gain international acclaim for introducing the world to Negro Spirituals
• Lewis Wade Jones, sociologist and educator
• John Lewis, U.S. Congressman
• Hazel O'Leary, current President of Fisk University and former U.S. Secretary of Energy
• Booker T. Washington, educator and founder of Tuskegee University
• John Wesley Work III, professor, composer and musicologist