♪ Couldn't hear nobody pray,
oh, Lord ♪
♪ I couldn't hear nobody pray,
oh... ♪
♪ I couldn't hear nobody pray ♪
♪ I was way down yonder
by myself ♪
♪ I couldn't hear
nobody pray... ♪
♪ ♪
(bird screeches)
NARRATOR:
In 1855, a Tennessee slave named
Sarah Hannah Sheppard discovered
that her daughter Ella
had been trained to spy on her
by their white mistress.
Tormented, despairing,
Sarah set off to drown her
little girl, then herself.
But providence intervened, in
the form of an old slave woman.
READER:
"Mother caught me in her arms
"and while rushing
to the river to end it all
"was overtaken by Aunt Viney who
cried out, 'Don't do it, honey.
"'Don't you see the clouds
of the Lord as they pass by?
The Lord has got need
of this child.'"
"My mother took courage
"and walked back to slavery
to await God's own time.
Ella Sheppard."
♪ Swing low ♪
♪ Sweet chariot... ♪
NARRATOR:
Ella would fulfill the prophesy
in a way Sarah never imagined--
through Sarah's own songs
of sorrow and redemption.
One day Ella would perform them
in palaces, cathedrals,
and concert halls with a choir
of emancipated slaves
and build a great university out
of the sacred songs of jubilee.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
Ella Sheppard's father
purchased her out of bondage
and fled with her to Ohio,
where she learned to read
and write and play the piano.
At the end the of the Civil War,
she returned to Tennessee.
Determined to become a teacher,
she enrolled at a struggling
school for freed blacks
in Nashville
named Fisk University.
Fisk was a university
in name only--
a freedmen's school
established in an abandoned
army hospital barracks.
Fisk was dedicated to training
men and women like Ella
to educate African Americans
across the south.
The school was run by the
American missionary association,
called the A.M.A.
Fisk's treasurer was a zealous
missionary from New York
named George Leonard White--
a union veteran of Gettysburg
and Chancellorsville.
♪ ♪
White's job was
to keep Fisk afloat
but he had been a choir master
and a band sergeant
and his true passion was music.
Entranced by
the beautiful voices
of the young former slaves
who studied at the school,
he began to assemble
the most gifted into a chorus.
READER:
"We were especially fond
of music
"and gladly gave half of our
noon hour and all our spare time
"to study under Mr. White.
"We made rapid progress.
Ella Sheppard."
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
In Ella Sheppard,
George White recognized someone
whose passion for music
matched his own.
White appointed Sheppard
assistant choir director,
making her, at age 18, the
school's first black instructor.
Together, White and Sheppard
rehearsed the student chorus
in popular songs of the day
and musical pageants
like "The Cantata of Esther."
(chorus singing)
♪ Swing low... ♪
NARRATOR:
But White was most entranced
by the mysterious, moving songs
that Ella Sheppard and the
students sang for themselves.
They were called cabin songs,
plantation melodies,
spirituals, and jubilees--
folk hymns composed by slaves
for worship and solace.
♪ ...Sweet chariot ♪
♪ Coming for to carry me home. ♪
MAN:
You start singing a song, and
when you're singing it first,
according to the slaves,
you're just singing the words.
But after a while,
it's almost like therapy.
It begins to take the frown
out of the face.
The shoulders begin to come back
to their natural position.
What's happening is you're going
through a cleansing process.
♪ ...Coming for
to carry me home. ♪
These people were not readers,
they were not writers.
They had to sing songs
with a few words
that they could learn once,
carry on forever
that everybody could sing
at the same time.
So you're going to find
spirituals that will say
"Swing low, sweet chariot,
coming for to carry me home.
Swing low, sweet chariot,
coming for to carry me home."
Just a few words which are going
to be sung over and over.
(singers vocalizing)
NARRATOR:
But education, not music,
was the purpose of schools
like Fisk University.
Under slavery, reading
and writing had been forbidden
punishable by whipping,
imprisonment, or worse.
With emancipation,
waves of freedmen descended
on any school they could find,
desperate to learn
how to count their new wages,
write the new names
they had chosen for themselves,
read the ballot, and the Bible.
MAN:
♪ Oh... this little light
of mine... ♪
NARRATOR:
When Fisk opened its doors
in January of 1866,
hundreds of former slaves
crowded into day school
and night classes
at the school's barracks.
But the school was continually
on the verge
of financial collapse.
By 1868, it couldn't pay its
creditors, or even its teachers.
One instructor apologized
for asking for her back pay;
but it was cold, she said,
and she had no shoes.
CHORUS:
♪ Let it shine... ♪
NARRATOR:
Tuition was $12 a year at a time
when farm laborers earned as
little as eight dollars a month.
♪ ♪
As treasurer, George White
put up his own savings
to keep the school afloat.
To collect unpaid tuitions,
he wrote letter after letter
to already hard-pressed parents.
READER:
"We spare no pains or expense
in the education of the people.
"I write thus plainly
and earnestly-- yet kindly--
"because a great
and good enterprise
"is in danger of being crippled
"by this lack
of prompt fulfillment
"of your obligations.
George White."
READER:
"Dear Mr. White,
here is six dollars.
"That is all I have at present.
"The times is so hard
that I had to use it at home.
"Give my love to Ellen and
tell her to be a good girl.
Rachel Ferguson."
♪ ♪
NARRATOR:
When students uncovered
rusty chains
from an abandoned slave pen,
White sold the chains for scrap
iron to buy Bibles and spellers.
To raise more money, White led
his choir to neighboring towns
to sing for donations,
despite the dangers.
