American Experience (1988–…): Season 12, Episode 8 - Jubilee Singers: Sacrifice and Glory - full transcript

♪ I couldn't hear nobody pray,
crossin' Jordan ♪

♪ 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... ♪

♪ ♪

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.

"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... ♪

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.

"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."

♪ ♪

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."

♪ Swing low... ♪

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. ♪

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.

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.

♪ Oh... this little light
of mine... ♪

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.

♪ Let it shine... ♪

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.

"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."

"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."

♪ ♪

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.

There was no lacking
of opposition

to the establishment
and maintenance

of schools for the freedmen.

People who had subscribed
to the view

that, one, blacks were inferior,

they were childlike,
they were irresponsible,

could not believe that energy
and resources should be expended

on the training of people

who could not absorb
the training anyway.

After all, there's talk
about their becoming voters

and full citizens,
especially in 1866 and 1867.

And you've got
to put a stop to this.

Night riders
like the Ku Klux Klan

assaulted and whipped
Fisk students

for teaching in the countryside.

A young choir member,
Benjamin Holmes

was shot at in his classroom.

And soprano Maggie Porter
returned one New Year's

to find that local whites
had celebrated the holidays

by burning her school
to the ground.

♪ Were you there ♪

♪ When they crucified... ♪

One evening,
White and his singers

found themselves stranded at
a railway depot in a small town

and surrounded by a jeering mob.

"Seeing Mr. White among us,
word soon traveled

"that he was a 'yankee
nigger school teacher.'

"Threatenings began
near evening.

"We prayed through song
for deliverance.

"Mr. White stood between us
and the men

"and directed the singing.

"One by one, the crowd left off
their jeering and swearing

"and slunk back, until only
the leader stood near Mr. White.

"He finally took off his hat

"and begged us, with tears
falling, to sing again.

Ella Sheppard."

♪ ♪

♪ In times like these ♪

♪ Oh, in times like these... ♪

By 1871, Fisk's barracks
were rotting away.

♪ ♪

"The wind whistled and groaned
so fearfully

"that we trembled in our beds,

"thinking the sounds
were the cries

"of lost spirits of the soldiers
who had died in them.

"Privations began to tell
on the vitality of the students.

There was no money,
even for food."

♪ ...down, yeah ♪

♪ I need the Lord... ♪

That fall, George White seized
on a daring plan.

He proposed to take his singers

on a fundraising tour
of the north.

White believed his young
students were convincing proof

of what higher education
could do for the freedmen.

♪ ♪

By October,
White and Ella Sheppard

had assembled and rehearsed
their best singers.

All but two had been slaves.

Tenor Thomas Rutling,
a former house slave,

was almost expelled from Fisk

for passing notes
to female students.

One newspaper deemed him
the best tenor in Tennessee.

Benjamin Holmes, 23,

survived his semester
of countryside teaching.

As a slave, he'd secretly
taught himself to read

and was now a deacon
of Fisk's chapel.

Like Holmes,
18-year-old Maggie Porter

had continued to teach
in country schools,

uncowed by threats and arson.

21-year-old baritone
Isaac Dickerson

had been a Confederate colonel's
valet in the war.

Soprano Jennie Jackson, age 19,

was a granddaughter of president
Andrew Jackson's body servant.

Youngest of the nine singers

was 14-year-old contralto
Minnie Tate

who, as a free girl, had been
taken in by German settlers.

The parents of white's singers

were afraid to let
their children go.

Fearing ridicule, even disgrace,

his fellow teachers
opposed the tour,

and the American missionary
association refused to help.

George White wanted

to target mainly
white Christian audiences.

And generally, the audiences
he was going to be searching for

were the same audiences

that the A.M.A. already
appealed to for support.

But there's even more to it
than that.

Black singers did not appear
on stage during this era,

except in the minstrel show.

And the minstrel show was
a very stereotypical

and derogatory image
of African Americans.

Good, upstanding
Christian people

did not go to these kinds
of entertainments.

Many freedmen schools

had already been crushed
by debt and violence.

White was convinced

that he and his singers had
been chosen by God to save Fisk.

"'Tis time to root hog or die,"
he wired the A.M.A.

"I'm depending on God, not you."

With the last $40 of the
school's treasury in his pocket,

White took his singers
on the road.

"Not one of us had
an overcoat or wrap.

"Mr. White had
an old gray shawl.

"Taking every cent he had...

"all his school treasury could
spare and all he could borrow...

"Mr. White started in
God's strength October 6, 1871,

"with his little band of singers

"to sing the money out
of the hearts and pockets

"of the people.

Ella Sheppard."

♪ Can I ride ♪

♪ Ride away to heaven
in the morning... ♪

White's plan was
to lead his singers north

to perform along
the old underground railway

starting in Cincinnati

and following the network of
abolitionist homes and churches

that had once relayed
escaped slaves to Canada.

For their repertoire,

White chose European classical
and popular songs...

some composed by himself.

At their debut in Cincinnati,

the audience received them
warmly enough

but donated less than $50.

The next day,
news reached the singers

of the great fire in Chicago.

They gave all their money
to the relief fund

and left town empty-handed.

Night after night,
it was the same story.

Crowds loved their singing

but the collection plate
said it all...

$50 or $60... barely enough
to cover their expenses.

You were staying in flophouses

or in boarding houses.

You could get your meals there.

The meals were nothing
to write home about.

The rooms were generally dirty.

They were not well kept.

The vaudevillians of this period
refer to them

as "don't-look-
under-the-bed rooms."

There were probably bugs
in the beds.

There were probably rats around.

There were always signs
in the railroad stations saying,

"Nigger, read and run."

and sometimes there'd be
below the sign, scratched on,

"And if you can't read,
run anyways."

But no one turned back.

"All we wanted," recalled
soprano Maggie Porter,

"was for Fisk to stand."

If the singers don't
bring back some money,

the school is going to fold,

and so that the singers
were having to sing

at every opportunity.

Sometimes they would sing
in churches.

They would sing
for private parties.

They would sing for teas.

Sometimes they would ask them
to stand on a busy thoroughfare.

"Many a time, our audiences
in large halls

"were discouragingly slim.

"Our strength was failing

"under the ill treatment
at hotels and on railroads,

"poorly attended concerts,
and ridicule.

"Besides,
we were too thinly clad

"for the increasing cold
of a northern climate.

Ella Sheppard."

The grueling logistics
of the failing tour

were George White's burden.

Many times he would have
to leave

Ella Sheppard with the students,
with the rest of the singers,

to get ready
for the next concert

while he went ahead
to the next city.

There he would have
to secure a hall,

talk with all of the ministers
in the area

to try to drum up support,

build an audience, advertise.

He would have to leave
the students at the station

because no hotel
would take them in

and go up and down the streets,
knocking on doors

to try to find Christian people

who would house the singers
overnight.

"It is true, we are not received
like the Grand Duke Alexis,

"but we are willing
to wait a little longer

"till the good time coming
comes.

"I feel that our enterprise
must be a success,

"for God is with us
and has given us favor.

Benjamin Holmes."

♪ We'll take wing
and fly away... ♪

Week after week,
performing with little rest,

White and the singers
endured rheumatism,

coughing fits, bronchitis.

Their clothes ran to rags.

Sickly Ella Sheppard begged
White to send her home,

but White refused.

He had begun to experiment
with the singers' repertoire

and now needed Sheppard
more than ever.

Initially, they would have

maybe 17 numbers
that were "white man's music"

and they would include some
spirituals, often as encores.

But when they saw how
those spirituals were received,

they began to include
more and more spirituals.

They arranged them
while they were on tour,

and that responsibility
fell to Ella Sheppard.

So here's Ella Sheppard drilling
the singers,

arranging new melodies, teaching
them, practicing the spirituals,

all during the time
that they're concertizing

night after night after night.

It's incredible.

♪ ♪

"The slave songs were associated
with slavery and the dark past

"and represented
the things to be forgotten.

"they were sacred
to our parents.

"We did not dream
of ever using them in public.

"It was only after many months

"that gradually
our hearts were opened

to the wonderful beauty
and power of our songs."

On the 16th of November,

the weary singers arrived
at Oberlin College in Ohio

to sing before
a national convention

of influential ministers.

This time, they reached
past cantatas and ballads

back to the secret music they'd
sung behind closed doors...

The sacred songs
of their mothers and fathers.

♪ Steal away ♪

♪ Steal away to Jesus ♪

♪ Steal away ♪

♪ Steal away home ♪

♪ I ain't got long ♪

♪ To stay here ♪

♪ Steal away ♪

♪ Steal away... ♪

They started singing
"Steal Away."

♪ Steal away to Jesus... ♪

And all of a sudden,
there was no talking.

And then they said that
you could hear soft weeping

and the faces
of the people reddened.

And I'm sure
that the Jubilee Singers

were joining them in tears

because sometimes
when you think about

what you are singing,

particularly if you believe it,
you can't help but be moved.

♪ I ain't got long... ♪

After their small triumph
at Oberlin,

word spread from congregation
to congregation.

Letters and telegrams
flew ahead of them,

urging other small-town churches
to open their doors.

Yet the singers
still needed a name.

After a night of prayer,
George White had an inspiration.

"Children," he told the troop,
"it shall be Jubilee Singers."

The name was taken

from chapter 25 of Leviticus,
from the Bible

after the Jewish year
of jubilee.

The Jewish year of jubilee
occurred every 50th year.

And in the year of jubilee
were provisions for debt relief,

provisions for redemption
of property,

and for emancipation of slavery.

That winter,

White rushed to add more
spirituals to the repertoire.

Jennie Jackson brought him
"I'll Hear the Trumpet Sound."

Ella Sheppard taught White
her mother's favorite lullaby,

"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."

when the Fisk students
reached New York in December,

it was make or break.

Three days before Christmas,

Henry Ward Beecher, the most
famous preacher in America,

had invited them to sing
at his weekly prayer meeting.

Beecher's Plymouth church
in Brooklyn included

some of America's richest
and most influential families.

If the singers failed here,

they wouldn't even have enough
money to get back to Nashville.

♪ Oh, Nick... ♪

♪ Oh, Martha... ♪

"I shall never forget the rich
tones of the young men and women

"as they mingled their voices

"in a melody so beautiful
and touching,

"I scarcely knew whether
I was in body or out of body.

Gustavus Pike."

♪ ♪

"Henry Ward Beecher was
on his feet.

"and with his hands
in his pockets,

"he brought out five dollars and
told everybody to follow suit.

"That was our start.

"Every church wanted
the Jubilee Singers

"to sing for them
from that time on.

Maggie Porter."

Even the American
Missionary Association

dropped its opposition
and scrambled to get onboard.

It would now take five
of their agents, full-time,

to accomplish what White
and Sheppard had been doing

on their own.

Touring Connecticut,

they brought in
a phenomenal $1,200 a week.

In New haven and Hartford,

hundreds of new fans
were turned away.

"I don't know when anything has
so moved me," wrote Mark Twain,

"as did the plaintive melodies
of the Jubilee Singers."

In Washington, they delighted
President Ulysses S. Grant

and a concert hall filled
with congressmen and diplomats.

"If the Great Book were
destroyed today,"

wrote one reviewer,

"it could be recreated out of
the fabric of these very songs."

"Success is now at hand.

"Our concerts are
so well attended

"that many are doomed to stand

"and many more leave
for want of room.

"In some cities, excursion
trains are going to run

"to the places where we sing.

"The people seem
to be perfectly frantic

"about the Jubilee Singers.

Ella Sheppard."

Now, when the Jubilees
encountered northern racism,

protests often followed.

When the singers were later
refused accommodations

on Pullman cars, George Pullman
integrated the cars himself,

and they stayed integrated
for another quarter century.

When a New Jersey hotel manager
threw them out

after realizing they were
not "black face" minstrels,

leading citizens took them in

and an embarrassed
board of education

opened its schools to black
children for the first time.

"These singers,"
wrote one newspaper,

"are doing a great work
for humanity.

"They are, by their sweet songs,

molding and manufacturing
public sentiment."

"New life had come
into our bodies.

"We sang as if inspired.

"We not only paid the debts
at home,

"we carried home $20,000,

"with which was purchased
the site of our new school.

We returned to Fisk
amid great rejoicing."

They returned to a school
under siege.

In Nashville,
as in many southern cities,

northern troops stood guard
against vigilantes.

The new university president,
Erastus Milo Cravath,

was determined
to oppose white hostility

by making Fisk
a southern showcase.

He set out
to build Jubilee Hall...

a grand edifice to capture
the imagination of donors

and frustrate the torches
of the Ku Klux Klan.

By 1873, '74, in the south

there were a series of fires,
and many of those places

identified as schools
for the former slaves

come under the torch.

But Jubilee Hall will stand
as a mighty structure

with walls more than 12 inches
thick of stone and brick.

It would be adorned
by a bell tower,

which can also serve
as a watchtower.

Building Jubilee Hall was
going to take a lot more money.

After less than two weeks' rest,

Sheppard and White reorganized
the Jubilee Singers

and took them back on the road.

Now they were paid professionals

supporting a large entourage
of managers, matrons,

tutors, and advance men.

♪ Glory, glory, hallelujah... ♪

In July of 1873, at Boston's
World Peace Jubilee,

the singers were called on
to make themselves heard

over a 1,000-piece orchestra,
a chorus of 10,000,

and a battery of cannons
in a colossal performance

of "The Battle Hymn
of the Republic."

"With voices that rang clear,

"reaching the utmost
of the vast building,

"we took the audience by storm.

"Strauss, the German composer
of waltz music, was present

"and threw up his hat

"during the burst of applause
which followed.

Georgia Gordon."

They were representing
a new freedman,

a new kind of black person.

The dignity, the carriage,
the voice,

and the articulateness
of these young people

surprised large numbers
of northerners.

♪ ♪

Not every northerner
was won over.

The "New York World" called them
"trained monkeys"

who sang
"with a wild darkey air."

The "Newark Evening Courier"
listed them

as if they were items from
a slave dealer's catalog.

In Baltimore, a ticket seller

refused to sell the singers
admission to their own concert.

And there was more.

Other black schools began
their own choirs.

Hucksters passed themselves off
as the original Jubilee Singers.

All this further popularized
the spirituals

but cut into
the Jubilees' receipts.

The singers were forced to seek
out new fields for harvest

thousands of miles from home.

In April 1873, they set sail
for the British Isles.

♪ This little light of mine... ♪

Only one day after
their London debut,

the singers were astonished
to find themselves performing

before none other
than Queen Victoria herself.

♪ This little light of mine... ♪

"The queen wore no crown,
no robes of state.

"But it was the queen
in flesh and blood.

"I saw her, I heard
her deep, low voice saying,

"'Tell them we are delighted
with their songs.'

"I wondered why the queen
did not speak these words to us.

"We were within hearing.

Maggie Porter."

"They are real Negroes,"

wrote the queen in her journal
that night,

"come from America
and have been slaves.

They sing extremely well
together."

The queen's pleasure
opened every door.

Prime Minister Gladstone,
the prince of Wales,

dukes, duchesses, and earls
were transfixed by their songs.

And the singers were quickly
embraced by evangelicals

crusading to save British souls.

At Reverend Charles Spurgeon's
vast tabernacle,

they sang to a congregation
of 6,000.

Across England, Scotland, and
Ireland, they were a phenomenon.

Books and newspapers chronicled
their rise from slavery.

At concert after concert,

their portraits and song books
sold out to British fans.

Thomas Rutling and
Isaac Dickerson left behind

a string of broken hearts.

These young people are
perfect Victorians.

They are dressed
in Victorian elegance.

They deport themselves
in a very Victorian manner.

Remember, the world was
not accustomed

to looking at black Victorians.

This may be the inspiration as
much as the songs and the music

for Queen Victoria to allow
her portrait painter

to paint a beautiful
Victorian portrait

of these young Jubilee Singers.

♪ ♪

The British were fascinated
by their color.

They said Mabel Lewis
and Georgia Gordon

could pass as English belles,

and Minnie Tate as coming
from the south of France.

Dark-complexioned Jennie Jackson
was most sought out of all.

"She had no peace.

"She would take her umbrella
and beat her way along with it.

"One time a crowd
was following us,

"and when we got to the hotel,

"the proprietor had to take the
hose to drive the crowd away.

Mabel Lewis."

Mabel Lewis enjoyed
teasing her fans.

"One time we heard someone say,

"'I am going to speak
to some of them

"and see if they speak English.'

"She came up to me and said,
'Do you all speak English?'

"'Ugh?' I said.

"'Do you speak English or
do you just learn the songs?'

"'Baca migly pan mar tu, '
I answered.

And she said, 'I guess
they only sing in English.'"

In the spring of 1874,

the Jubilee Singers returned
home in triumph

with another $50,000 for the
construction of Jubilee Hall.

"No one can estimate
the vast amount of prejudice

which has perished under the
spell of their marvelous music,"

declared the board of trustees.

"Wherever they have gone,

"they have proclaimed
to the hearts of men

the brotherhood of race."

♪ In times like these, yes... ♪

♪ Oh, in times like these ♪

♪ In times...

But success in England
had come at a price.

Worn down by
a relentless schedule,

an advance man suffered
a nervous breakdown.

Typhoid fever carried away
George White's wife.

White himself nearly died
of a pulmonary hemorrhage.

Contralto Minnie Tate had
sung her voice to shreds.

And the nagging cough

Benjamin Holmes had urged
friends not to worry about

turned out to be tuberculosis.

Throughout Tennessee
and the rest of the south,

the hopes of African Americans
were being dashed.

The Freedmen's Bureau,
established by Congress

to enforce the rights
of emancipated slaves,

had been abolished.

Federal troops that had once
protected African Americans

were gone.

Many black schools shut down.

Former Confederates took over
legislatures

and began to replace laws
protecting black rights

with new segregation codes.

And despite all the singers
had sacrificed,

Jubilee Hall was still
only a hole in the ground.

Fisk's president Cravath

knew this was because the A.M.A.
had been borrowing heavily

from the Jubilee Hall fund
to stave off its own bankruptcy.

Cravath was anxious to get
the singers back on the road

not just to build up Fisk
and Jubilee Hall,

but to rescue
the overextended A.M.A.

Reminding them of
their evangelical mission,

Cravath prevailed
on the exhausted Jubilees

to embark on yet a third tour.

In January 1875, George White
and Ella Sheppard organized

a new troupe of singers.

Ella and Thomas Rutling,
Maggie Porter and Jennie Jackson

were the only
original Jubilees left.

Among the newcomers was
America Robinson,

a Fisk student engaged
to classmate James Burrus.

"Dear James, this morning,
there was combat on our behalf.

"A southern man was enraged

"because the proprietor
took us in.

"A northerner
told the southerner

"that he was
a half 'nigger' himself.

The southerner attempted
to throw the paper

"at the northerner

"so the northerner struck him
on the mouth with a chair.

"Many boarders threatened
to leave.

America Robinson."

♪ ♪

After long tours
of America and Britain,

the Jubilees traveled
to Switzerland and Holland

to test the universality
of their music.

♪ I'm a-gonna lay down
this world ♪

♪ Gonna shoulder up
my cause... ♪

Arriving in Amsterdam
in winter of 1877,

the singers were mobbed
by adoring fans.

♪ ♪

"Our arrival created
a greater sensation

"than a circus
in the United States.

"We could not go walking
or shopping on foot

"because crowds of children
in wooden shoes

"surrounded us so closely
that we could not get on.

Ella Sheppard."

They performed for
the queen of the Netherlands

and raised another $10,000.

But the non-stop schedule

was wearing out
George White and the singers.

The voice is the one thing
that we can't camouflage.

We can't put makeup on the voice

and have it come out
a different way.

So if you have a cold, if
you're tired, if you're hungry...

all of these things come out
in the voice.

So you have not only
the physicality of singing

and the problems
of dealing with...

with working on stage,

but you have on top of all that

the whole issue of the pressure

that these kids are under
to prove a point.

The point is that African
Americans are educable people,

that they are people who can
gain from a college education.

Many people didn't believe that.

That summer, White asked Cravath
to come help manage the troupe.

He got more
than he bargained for.

Cravath had no musical training,
but he had big plans,

starting with an ambitious tour
of Germany,

birthplace of Bach,
Beethoven, and Brahms.

White was against it.

"I know what is necessary

to win musical success
in Germany," White argued,

"but I see no chance at all
to accomplish it."

But in the end,
the Jubilaums-Sanger

were a popular
and critical sensation.

"What wealth of shading.

"What accuracy of declamation.

"Something may be learned
from these Negro singers

"if only we will consent
to break through

"the fetters of custom.

'Die Berliner Musikzeitung.'"

Even when the Germans did not
understand the words,

they cried and smiled
at the same places

as English audiences had.

At Potsdam, they sang
for Kaiser Wilhelm I.

As the Jubilees sang,
Crown Princess Victoria,

daughter of Queen Victoria
of England,

burst into tears.

"Afterward, she remarked

"she hoped we did not
think her silly,

"but she could not help weeping.

"She is in mourning for a child

and the song probably
reminded her of the lost one."

♪ ♪

"These songs, as you sing them,
go to the heart,"

explained the crown prince.

"They go through
and through one."

In later years,
many of the singers

would remember these concerts

as the crowning triumph
of their careers.

But this was soon overshadowed
by news from home.

With conditions worsening
in the Tennessee countryside,

hundreds of African Americans
were fleeing

to the cities for refuge,
cramming into slums.

Epidemics were rampant.

Tuberculosis claimed
three Fisk students,

among them the Jubilees'
old friend and colleague

Benjamin Holmes.

"We were all quite prepared
for his death,"

wrote America Robinson,

"but we all felt it deeply...
Everybody loved Mr. Holmes."

♪ ♪

They traveled
from Berlin to Magdeburg

Magdeburg to Leipzig...
On and on through Germany.

An astonishing 68 concerts
in 41 towns in 98 days...

not including impromptu
performances

in churches, trains,
and private homes.

Many nights, only six out of 11
were well enough to perform.

Ella Sheppard collapsed and was
sent to Holland to recuperate.

Then Julia Jackson suffered
a stroke.

"About 4:00, she got up and in
attempting to get back into bed

"fell across it,
unable to move herself.

"It never entered our minds

"that such a dreadful thing
as paralysis

"had taken hold upon her,
but it was even so.

"It has left one whole side
of her powerless.

America Robinson."

A new baritone named
Frederick Loudin blamed Cravath.

"You have only thought

"of how much you could get
out of the singers.

"Three years killed Mr. Holmes.

"Ella is quite gone.

"Jennie Jackson is failing,
as all can see.

"Still, you seem determined
to drive ahead

"as if we were all superhuman.

"And as fast as we are killed,
you put in a new one.

Frederick Loudin."

These were no longer
the wide-eyed teenagers

who had set out
six years before.

Most were now well
into their 20s.

Almost every one of them
had been offered opportunities

to study at British
universities,

perform for rival groups,
or even strike out on their own.

And they knew their own worth.

More and more,
they demanded a say

in how the troupe
would be managed.

George White was used
to running the group

and giving clear directions

and mandating how things
were going to go.

But as the membership
and the group evolved

and became
a professional organization,

the individual members had
ideas equally

about how things should go.

And they often clashed
with George White.

After a six-week recovery
from near-fatal pneumonia,

Ella Sheppard rejoined
the singers in Germany

to find chaos.

George White,
worn out from illness,

railed at the singers
he still called his "children"

and submitted his resignation.

To Sheppard's horror,
Cravath accepted it.

He was already planning tours
of Australia, South America,

and the American west.

To keep the troupe alive,

Cravath asked Sheppard
to take over from White.

After prayer, Ella agreed
on the sole condition

that she and the exhausted
Jubilees return to Nashville

at the end of
their current engagements.

There would be no new bookings.

Cravath called her a deserter.

"Though I live to be
an old woman,

"the scar of that word 'desert'
will remain upon my heart.

"As hard as I've worked
for seven years...

"late and early,
doing extra work...

To at last be called
a deserter."

Ella stood her ground.

She directed the troupe
for the three contentious months

it took to finish
their engagements.

Even Cravath could see
that it was time.

Rivalries among the singers
had become open.

Morale was low,
nerves were frayed.

After almost seven years
of touring together,

singing night after night,

the Jubilee Singers
had had enough.

At long last, the singers
started for home.

♪ ♪

As their ship approached
American waters,

they sang together
one last time.

♪ ♪

"Many wept during the evening,

"and one lady followed me
to our room, weeping,

"and threw her arms
around my neck

"and kissing me, cried,

"'I do thank you... I never felt
such music before.'

"How much good we might do

"not only for others
but for our people and hearts.

"May our Father forgive us.

Ella Sheppard."

The contrast between the world
that the Jubilee Singers left

and the world to which they were
returned is considerable.

They had been wined
and dined and lionized

and praised all over the north
and all over Europe,

and had seen
how a human being could live.

Bad for them to come back
to a world

that has deteriorated
even since they left.

Some never did come back.

Thomas Rutling
and Isaac Dickerson

refused to set foot in America
and eventually died in England.

The years of touring reduced
George White to an invalid.

Like Benjamin Holmes,
he died of consumption.

At his memorial service in 1895,

a few of the Jubilees returned
to sing his favorite spiritual,

"Steal Away."

♪ ♪

The singers who returned to
Nashville were honored by Fisk

for raising over $160,000
to complete Jubilee Hall

and save their school.

But as emissaries
of the freedmen,

their contributions extended
far beyond Fisk University.

They had introduced the world

to the sacred hymns
of their ancestors.

♪ Lord, I keep those... ♪

Ella Sheppard eventually
returned to Fisk

to be the teacher
that she had wanted to become

when she first arrived in 1868.

By the time of her death
at the age of 63,

she had become one of the most
respected women of her day...

A confidante
of Frederick Douglass

and Booker T. Washington.

And Sarah Hannah Sheppard,

the mother who had once tried
to drown Ella and herself

rather than live in bondage,

lived out her life
in her daughter's house,

witness to the fulfillment
of a prophesy

made back in the days
of their bondage

under the clouds of the Lord.

♪ When I'm feeling the pull... ♪

♪ I'm working for the kingdom ♪

♪ Ain't got time to die. ♪

♪ 'Cause it takes
all of my time ♪

♪ To praise my Jesus ♪

♪ All of my time
to praise my Lord ♪

♪ If I don't praise Him,
the rock's going to cry out ♪

♪ Glory and honor,
glory and honor ♪

♪ Ain't got time to die ♪

♪ ♪

Next time...

JOSEPH McCARTHY:
Even if there is only
one communist

in the State Department,

that would still be
one communist too many.

Joe McCarthy turned
anti-communism

into something bigger
than anyone else ever imagined.

McCARTHY:
You're not fooling anyone
at all, senator.

He tells a lie, and by the time
you've responded to that,

he's told three others.

Have you left
no sense of decency?

"McCarthy," coming soon
to "American Experience."

Made possible in part
by Liberty Mutual Insurance.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪