Leaders of the Upper North American Missionary…
August 1867 CE
Leaders of the Upper North American Missionary Association (AMA)—John Ogden, Reverend Erastus Milo Cravath, field secretary; and Reverend Edward Parmelee Smith—had founded the Fisk Free Colored School, for the education of freedmen in 1866, six months after the end of the American Civil War.
AMA support means the organization tries to use its resources across the country to aid education for freedmen.
Enrollment had jumped from two hundred to none hundred in the first several months of the school, indicating freedmen's strong desire for education, with ages of students ranging from seven to seventy.
The school is named in honor of General Clinton B. Fisk of the Tennessee Freedmen's Bureau, who makes unused barracks available to the school, as well as establishing the first free schools for white and black children in Tennessee.
In addition, he has endowed Fisk with a total of thirty thousand dollars.
Fisk had opened to classes on January 9, 1866.
With Tennessee's passage of legislation to support public education, leaders see a need for training teachers, and Fisk University is incorporated as a normal school for college training in August 1867.
Cravath organizes the College Department and the Mozart Society, the first musical organization in Tennessee.
The American Missionary Association's work is chiefly sponsored by the Congregationalist churches in New England.
The United Church of Christ retains an affiliation with the university today.