Tennessee Voices, Episode 264: Vann Newkirk, president of Fisk University
Fisk University opened its doors in 1866 to educate formerly enslaved African Americans in Nashville.
Today, it is the oldest university in a city that has become known as the "Athens of the South" because it is home to several institutions of higher education.
The world famous Fisk Jubilee Singers — whose performance before the United Kingdom's Queen Victoria in the 19th century led her to dub Nashville "Music City" — recently won its first Grammy Award.
On this episode of the Tennessee Voices podcast, Fisk President Vann R. Newkirk, Sr., spoke about the institution's rich history, its renowned art collection, and the financial challenges the school has faced and is overcoming. This fall, Fisk will become the first historically Black college and university to have a women's gymnastics team.
We talked about Fisk's legacy as a center for social justice, educating leaders, such as, W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells and John Lewis.
Last fall, Newkirk participated in a public discussion with four other college leaders — Belmont, Vanderbilt, Lipscomb and Nashville State Community College — to enhance their communication and collaboration as a consortium.
Newkirk also talked to me about the need to teach history as it happened in light of efforts by Tennessee and other state legislatures to ban instruction of so-called "divisive" topics.
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About Tennessee Voices
The Tennessee Voices videocast is a 20-minute program, which started in March 2020 and invites leaders, thinkers and innovators who have written guest columns for a USA TODAY Network Tennessee publication to share their insights and wisdom with me and our viewers.
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David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network Tennessee and an editorial board member of The Tennessean. Tweet to him at @davidplazas.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee Voices: Honoring Fisk University's past, building its future
