By Pamela E. Foster
Special to The Tennessee Tribune
The Fisk Herald was founded in June 1883 by students of three literary societies at Fisk University in Nashville, making it America’s first student newspaper at a historically black college or university.
The societies were the Beta Kappa Beta Society, the Union Literary Society, and the Young Ladies Lyceum. Students of these groups first discussed with school administrators in 1882 that they wanted their own paper then took the initiative to elect editors and managers from among themselves to execute all aspects of running the paper.
The school was founded in 1866 by the Christian group the American Missionary Association to educate former slaves and their offspring. The paper’s most famous editor is W.E.B. Du Bois, who served as editor-in-chief from November 1887 to his graduation in June 1888.
The first editor was Tolbert F. Sublett, Fisk class of 1883, Harvard Law class of 1889. In the paper’s first editorial, Sublett said in part, “The students hope to present a real live college paper in the full extent of this term, conducted on a high moral basis, loyal in every respect to the University. The HERALD is to be wholly a student paper, independent to the extent it is in no way an organ of the faculty, and will speak from the students’ standpoint.”
At the 2013 National HBCU Student News Media Conference held in Nashville in February at the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, students from across the country celebrated the Herald’s debut and learned how they could better implement the paper’s focus on professionalism, advocacy and humor in their own papers.
At the time the paper started, about 40 black publications nationally were in circulation, and The Fisk Herald took on many of the traits of the best of those publications. In his article “The History and Development of Negro Journalism,” written in the January 1890 edition of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, author John T. Morris names The Fisk Herald and The Paul Quinn Monthly, a subsequent black college student newspaper, among America’s quality black newspapers that exemplify race enterprise and superior ability.
“We have periodicals published (weekly,) monthly, quarterly and annually,” he said. “‘The Paul Quinn Monthly,’ at Waco, Texas; ‘Howard’s Magazine’ at Harrisburg, Pa; ‘The Fisk Herald,’ of Fisk University; ‘The A. M. E. Church Review,’ Philadelphia; ‘The St. Joseph Advocate,’ Baltimore.”
Also in the article Morris says, “The literary talent of a people is the measure of its national worth. Nothing more clearly defines the stages of a people’s advancement than its circulating literature; nothing more vividly portrays the interest evinced therein than its periodical publications….”
The Fisk Herald was a monthly paper, professionally designed, and typically contained two news or opinion pieces per page. The paper covered student news, campus issues, and the broader black community. Subscriptions sold for one dollar per year.
The paper began with eight pages in a four-column, 8.5- by 11-inch format with the paper’s title in its flag all in capital letters followed by a period. In April 1885 it moved to twelve pages and a new flag with only the first letter of the words in the paper’s name in capital letters. Ads typically were on the inside cover and the last one to four pages. In October 1887 it moved to a two-column format. The paper’s final format was 16 pages with a cover, listing of faculty and ads on the inside cover, a standard page one, and a two-column format.
The Fisk Herald’s final publication as a newspaper was circa 1930. By then Fisk students were publishing The Greater Fisk Herald, a newspaper that later gave way to the Fisk University students’ current newspaper, the Fisk Forum, founded in 1948. The Fisk Herald has resurfaced from time to time on campus as a literary magazine.
The Fisk Herald papers pictured here are courtesy of the Fisk University Franklin Library Special Collections. Some issues of the paper, including ones edited by W.E.B. Du Bois, are preserved free online as a service of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society’s HBCU Newspaper History Project at
http://www.aahgsnashville.org/hbcuproject/fisk-herald.
Pamela E. Foster is an award-winning journalist and author of four books on black people in country music, Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Nashville, and her family heritage. She lives and writes in Nashville and can be reached at countrypef@gmail.com.