A Good Ole Fashion Public Negro Lynching YOU Can Prevent!

ACTION NEEDED NOW!!

Fisk University, a Historically Black University is being stripped of the Stieglitz Art Collection left to it by the late Georgia O’Keefe. The school depends on the art collection as revenue and as something unique and specifically intended to keep the school in the business of educating at a superior level for a long time to come.

Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper is trying to strip the school of its most available asset which would eventually close it; just a new way of lynching Blacks using education and politics as the noose! He is claiming the school cannot properly maintain the collection.

“This is only a temporary arrangement,” said Cooper. “The Collection should return to the Fisk campus when the University is once again financially able to display and maintain the art.” But he and his Tennessee Arts Commission have other plans which do not include returning the collection back to Fisk at all. Not to mention how much money he is costing the school in attorney and legal fees. This is money that could be spent on the collection and of course Fisk students.

If people can remember, Fisk is very important for several reasons, one of which includes the Fisk Jubilee Singers, one of the very first Black singing groups in America, leading to gospel choirs all across the nation. These weary students traveled the country to sing and raise money to keep their school open, expand the campus, and raised tuition money for freed slaves to get post-secondary schooling. Some of these dedicated students died from sickness and disease in the process and their story lives on in those of us who continue to sing praises and in the hallways that are still changing and growing thanks in part to these pioneers. We owe this university much for its contribution to the American story. Not to mention the long list of famous alum such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Nikki Giovanni, and Ida B. Wells, and faculty members James Weldon Johnson, Hon. Hazel O’Leary, and John Oliver Killens that graced the hallways of this prestigious higher learning mecca.

If we do not act RIGHT NOW, this state and this corrupt group of legislators acting as the Tennessee Arts Commission would seize control over this 101 piece art collection and damage forever a truly remarkable school, closing a very crucial chapter on Black and American history.

You can make the difference by passing along this story, learning more about Fisk University and other HBCU’s, contributing money to the school, or simply by emailing Attorney General Cooper or the Frist Arts Center to leave Fisk University alone. It only takes a minute to give Fisk University your much needed support!

Peace Family!!

Wonder Woman

Resourceful Links:

For more about the story:

http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/moving_america_news/21942

For more about Fisk University:

http://www.fisk.edu/Home.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisk_University

For more about Stieglitz Art Collection

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Stieglitz

To contact Atty. General Cooper:

http://www.tn.gov/attorneygeneral/

Office of the Attorney General and Reporter
P.O. Box 20207
Nashville, TN 37202-0207
Telephone: (615) 741-3491
Fax: (615) 741-2009

To Tell the Frist Center for the Visual Arts you supoprt Fisk University

http://www.fristcenter.org/site/default.aspx

For more about HBCU’s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historically_black_colleges_and_universities

A special dedication pic to my own “Jubilee Singers” the Saint Joan Anitda HS Gospelaires who did their best with every performance to honor the Fisk Jubilee Singers. I love you girls and I miss you tons!!!

~ Mrs. Haywood aka WW