Page:The Story of the Jubilee Singers (7th).djvu/98

 the sons of an unlettered freed woman, who had consecrated every spare dollar of her hard earnings, for these ten years, to aid her boys in getting an education. It was a proud hour for her when they stepped upon the stage to receive their diplomas—a scene that it would have done the heart of every contributor to Fisk University good to see.

The completion and occupancy of Jubilee Hall was another of the important events of 1875. Both in its architectural appearance and substantial construction of the most durable materials, as well as in its admirable adaptation to the permanent uses of the University, it is all that could be desired. Its walls are of brick, with stone foundations and facings; every part of the work upon it has been done in the most thorough manner, and it is believed to be the best building of its kind in the Southern States. Crowning a commanding eminence overlooking the capital city of Tennessee and the beautiful encircling valley of the Cumberland, it stands, not only an enduring and most fitting monument to the toils and triumphs of the Jubilee Singers and to the sympathy and generosity shown them by the Christian public on both sides of the Atlantic, but a perpetual inspiration to the freed people as they struggle out of the slough of ignorance and social proscription in which emancipation found them.

But the very success of these years had increased the demands upon the University faster than it had supplied the means of meeting them. It had achieved results that demonstrated the necessity of its existence and guaranteed its permanence. But