January 1866

Fisk University was founded in Nashville, Tennessee in January 1866 by the American Missionary Association, initially to educate freed people. Named for Union general Clinton Fisk, it became one of the most academically distinguished HBCUs, later home to W.E.B. Du Bois and the celebrated Fisk Jubilee Singers.

The U.S. Congress established the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry regiments in 1866 — the first all-Black regular Army units. Serving on the western frontier, they earned the name 'Buffalo Soldiers' from Plains tribes. They had the lowest desertion rate in the Army and won numerous Congressional Medals of Honor.

By 1866 the Freedmen's Bureau oversaw more than 900 schools serving over 90,000 students, rising to 150,000 by 1870. Northern missionary teachers, many of them Black women trained at institutions like Oberlin, staffed schools across the South. Black literacy rates rose from near zero in 1865 to approximately 30 percent by 1880 — a historically unprecedented educational transformation.

Norbert Rillieux, a free Black Creole engineer from New Orleans, had patented his multiple-effect evaporator in 1843, revolutionizing sugar refining worldwide and eliminating dangerous, labor-intensive open-kettle processes. In the Gilded Age, his process was standard in every major sugar-producing nation. Rillieux spent his later years in Paris, where he deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics and won French agricultural prizes.

Norbert Rillieux, a free Black Creole engineer from New Orleans, had patented his multiple-effect evaporator in 1843, revolutionizing sugar refining worldwide. In the Gilded Age his process was standard in every major sugar-producing nation. Rillieux spent his later years in Paris, deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics and winning French agricultural prizes.

Fisk University opened January 9, 1866 in Nashville for freedpeople's education. Its Jubilee Singers, formed 1871, toured the U.S. and Europe performing spirituals, introducing white audiences to Black sacred music in major concert halls. Their tours raised $150,000 for Fisk.