Andrew Ward
Andrew Ward is the author of several award winning historical works including River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War; Our Bones Are Scattered: The Cawnpore Massacres in the Indian Mutiny of 1857;and Dark Midnight When I Rise: The Story of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. A former contributing editor and essayist at the Atlantic Monthly, commentator for NPR’s All Things Considered, and columnist for the Washington Post, Ward has also written numerous articles for American Heritage and National Geographic, and documentary screenplays for WGBH and the Hallmark Channel.
Articles by
Fort Pillow Massacre (1864)
On April 12, 1864, some 3,000 rebels under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest overran Fort Pillow, a former Confederate...
Fisk Jubilee Singers
In 1866 the Fisk Free Colored School was established in Nashville, Tennessee by the American Missionary Association. Housed in abandoned...
Ophelia Settle Egypt (1903-1984)
In the late 1920s, Ophelia Settle Egypt conducted some of the first and finest interviews with former slaves, setting the...
Benjamin M. Holmes (1846-1875)
Teacher, news correspondent, and Fisk Jubilee Singer, Benjamin M. Holmes was born a slave around 1846 in Charleston, South Carolina...
Frederick J. Loudin (1840-1904)
Frederick J. Loudin, teacher, impresario, manufacturer and Fisk Jubilee Singer, had a bass voice the likes of which no one...
Jennie Jackson (1852-1910)
Jennie Jackson, Fisk Jubilee Singer, folklorist & impresario, was the granddaughter of President Andrew Jackson’s almost lifelong body servant. Jackson’s...
Thomas Rutling (1854-1915)
Born a slave, Thomas Rutling was one of only four Fisk Jubilee Singers who remained with the company through all...
Greene Evans (1848-1914)
Greene Evans, Fisk Jubilee Singer, Memphis City Councilman and Tennessee State Assemblyman, was born somewhere in Tennessee and emancipated after...
America W. Robinson (ca. 1855-ca. 1920)
Fisk Jubilee Singer and educator America W. Robinson was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee in 1855. Though America’s father was his...
Isaac Dickerson (1852-1900)
Fisk Jubilee Singer and preacher Isaac Dickerson was born enslaved in Wytheville, Virginia in 1852 and orphaned by the age...
Maggie Porter (1853-1942)
Maggie Porter was born in Lebanon, Tennessee around 1853. At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Henry Frazier,...
Ella Sheppard (1851-1915)
Ella Sheppard, soprano, pianist and reformer, was the matriarch of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, a social reformer, confidante of Frederick...
