When we go to the movies, we want to be entertained. We don’t care if the plot is over the top and not believable. But in the case of Ella Sheppard, over the top is the way her life really was.
Fisk University
As mentioned in Did You Know In 1873 This Black A Cappella Group Performed for the Queen of England? the original Fisk Jubilee Singers were organized by George L. White, Fisk’s Treasurer and Music Director, to raise money and save their university. He stumbled upon this solution when he, a white man, overheard black students singing—what he learned later were—original old “plantation songs.” Songs not for the public. They were sacred to the former slaves and used in worship. But the haunting melodies stayed with him, and he asked Ella Sheppard to arrange them in European-style four-part harmony for concert performance. According to Ella, it took months before the group’s hearts were opened and “we began to appreciate the wonderful beauty and power of our songs.”
White requested Ella help prepare the singers for their first tour. She acted as the primary vocal coach and group director. She collected and arranged the songs they sang—over one hundred of them. She provided piano accompaniments, oversaw rehearsals, and, during performances, conducted the group. She did it all. And she was only twenty years old!
Did You Know…
- Fisk University only had one black staff member before 1875—Ella Sheppard. She taught music.
The Baby
Samuella “Ella” Sheppard was born into slavery on February 4, 1851. Her parents, Simon and Sarah Sheppard, were owned by Benjamin Harper Sheppard (Simon’s white half-brother) and his wife, Phereby Donelson Sheppard, Andrew Jackson’s grandniece.
Ella was born at The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s Tennessee plantation. However, she never met the former president, having been born five years after his death. But she was kin to him, being a biracial relative of his family.
Did You Know…
- Native American, African, and Caucasian bloodlines merged in Ella.
- Rosa, Ella’s maternal great-grandmother, was the free, full-blooded daughter of a Cherokee chief. She lived to be 109 and had fourteen children.
- White planter James Glover Sheppard was Ella’s paternal grandfather.
- Because Benjamin, Simon’s white half-brother, had permitted Simon to hire out as a hack driver and liveryman, Simon had earned $1,800 and purchased his own freedom.
The Incident . . . And The Legend
When Ella was about three, Sarah learned her mistress had trained Ella to spy on her. That was the final straw. Sarah picked Ella up and hurried down to the river. She planned to drown her daughter then herself.
According to legend, an old slave woman stopped her. One version claims the woman told Sarah not to take what she couldn’t give back before looking up to heaven and saying, “Look, Honey, don’t you see the clouds of the Lord as they pass by? The Lord has got need of this child.” Another version has the old woman’s prophecy being more specific, “God’s got great work for this baby to do. She’s going to stand before kings and queens.” (Which she did as a Fisk Jubilee Singer.)
Whatever was said, Sarah returned to slavery with her child to “await God’s own time.”
Simon had been promised he could buy his wife, Sarah. But prior to the white Sheppard family moving to Mississippi, Sarah learned her mistress, Benjamin’s wife, had backed out of the agreement.
Sarah’s hopes of freedom died, but she was more determined than ever to see her daughter freed. She presented her mistress with an ultimatum. If Simon was allowed to purchase Ella, Sarah promised to continue being her faithful slave. If not, Sarah would kill herself and the child. The woman took the threat seriously, and Simon was allowed to buy his daughter.
(You can read a short, but more detailed account of Ella’s early life here.)
Did You Know…
- Ella’s mother, Sarah Sheppard, was the head nurse and housekeeper at the white Sheppard’s family house.
- Simon purchased his daughter Ella for $350.
The Music
Ella’s life continued to be filled with highs and lows. She was free but had lost her mother. Her father remarried. But when he couldn’t work and went into debt, he took his family and fled to Cincinnati, Ohio, afraid his second wife and daughter would be seized as assets and sold back into slavery.
Though times were extremely tough for the family in Cincinnati, when Ella displayed an extraordinary musical ability, her father bought her a piano. She practiced constantly. Music took her away. He also paid for private, secret music lessons. Then, in 1865, Ella’s father died of cholera, leaving the family penniless.
At fourteen, Ella began supporting her stepmother and half-sister by playing piano for local functions and working as a maid. Then, they moved back to Tennessee, where Ella taught in Gallatin at a school for former slaves. Over the next five months, she only saved about six dollars, but she used every penny to enroll in the Fisk Free Colored School in 1868. There, her pianist skills were quickly noticed by Fisk’s Treasurer and Music Director.
Did You Know…
- Respiratory and ear infections made Ella a semi-invalid for two years during her early youth.
- Ella’s six dollars only lasted three weeks at Fisk, but she earned enough money to stay in school for two years by teaching music in Nashville.
- Though a frail and sickly young woman, Ella Sheppard spent seven grueling years as a Fisk Jubilee Singer.
- In 1882, Ella married Rev. George Washington Moore, a prominent black minister, and they had two sons.
- Ella eventually found her mother and a half-sister in Mississippi and brought them to Nashville.
The Matriarch . . . The Honor
Only twenty years old when the original Fisk Jubilee Singers set out on their first tour, Ella Sheppard was considered the group’s backbone. The matriarch. Her life experience, much less her musical talents—which were almost limitless—established her in this position. She had a beautiful soprano voice and played piano, organ, and guitar. She also composed music and arranged the spirituals the group sang. In her generation, few other African American women were as distinguished.
Though she and her husband lived in Washington, D.C. initially, they eventually returned to Nashville and she to Fisk University. By the time she passed away on June 9, 1914, Ella had taught and inspired hundreds of Fisk Jubilee Singers.
On November 17, 2009, one former Jubilee Singer, Chicago native George Cooper—with the blessing of Ella’s great-granddaughter—founded the Ella Sheppard School of Music. The school provides free musical instruction to hundreds of children (ages 2-14) on the west side of Chicago.
Did You Know…
- Ella was a social reformer and a trusted friend of Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglas.
- Ella is buried in the Nashville City Cemetery.