87 Notable alumni of Fisk University

Willis Elbert Mollison was an American teacher, newspaper editor, politician, banker, businessman, lawyer, public official, and civil rights advocate in Mississippi. He was a Republican.

Lena Terrell Jackson was an American educator. She taught Latin to African-American students in Nashville, Tennessee for over fifty years.

Wilhelmina Ruth Delco is an American politician who served in the Texas House of Representatives. She was inducted into the Texas Women's Hall of Fame in 1986. She was the first African American official elected at-large in Travis County and the first woman to hold the second-highest position in the Texas House of Representatives.

Jacob Javan Durham was an American minister, educator, debater and orator, and the founder of a college. He was a Baptist minister in South Carolina, and the founder of Morris College in 1908. He was a member of the board at Morehouse College and an officer in state and national Baptist conventions.

Millicent Gray Lownes-Jackson is an American professor and author. She became the dean of the college of business at Tennessee State University on July 1, 2013. She is the founder of the non-profit organizations Interdenominational Services Organization of America, Inc. and The World Institute for Sustainable Education and Research (The WISER Group).

Georgia Gordon Taylor was an American soprano from the U.S. state of Tennessee. She was the leader of the "Original Fisk Jubilee Singers".

Henry Hugh Proctor was a minister of the First Congregational Church in Atlanta, the second-oldest African American Congregational church in the United States. He was also an author and lecturer.

Althea Maria Brown Edmiston was an African-American teacher and Presbyterian missionary, working in the Belgian Congo for more than thirty years. She compiled the first dictionary and grammar for Bushong, the language of the Kuba Kingdom.

Mame Stewart Josenberger was an American educator, businesswoman, and clubwoman, based in Arkansas for most of her career.

Ophelia Settle Egypt, also known as E. Ophelia Settle, was a social worker, educator, sociologist and writer who conducted some of the first oral history interviews with formerly enslaved people.

Arnett Elysus Girardeau Sr. was an American dentist and politician in the state of Florida. He served in the Florida House of Representatives for the 16th district from 1976 to 1982 and in the Florida Senate for the 7th district from 1982 to 1992.

Irene McCoy Gaines was an American social worker and civil rights activist who fought against segregation throughout her adult life.

Thomas Junius Calloway was an African-American journalist, educator and lawyer. He was born in Cleveland, Tennessee, the fifth of seven children.

Minnie Tate was the youngest original member of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, based in Nashville, Tennessee.

Samuel A. McElwee was an African-American lawyer and politician in the United States. He was born enslaved in 1857 in Haywood County, Tennessee. His parents were Robert and Georgianna McElwee. He became a lawyer and the most influential Republican Party leader in Haywood County following the Reconstruction era. He served in the Tennessee General Assembly from 1883 to 1888. He...

Ronald Edward "Rahn" Coleman is an American record producer, musical director, arranger, orchestrator, composer, vocal coach, and pianist. Coleman was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in nearby Oakland, where he attended public school and began studying piano at age 4. He has also played oboe, clarinet, violin, English horn and pipe organ.

William Henry Lanier, commonly known as W. H. Lanier, was an American academic administrator, and prominent educator in Mississippi during the late 19th century and early 20th century. He served as the 6th president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Alcorn State University) a historically black public university in Lorman, Mississippi.

Irvin Colloden Miller was an American actor, playwright, and vaudeville show writer and producer. He was responsible for successful theater shows including Broadway Rastus (1921), Liza (1922), Dinah (1923), which introduced the wildly popular black bottom dance, and Desires of 1927 starring Adelaide Hall. For thirty years he directed the popular review, Brown Skin Models, influenced by the Ziegfeld Follies...

Ramona Hoage Edelin was an American academic, activist and consultant. Edelin is credited with introducing the term "African American" into the general vernacular. She has been named one of the most influential Black Americans by Ebony. She later served as executive director of the DC Association of Charter Schools.

Mary Eliza Walker Crump was an African American contralto singer and manager, and one of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers.

Bilikiss Adebiyi or Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola is a Nigerian entrepreneur who founded the Lagos-based recycling company 'Wecyclers' in 2012. In 2022 she was the Director General of the Lagos State Records and Archives Bureau and Managing Director of the Lagos State Parks and Gardens Agency (LASPARK). She was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Lagos State Employment Trust...

John Houston Burrus was an educator in Nashville, Tennessee and Lorman, Mississippi. He was a member of the first class of students at Fisk University in Nashville and when that class graduated became among the first group of African-Americans to graduate from a liberal arts college south of the Mason–Dixon line. He was a professor of mathematics at Fisk and...

Elwood L. Robinson is an American academic, university administrator and clinical psychologist currently serving as the 13th Chancellor of Winston-Salem State University. He previously served as Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs at Cambridge College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Thomas Washington Talley was a chemistry professor at Fisk University and a collector of African American folk songs.

Leslie Amenia Meek is an American lawyer who has served as an associate judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia since 2023. She previously served as an administrative law judge from 2006 to 2023.

Alonzo Fulgham is an international development strategist and business executive. He served as the former Acting Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development.

Jennie Jackson was an American singer and voice teacher. She was one of the original members of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, an African-American a cappella ensemble. She toured with the group from 1871 to 1877. In 1891 she formed her own sextet, the Jennie Jackson Concert Company.

Bert Cumby was a United States military intelligence officer who served as head of research of the U.S. Army's Military Intelligence Corps and led the debriefing of repatriated American prisoners of war (POWs) during the Korean War. In 1956 he testified to a United States Senate committee regarding an international communist conspiracy he alleged was underway, the objective of which...

William Demby was an African-American writer, whose works include Beetlecreek (1950), The Catacombs (1965), Love Story Black (1978) and King Comus (published posthumously in November 2017).

Louis Emanuel Martin Jr. was an American journalist, newspaper publisher, civil rights activist and advisor to three presidents of the United States. Through his political activism during the civil rights era, he came to be known as the "Godfather of Black Politics."

Ronald Elbert Mickens is an American physicist and mathematician who is the Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Physics at Clark Atlanta University. His research focuses on nonlinear dynamics and mathematical modeling, including modeling epidemiology. He also has an interest in the history of science and has written on the history of black scientists. He is a fellow of the American...

Jasper Alston Atkins was an attorney, activist, and educator.

William Pickens was an American orator, educator, journalist, and essayist. He wrote multiple articles and speeches, and two autobiographies, The Heir of Slaves (1911) and Bursting Bonds (1923). In the latter book he noted race-motivated attacks on African Americans, both in the urban riots of 1919, which took place across the country, and in lynchings in 1921.

Tuajuanda C. Jordan is an American academic administrator who served as the seventh president of St. Mary’s College of Maryland from July 1, 2014, to June 30, 2025. From 2006 to 2011, Jordan served as director of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science Education Alliance program, where she launched the SEA-PHAGES program. This program has been implemented at more than...

Alfred Oscar Coffin was a professor of mathematics and Romance language. He is best known for being the first African American to obtain a PhD in biology.

Antonio Maceo Smith was a civil rights leader in Dallas, Texas, whose years of activism with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other civil rights and community groups led Texans to dub him "Mr. Civil Rights" and "Mr. Organization".

Victor O. Frazer is a Saint Thomian lawyer and former politician, having served as the 3rd elected Delegate from the United States Virgin Islands to the United States House of Representatives. He was born in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. He attended Fisk University and the Howard University Law School. He was admitted to the bar in New York, Maryland, the...

Cora Mae Brown was the first African-American woman elected (rather than appointed) to a state senate in the United States. She won her seat in the Michigan Senate in 1952. Brown was a Democrat who represented Detroit.

Louis George Gregory was a prominent American member of the Baháʼí Faith who was devoted to its expansion in the United States and elsewhere. He traveled especially in the South to spread his religion as well as advocating for racial unity.

George Edmund Haynes was an American sociology scholar and federal civil servant, a co-founder and first executive director of the National Urban League, serving 1911 to 1918. A graduate of Fisk University, he earned a master's degree at Yale University, and was the first African American to earn a doctorate degree from Columbia University, where he completed one in sociology.

John Betsch is an American jazz drummer.

Vivienne Lucille Malone-Mayes was an American mathematician and professor. Malone-Mayes studied properties of functions, as well as methods of teaching mathematics. She was the fifth African-American woman to gain a PhD in mathematics in the United States, and the first African-American member of the faculty of Baylor University.

William McLeish Smith was an American saxophonist and one of the major alto saxophone players of the swing era. He also played clarinet and sang.

John Wesley Work Jr. was a musicologist choral director, educationalist singer and songwriter. He was the first African American collector of folk songs and spirituals.

Eliza Anna Grier was an American physician and the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in the U.S. state of Georgia.

Wade Hampton McCree Jr. was an American legal scholar and judge. He was the first African American appointed as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the second African-American United States Solicitor General in the history of the United States. He joined the faculty of the University of Michigan Law...

Charles Harris Wesley was an American historian, educator, minister, and author. He published more than 15 books on African-American history, taught for decades at Howard University, and served as president of Wilberforce University, and founding president of Central State University, both in Ohio.

Carolyn Beatrice Parker was a research physicist and educator whose scientific contributions helped expand our understandings of physics and aircraft radio technologies during WWII. After obtaining her undergraduate degree at Fisk University, in 1938, Parker taught at public schools in Florida before attending the University of Michigan to earn a M.A. in physics in 1941. From 1943 to 1947, Parker...

Etta Zuber Falconer was an American educator and mathematician the bulk of whose career was spent at Spelman College, where she eventually served as department head and associate provost. She was one of the earlier African-American women to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics.

Minnie M. Cox (1869–1933) was an American teacher who was appointed the first black postmaster in Mississippi, following closely behind Anna M. Dumas, who was appointed to the same position in 1872 in Covington, Louisiana. Though she made national headlines after President Theodore Roosevelt refused to release her from her position after threats of violence from whites in Indianola, Cox...

William Levi Dawson was an American politician and lawyer who represented a Chicago, Illinois district for more than 27 years in the United States House of Representatives, serving from 1943 to his death in office in 1970. In 1949, he became the first African American to chair a congressional committee.

Princess Ariana Austin Makonnen is an American businesswoman, philanthropist, arts manager, and member of the former Ethiopian imperial family. She founded the evening arts festival Art All Night and the creative agency French Thomas. In 2018, she and her husband, Prince Joel Dawit Makonnen, co-launched Old World/New World Productions, a media company that produces content focusing on the African diaspora.

James W. “Jim” Ford was an activist, a politician, and the vice-presidential candidate for the Communist Party USA in the years 1932, 1936, and 1940. Ford was born in Alabama and later worked as a party organizer for the CPUSA in New York City. He was also the first African American to run on a U.S. presidential ticket (1932) in...

Arikana Chihombori-Quao is a medical doctor and activist. She is a public speaker, educator, diplomat, founder of medical clinics, and an entrepreneur. She moved to the United States after living many years in Zimbabwe. She is the CEO and founder of Bell Family Medical Centers in the United States, and served as the African Union representative to the US from...

Mary Frances Berry is an American historian, writer, lawyer, activist and professor who focuses on U.S. constitutional and legal, African-American history. Berry is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought where she teaches American legal history at the Department of History, School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the former chairwoman of the...

David Levering Lewis is an American historian, a Julius Silver University Professor, and professor emeritus of history at New York University. He is twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, for part one and part two of his biography of W. E. B. Du Bois (in 1994 and 2001, respectively). He is the first author to win...

Charles Coles Diggs Jr. was an American politician from the U.S. state of Michigan who served in the state senate and U.S. House of Representatives. He was the first African American elected to Congress from Michigan.

Johnnetta Betsch Cole is an American anthropologist, educator, museum director, and college president. Cole was the first female African-American president of Spelman College, a historically black college, serving from 1987 to 1997. She was president of Bennett College from 2002 to 2007. During 2009–2017 she was Director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art. Cole served as the...

Julius Bernard Lester was an American writer of books for children and adults and an academic who taught for 32 years (1971–2003) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Lester was also a civil rights activist, a photographer, and a musician who recorded two albums of folk music and original songs.

Robert Keith McFerrin Sr. was an American operatic baritone, notable for being the first African-American man to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. His voice was described by critic Albert Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times as "a baritone of beautiful quality, even in all registers, and with a top that partakes of something of a tenor's...

Hazel Reid O'Leary is an American lawyer, politician, and university administrator who served as the 7th United States secretary of energy from 1993 to 1997. A member of the Democratic Party, O'Leary was the first woman and first African American to hold that post. She also served as the 14th president of Fisk University from 2004 to 2013, a historically...

James Melvin Lunceford was an American jazz alto saxophonist and bandleader in the swing era.

Ethyl Spraggins Ayler was an American character actress with a career spanning over five decades.

Judith Ann Jamison was an American dancer and choreographer. She danced with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater from 1965 to 1980 and was Ailey's muse. She later returned to be the company's artistic director from 1989 until 2011, and then its artistic director emerita. She received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1999, the National Medal of Arts in 2001,...

Malia M. Cohen is an American politician serving as the 33rd Controller of California since 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, Cohen previously served as Chair of the California State Board of Equalization from the 2nd district from 2019 to 2023 and as President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from District 10 from 2011 to 2019.

Nina Yolande Du Bois was an American teacher known for her involvement in the Harlem Renaissance. She was the daughter of W.E.B. Du Bois and the former Nina Gomer. Her father encouraged her marriage to Countee Cullen, a nationally known poet of the Harlem Renaissance. They divorced within two years. She married again and had a daughter, Du Bois's only...

George Padmore, born Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse, was a leading Pan-Africanist, journalist, and author. He left his native Trinidad in 1924 to study medicine in the United States, where he also joined the Communist Party.

John Hope Franklin was an American historian who focused on the history of the United States. He is best known for his work From Slavery to Freedom, first published in 1947 and continually updated. More than three million copies have been sold.

Otis Frank Boykin was an American inventor and engineer. His inventions include electrical resistors used in computing, missile guidance, and pacemakers.

Constance Baker Motley was an American jurist and politician who served as a Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. A key strategist of the civil rights movement, she was state senator, and Borough President of Manhattan in New York City before becoming a United States federal judge.

Diane Judith Nash is an American civil rights activist, and a leader and strategist of the student wing of the Civil Rights Movement.

Lillian Hardin Armstrong was an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, singer, and bandleader. She was the second wife of Louis Armstrong, with whom she collaborated on many recordings in the 1920s.

Justin Jones is an American activist and politician from the state of Tennessee. A member of the Democratic Party, he serves in the Tennessee House of Representatives for District 52, representing parts of Nashville. As of 2025, Jones is the second youngest member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, and the youngest Democratic lawmaker. He was expelled in April 2023...

Roland Wiltse Hayes was an American lyric tenor and composer. Critics lauded his abilities and linguistic skills demonstrated with songs in French, German, and Italian. Hayes' predecessors as well-known African-American concert artists, including Sissieretta Jones and Marie Selika, were not recorded. Along with Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson, Hayes was one of the first to break this barrier in the...

Frederica Smith Wilson is an American politician who has been a member of the United States House of Representatives since 2011, representing Florida's 24th congressional district. Located in South Florida, Wilson's congressional district, numbered 17th during her first term, covers a large swath of eastern Miami-Dade County. The district contains most of Miami's majority-black precincts. Wilson gained national attention in...

Alma Vivian Powell was an American audiologist and the wife of military and political figure Colin Powell, to whom she was married from August 25, 1962 until his death in 2021.

Alcee Lamar Hastings was an American politician and judge from the state of Florida.

Kym Whitley is an American comedian, actress and podcaster. She is known for her roles on television sitcoms, such as My Brother and Me, Sparks, Animal Practice, The Boondocks, Young & Hungry, The Parkers, The Cleveland Show, Black Dynamite, and Act Your Age. Whitley was nominated for a 2004 BET Comedy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Box Office...

Mandisa Lynn Hundley, known mononymously as Mandisa, was an American gospel and contemporary Christian recording artist. She began her solo career as a contestant in the fifth season of American Idol finishing in ninth place. Her album Overcomer won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Christian Music Album; she was the fifth American Idol contestant to win a Grammy.

Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. was an American poet, writer, commentator, activist and educator. One of the world's best-known African-American poets, her work includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children's literature. She won numerous awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award. She was nominated...

James Weldon Johnson was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. He served in...

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was an American investigative journalist, sociologist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Wells dedicated her career to combating prejudice and violence, and advocating for African-American equality—especially for women.

Marion Shepilov Barry was an American politician who served as mayor of the District of Columbia from 1979 to 1991 and 1995 to 1999. A Democrat, Barry had served three tenures on the Council of the District of Columbia, representing as an at-large member from 1975 to 1979, in Ward 8 from 1993 to 1995, and again from 2005 to...

John Robert Lewis was an American civil rights activist and statesman who served in the United States House of Representatives for Georgia's 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in 2020.

David Abner Jr. was an American educator. He was the first president of Guadalupe College and then of Conroe College.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, writer, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist.