The Fisk Jubilee Singers

In September of 1922, a concert by the Fisk Jubilee Singers closed out the Industrial Human Relations Conference, an annual summer gathering of leaders from industry and organized labor.

The first Fisk Jubilee Singers had been organized 50 years earlier to tour and raise funds for Fisk College in Nashville, Tennessee. They were the first group to publicly perform the songs of slaves and they shared them with the world. keeping these songs alive and illuminating the faith and emotions of the African American slave. And as the earliest choir members were children of freed slaves or freed slaves themselves, the “Jubilee” appellation – a reference to the Biblical year of jubilee when slaves were set free – was very appropriate.

In March of 1872, the group performed for President Ulysses S. Grant at the White House. The following year, while touring Great Britain and Europe, they performed “Steal Away to Jesus” and “Go Down, Moses” for Queen Victoria.

An autographed photo of the Fisk Jubilee Singers circa 1905

The Fisk Jubilee Singers were followed at Silver Bay by the Cotton Blossom Singers in 1931 and the Tuskegee Quintet in 1938. The first of the African-American touring college choirs, the Jubilee Singers are still an active organization at Fisk University.

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An interesting note on the 1922 Industrial Conference: The newspaper said, “In order that the speakers may have the utmost freedom of utterance, they have been assured that their addresses shall not be reported and that newspaper writers are not to be admitted to the discussions.”

Silver Bay Wisdom

“We need a type of patriotism that recognizes the virtues of those who are opposed to us.”

– Francis John McConnell (1871-1953), American social reformer, bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church and faculty member at Silver Bay conferences in the 1920s.

John Mott, Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

John Mott was on the faculty of Silver Bay’s summer conferences as early as 1903 and was a frequent speaker through the 1920s.

A seemingly tireless individual, John Raleigh Mott (1865-1955) came to Cornell University from a small college in Iowa in 1885. As president of the Cornell Y.M.C.A., he increased the membership threefold and raised the money for a university Y.M.C.A. building. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1888. That autumn, he began 27 years as national secretary of the Intercollegiate Y.M.C.A. of the U.S.A. and Canada.

During this time, he led the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, presided at the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910, and chaired the International Missionary Council. He helped to organize the World’s Student Christian Federation in 1895 and as its general secretary went on a two-year tour, during which he organized student movements in India, China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Europe. In 1912 and ’13, he toured the Far East, holding 21 missionary conferences in India, China, Japan, and Korea.

From 1915 to 1928, Mott was general-secretary of the International Committee of the Y.M.C.A. and from 1926 to 1937 president of the Y.M.C.A.’s World Committee. During World War I, when the Y.M.C.A. offered its services to President Wilson, Mott became general secretary of the National War Work Council. Through the Y.M.C.A., he kept up international contacts and helped to conduct relief work for prisoners of war.

Mott wrote 16 books; crossed the Atlantic more than 100 times and the Pacific 14 times. He received decorations from China, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Jerusalem, Poland, Portugal, Siam, Sweden, and the USA, plus honorary degrees from Brown, Edinburgh, Princeton, Toronto, Upper Iowa, and Yale universities.

Some considered him to be the most universally trusted Christian leader of his time. In 1946, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.

But much of it might not have happened. In 1912, Mott and a colleague were offered free passage on an ocean liner by a White Star Line official who was interested in their work. But they declined the offer and took a more humble liner, the SS Lapland, passing on their chance to sail on the Titanic.

The Cotton Blossom Singers

In August of 1931, Silver Bay hosted the Cotton Blossom Singers from the Piney Woods School. Like the Tuskegee Institute’s quintet and Fisk University’s Jubilee Singers, this was a group sent out in the summers to sing and raise funds for their school.

Founded in 1909, the Piney Woods School provided schooling among poor blacks in rural Rankin County, Mississippi. The school’s founder, Laurence Clifton Jones, escaped lynching only because he was able to convince a group of angry white men that he had not come to preach against them.

In 1923, Jones first sent out the Cotton Blossom Singers on a fundraising tour; in the years to come, he would send out both male and female quartets bearing the name. Also, the Mississippi School for the Blind for Negroes was located at Piney Woods from 1929 to 1951, and among its groups performing spirituals were five blind students who were later known as the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi; their “hard gospel” style of quartet singing, accented by moans, shrieks and wails, influenced soul singers including Ray Charles, James Brown and Wilson Pickett.

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Photo of the Cotton Blossom Singers in 1929 from the Piney Woods School website.

The Word from Wellesley, 1935

“Silver Bay on Lake George, the Mecca towards which daughters of Smith, Holyoke, Connecticut, Cornell, Vassar, Syracuse, Wheaton and many other Eastern colleges— not forgetting Wellesley — flock each June after commencement, is proving to be a greater rallying ground than ever this year. On the wooded shores of Lake George, from June 19-26, well-known leaders are going to conduct the wide awake discussions demanded by the theme: A Modern Christian Faces A Nationalistic World.

“It will be a familiar sight to see Dr. Gregory Vlastos from Canada munching a blade of grass while leaning against his favorite apple tree with an attentive group gathered in its shade.

“Dr. Ira Reid, the negro economist and political theorist, will return to his old haunt, the boat house, to hold forth on communism during the day and old Southern songs at night after the full moon rises.

“College girls proudly displaying college banners and identification tags will meet, mingle and rival each other in friendly competition. The Barnard-Cornell baseball game must take place to make the week a success. Smith will undoubtedly return in high hopes of capturing the swimming-meet title once more, but if Wellesley’s diving is as excellent as last year it should be close.

“The jolly ‘sings’ will undoubtedly be repeated. ‘Neath the Oaks, Problems and Prairie Flower were Wellesley’s contributions to one evening last year. The sunrise will again drag sleepy girls out of bed to scale a mountain, and those who get to the top may view the dawn. Candlelight vespers will undoubtedly be as beautiful as ever. The picture of hundreds of tiny lighted candles floating out over Lake George in paper boats is memorable according to students who have attended the conference in other years.”

– “College Girls Gather At Silver Bay In June ,” Wellesley News, May 1935

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Gregory Vlastos (1907–1991) was a scholar of philosophy, author of works on Plato and Socrates, and a Christian who wrote on Christian faith as well. Vlastos received a PhD from Harvard University in 1931. He taught at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario; Cornell University; Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Robert Meister, a friend and former student, said, “He was the kind of professor who would explore your ideas more than you did yourself, write more on your paper than you did and show what you had said would really mean.” Although Vlastos is best known for his writing on Plato and Socrates, in the 1930s he was also writing Towards the Christian Revolution (1936) with R.B.Y. Scott, and Christian Faith and Democracy (1939).

Ira de Augustine Reid (1901-1968) was an African-American sociologist who did pioneering work with the New York Urban League and published landmark studies on African-American workers and families. Biographer Paul Jefferson noted, “Six feet four inches tall, confident, well dressed, and witty, Reid was an impressive figure. His biting intelligence was acknowledged—if not always appreciated—and his urbane manner made him an effective inter-racial diplomat in an era when black equality was an implausible hypothesis for most white Americans.”

Oneita Bay from Mrs. Paine’s Gateway

Photo by Jesse Sumner Wooley

Faculty Parade, 1916

YWCA Conference Faculty lead the way to the annual ballgame, 1916, beating on wash tubs, pan lids, etc. I especially like the woman playing the Cream of Tartar Baking Powder tin. With thanks to Harvard University’s Radcliffe Archives.

Moon Walk

It is one thing — and a good thing — to see the moon rise over the mountains across Lake George, but it’s quite another to actually set foot on that moon. But at least one man who spoke at Silver Bay had been there, done that.

On July 9, 1982, former astronaut James B. Irwin came to Silver Bay and gave a evening talk entitled “From Outer Space to Inner Space.” Eleven years before, Irwin had been part of the Apollo 15 mission of July/August 1971, and the eighth person to walk on the moon.

After Irwin retired from the Air Force in 1972, he traveled as “a goodwill ambassador for the Prince of Peace,” speaking about how his experiences in space had made the presence of God more real to him. One wonders if the moon rose while he spoke that evening at Silver Bay, and gave the people leaving the auditorium something to think about.

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The rising of the moon over Lake George, at Silver Bay, July 2008; detail from a photo by Frieda Celeste Dunkelberg.

James B. Irwin works with the Lunar Roving Vehicle on the surface of the moon; photo by Astronaut David R. Scott.

John L. Lewis

In late August of 1922, Silver Bay hosted leaders in banking, labor and politics to discuss “Human Relations in Industry.” Among the speakers was John L. Lewis, soon to become a legend in organized labor.

John Llewellyn Lewis (1880-1969) was the newly elected president of the United Mine Workers of America, a position he held from 1920 to 1960. As a thundering advocate for coal miners, he brought them higher wages, safer working conditions, pensions and medical benefits. He was also the driver behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s.

Lewis was known for his bushy eyebrows and ever-present scowl, and his stormy visage appeared on the cover of Time magazine six times.

The Visit and Voyage of Adolph S. Ochs

In August of 1922, Adolph S. Ochs, publisher of the New York Times, spoke at Silver Bay on Visitors’ Day, second-billed to the Governor of New York, Nathan Miller. Afterwards, they took the Silver Bay steam launch, Crusader, back to Lake George Village. Halfway home they had to abandon ship, but I’ll hold that part for a moment.

Adolph S. Ochs’ introduction to the newspaper business began at the age of 11 in Knoxville, Tennessee. He went to work as an office boy, printer’s devil and delivery boy for the Knoxville Chronicle. At the age of 19, he borrowed $250 to purchase a controlling interest in the bankrupt Chattanooga Times. In 1896, at the age of 38, he bought The New York Times, a money-loser with 9,000 readers. By the time of his talk at Silver Bay, he had raised the circulation to 780,000 and created an American institution, a newspaper that carried the motto, “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”

Nathan L. Miller was the governor of New York from January 1, 1921 to December 31, 1922. The father of seven daughters, he was opposed to women’s suffrage and told the convention of the League of Women Voters that they were “a menace to American institutions.” He was not re-elected.

To return to the voyage of the Crusader, the gentlemen and ladies of the party were still four miles north of Lake George Village when a rope left draped over a steam pipe began to smoke, prompting the passing out of life preservers and a run for shore. The boat was unscathed, but the voyagers chose to complete their journey by automobile.

Adolph Ochs had strong ties to Lake George. Around 1918, he purchased George Foster Peabody’s lakeside estate, “Abenia,” about two miles north of Lake George Village, and spent every summer there. Although he telephoned the Times every morning, afternoon and evening, he also made time for golf, friendships and rest.

There is an apocryphal story that, one afternoon near the end of his life when illness kept him in New York City, Ochs telephoned Karl Abbott, the owner of the Sagamore Hotel in Bolton Landing, and asked him to describe Lake George as he saw it from his window. For several minutes, Abbott described the water, the sky, the trees, all that he saw. Ochs thanked him warmly and said goodbye. Soon after, Abbott read in the New York papers that Ochs had died that evening.