The original group toured along the Underground Railroad path in the United States, as well as performing in England and Europe.

To avert bankruptcy and closure, Fisk's treasurer and music director, George Leonard White, a white Northern missionary dedicated to music and proving African Americans were the intellectual equals of whites,[2] gathered a nine-member student chorus, consisting of four black men (Isaac Dickerson, Ben Holmes, Greene Evans, Thomas Rutling) and five black women (Ella Sheppard, Maggie Porter, Minnie Tate, Jennie Jackson, Eliza Walker) to go on tour to earn money for the university.

The mayor of Chillicothe, Ohio, expressed "thanks to these young colored people for their liberality in giving the proceeds of last evening’s concert to our relief fund for the Chicago sufferers.

"[2] The group traveled on to Columbus, Ohio, where lack of funding, poor hotel conditions, and overall mistreatment from the press and audiences left them feeling tired and discouraged.

[3] Since most of the students at Fisk University and their families were newly freed slaves,[5] the name "Jubilee Singers" seemed fitting.

"[6] "Those who have only heard the burnt cork caricatures of negro minstrelsy have not the slightest conception of what it really is," Doug Seroff quotes one review of a concert by the group as saying.

[7] This was not a uniquely American response to the group's performance, but was typical in audience receptions in Europe as well: "From the first the Jubilee music was more or less of a puzzle to the critics; and even among those who sympathised with their mission there was no little difference of opinion as to the artistic merit of their entertainments.

The Jubilee Singers are credited with the early popularization of the Negro spiritual tradition among white and northern audiences in the late 19th century; many were previously unaware of its existence.

They traveled next to New York, where they performed before enthusiastic audiences at preacher Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Church in Brooklyn and at Steinway Hall in Manhattan.

Staying in the New York area for six weeks, by the time they returned to Nashville, they had raised the full $20,000 White had promised the university.

[5] In a tour of Great Britain and Europe in 1873, the group, by then with 11 members, performed "Steal Away to Jesus" and "Go Down, Moses" for Queen Victoria in April.

As Ella Sheppard, one of the original Jubilee Singers recalled, "our strength was failing under the ill treatment at hotels, on railroads, poorly attended concerts, and ridicule."

[14] This troupe, formed by White, consisted of Jennie Jackson, Maggie Porter, Georgia Gordon, Mabel Lewis, Patti Malone, Hinton Alexander, Benjamin W. Thomas, Ella Sheppard (until 1882), and newcomers R. A.

[15][16] The original Jubilee Singers introduced slave songs to the world in 1871 and were instrumental in preserving this unique American musical tradition known today as Negro spirituals.

[20] 1879–1898 — George Leonard White and Frederick Loudin established another group in September 1879—not associated with Fisk University—and shared the musical directorship for about two years.

In 1899, University President E. M. Cravath, who had dissolved the original group 20 years earlier, commissioned Work with the second recreation.

Ella Sheppard Moore…has been so closely connected with the presentation of [Negro folk songs] to the world, so intimately associated with their preservation that it is impossible to think of the one separate and apart from the other.” Due to budgetary constraints, it operated as Fisk University Jubilee Quartet from 1909–1916 in which Work sang First Tenor.

[16] 1947–1956 — John Wesley Work III 1957–1986 — Matthew Washington Kennedy 1968-1972 — Richard Turner III 1973-1975 — Oscar M. Henry 1986–1987 — Horace Clarence Boyer 1987–1990 ― Anthony E. Williams 1990-1994 — Delise P. Hall 1994–2022 — Dr. Paul T. Kwami 2022–2023 — Dr. Anthony Williams 2024 - Dr. G. Preston Wilson, Jr., Current Director Fisk University commemorates the anniversary of the singers' first tour by celebrating Jubilee Day on October 6 each year.

[22] They also have appeared with popular performers including Danny Glover, Hank Williams Jr., Faith Hill, and Shania Twain.

[24] Noted as the premier carriers of the Negro spirituals, the Fisk Jubilee Singers were selected in November 2008 as one of nine recipients of the 2008 National Medal of Arts.

From 8 May to 22 May 2010, the radio drama series Adventures in Odyssey released a three-episode saga entitled "The Jubilee Singers.

"[28] In this saga, listeners can hear Frederick Douglass tell the story of George Leonard White, Benjamin Holmes, Ella Sheppard, Maggie Porter, and others in their struggle to save Fisk University out of a financial crisis.

In 2016, Tyehimba Jess published a book of poems entitled "Olio" that includes a crown of sonnets which follows the lives of the first troupe of Fisk Jubilee Singers.