At different times twenty-four persons in all have belonged to the company. Twenty of these have been slaves and three of the other four were of slave parentage.
Whether the company was equally composed of twelve males and twelve females does not appear from the above quotation.
Mr. J. B. T. Marsh also makes the following statement with reference to their first three years' work, which furnishes another link to the chain of evidence that an humble beginning is by no means an assurance of failure in large and difficult undertakings of the Afro-American:
They were at times without money to buy needed clothing; yet in less than three years they returned, bringing back with them nearly one hundred thousand dollars. They had been turned away from hotels and driven out of railway waiting-rooms, because of their color; but they had been received with honor by the President of the United States; they had sung their slave songs before the Queen of Great Britain, and they had gathered as invited guests about the breakfast table of her Prime Minister. Their success was as remarkable as their mission was unique.
It is but just to state here that the ostricism which they received at "hotels" and "railway waiting-rooms" all, possibly, took place in our liberty-loving America, as we have never known of the denial of rights to colored ladies of America when traveling in foreign counties.
A letter just received from Rev. E. M. Cravath, D. D., President of Fisk University, contains the following, in answer to questions by the author:
The University raised through the Jubilee Singers in the seven years'
work one hundred and fifty thousand dollars net in money, and secured books, paintings and apparatus to the value of seven or eight thousand