Music City wake up!

A very important chapter in Nashville's history is in danger of coming to an end. Fisk University, a historically black university and home to the world-renowned Fisk Jubilee Singers, has been battling severe financial difficulties for some time now and it is uncertain whether or not the college will remain open for the Spring 2008 semester.
As a Nashvillian and music lover, I find this appalling. Even if the rest of Music City could turn its head, I would think that at least the educators, the black community and the bread-winners of the city - the giants that make up Music Row and the entire country music industry - would collaborate on an effort to save this historical university that has played such a large part in this city's past. The Fisk Jubilee Singers were touring the world and making their impact on musicians everywhere long before Carrie Underwood asked Jesus to take the wheel, and the first permanent structure for the higher education of black students in the South was built in the form of Jubilee Hall decades before the Civil Rights Movement shook America.
And for goodness sake....why in the world are the Fisk Jubilee Singers still performing for free? This is an organization that has, in history, performed for kings and queens, as well as in the White House. In 1871, only five years after the university was founded, the small group of singers set out on their first tour for the purpose of raising money to support their flailing school. Why is 2007 any different?
Here is a chance for Nashville to say "thank you" for some of its earliest references as "Music City" and I hope that the city realizes the value that lies within Fisk University before it is too late.

A National Historical Landmark and campus focal point, Jubilee Hall at Fisk University is the oldest permanent building for the higher education of African Americans in the United States.