Ambassador Victor Smith pays historic visit to Fisk University
NASHVILLE, Tennessee – October 30, 2026 — In a powerful celebration of deep-rooted Pan-African history, Ghana’s Ambassador to the United States, Ambassador Victor Smith, paid a historic visit to Fisk University to reinforce a century-old academic and cultural alliance.
Hosted by Fisk University President Agenia Clark and members of the faculty, the meeting spotlighted a strong, reciprocal relationship that was described not only as a footnote in history, but as “a central axis around which the modern Black American intellectual tradition was formed.“
Faculty presentations traced the transatlantic connection back to 1882, when Fisk dedicated Livingstone Missionary Hall to support training African American teachers and medical and religious scholars bound for West Africa, particularly Ghana.
By the 1920s, prominent Black American educators and sociologists from Fisk were traveling to Ghana to design collaborative higher education programs. This intellectual exchange helped draw generations of Ghanaian students to the Nashville campus to learn, connect, and grow.
The bond was further solidified under Dr. Charles Johnson, Fisk’s ninth president and its first Black leader. In 1928, Dr. Johnson established the Department of Social Sciences, directing faculty to focus on Ghana’s anticolonial movement, building an archive that researchers still study today.
Visual reminders of this bond remain permanently woven into the campus fabric through the famous murals of Aaron Douglas, which prominently feature Ghanaian imagery, heritage, and symbolism.
The presentation also highlighted how Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, a Fisk alumnus, eventually relocated to Ghana to undertake encyclopedic preservation work capturing African heritage in Accra.
Dr. Du Bois was invited by Ghana’s first president, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah—himself an HBCU graduate of Lincoln University—after the two were originally introduced on the Fisk campus prior to Ghana’s independence in 1957.
Perhaps the most emotional tribute to the enduring legacy of friendship during the visit centered on the late Dr. Paul Kwami, a Ghanaian who enrolled at Fisk as a student in 1983.
Dr. Kwami joined the world-renowned Fisk Jubilee Singers, eventually becoming the first Ghanaian to direct the ensemble in 1994.
Dr. Kwami dedicated twenty-eight years of his life to preserving the legacy of the ensemble—which was originally formed in 1871 by formerly enslaved students to save the university from financial ruin.
Under Dr. Kwami’s leadership, the singers performed at Carnegie Hall and the White House, earned a National Medal of Arts in 2008, and won their first Grammy Award on March 14, 2021.
In a historic moment in 2007, Dr. Kwami led the Jubilee Singers to Ghana, where the descendants of enslaved people performed at the Elmina Castle and the National Theatre, bringing the ensemble to know its ancestral past. Dr. Kwami died in 2022 and remains a true symbol of the Fisk-Ghana alliance.
The historic ties continue to shape modern student life. Faculty recalled that in 2023, when Fisk decided to take its honors programme students abroad, Ghana was chosen because the nation “matched their energy, sense of place, and progress in the world.“
Co-sponsored by the Fisk Board of Trustees, a delegation of twenty-five students and five faculty members embarked on an exchange program.
The group traveled to Accra, Cape Coast Castle, the Volta Region, the National Museum, James Town, Kakum National Park, the W.E.B. Du Bois Center, and the University of Ghana, strengthening the relationship that continues to thrive well into the present.
The Ambassador’s visit, the first by any Ghanaian Ambassador, with the facilitation of the Conscious Group, led by Dr. Addae, is a refreshing reminder of the strong bond that Ghana has forged over the years with the Fisk University.
Source: Ethel A. Cudjoe of Ghana Embassy DC
