When northern men and women who knew music, met the slaves at Port Royal after its capture by Federal troops, they set down these songs in their original form for the first time so that the world might hear and sing them. The sea islands of the Carolinas where these meetings took place “with no third witness” were filled with primitive black folk, uncouth in appearance, and queer in language, but their singing was marvellous. Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Miss McKim and others collected these songs in 1867, making the first serious study of Negro American music. The preface said: “The musical capacity of the Negro race has been recognized for so many years that it is hard to explain why no systematic effort has hitherto been made to collect and preserve their melodies. More than thirty years ago those plantation songs made their appearance which were so extraordinarily popular for a while; and if ‘Coal-black Rose,’ ‘Zip Coon’ and ‘Ole Virginny nebber tire’ have been succeeded by spurious imitations, manufactured to suit the somewhat sentimental taste of our community, the fact that these were called ‘Negro melodies’ was itself a tribute to the musical genius of the race. “The public had well-nigh forgotten these genuine slave songs, and with them the creative power from which they sprung, when a fresh interest was excited through the educational mission to the Port Royal Islands in 1861.”[192] Still the world listened only half credulously until the Fisk Jubilee Singers sang the slave songs “so deeply into the world’s heart that it can never wholly forget them again.” The story of the Fisk Jubilee singers is romantic. In abandoned barracks at Nashville hundreds of colored children were being taught and the dream of a Negro University had risen in the minds of the white teachers. But even the lavish contribution for missionary work, which followed the war, had by 1870 begun to fall off. It happened that the treasurer of Fisk, George L. White, loved music. He began to instruct the Fisk students in singing and he used the folk-songs. He met all sorts of difficulties. The white people of the nation and especially the conventional church folk who were sending missionary money, were not interested in “minstrel ditties.” The colored people looked upon these songs as hateful relics of slavery. Nevertheless, Mr. White persisted, gathered a pioneer band of singers and in 1871 started north.