AN AMERICAN MUSICIAN
America W. Robinson was born in 1855 to Patrick and Elizabeth (both slaves of "mixed-race") in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. It was remarked that all their children had notably pale skin. Her father was sold by his own half-brother some years earlier when that family experienced financial difficulties. The new master trained Patrick as a carpenter, then during the Civil War put him to work in a munitions factory making musket-stocks for the Confederate army.   
During the battle of Stones River, the master's house was used as a field hospital, filled with wounded soldiers. America's father hid his family in wagons used to transport wounded, and escaped to Union-occupied Nashville, where they were legally free.
In 1866, when the New York-based American Missionary Association opened the Fisk Free Colored School in Nashville, ten year-old America became a student on opening day. At thirteen, she started teaching school during summer sessions to earn money for her fees. When Fisk opened a college in 1867, America was among the first to be enrolled, and was among the four men and women who matriculated as Fisk College's initial 1875 graduating class.
In 1871, "financial difficulties' again make an appearance in Robinson's story.   Moving the campus to the former Fort Gillem proved more costly than anticipated - Fisk was facing bankruptcy. The treasurer and music professor George White offered to have the school chorus (four men and five women) give concerts to raise money. At first they performed locally in Nashville, Franklin and Murfreesboro, but soon appeared in Cincinnati, and then Chicago, New York, Washington D.C. and across the Eastern states.
After their Cincinnati performance, the group donated their $30 takings to victims of the 1871 Chicago fire; the story of their generosity was reported by national newspapers bringing notice to the chorus. Now calling themselves the Fisk Jubilee Singers, their first US tour eventually raised $40,000 for the school. White arranged a British tour for the Singers in late 1872, and the chorus now included contralto America Robinson.   This five-year tour raised $200,000 to retire debt and enable construction of the Jubilee Hall
During her final years at Fisk, America became engaged to fellow-student James Burrus (another mixed-race former slave); they planned to be married after graduation, going with James while he took his Masters at Dartmouth. But for her 1875 graduation, America was touring Europe - although she was the only one of the early Jubilee Singers to graduate from Fisk.
A noted beauty, she remained in Strasbourg for several years after the tour disbanded in 1877, studying French and German as well as music. But eventually America returned to America.
In 1890 she earned a Masters degree from Fisk. She married schoolteacher Edward Lucas, and opened a school to prepare African-American teachers in Macon, Mississippi. Despite a number of lynchings in this tiny (2,000 population) town during her residence, America continued to live there until her death in 1920.
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