We are told to our faces often that though our quartet is one of the best that has been heard up here, they would like us better if we would "play the Nigger" - their own words - more... every day we are made to understand that if there was less refinement about us and more fool, we would do better... When I have about three persons ask for the [spirituals] and about four score ask that we dance and sing songs which tell of Negroes stealing chickens, I make no pretensions to try to please - Tuskegee Quartet member Isaac Fisher, in a letter to Dr. Booker T. Washington, c. 1900