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| Julius Rosenwald |
After the Civil War and Reconstruction era, Black
schools began to be established, under legal segregation between the races,
enforced by Southern States’ Democrats, when they regained power In the 1870s.
The early Black schools were mostly rural;
and classes were primarily taught by one teacher, who taught all subjects,
ages, and grades. Chronic underfunding led to constantly over-populated
schools, despite the relatively low percentage of African-American students in
schools, overall. In 1900, the average Black school, in Virginia for instance,
had 37% more pupils than the average White school.
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| Segregated School in Georgia after The Civil War |
Despite the worst conditions imaginable, such as:
fewer books, dilapidated buildings and much lower pay, Black teachers and
students were able to create some outstanding schools.
One very significant benefactor and enabler of Black schools was Julius
Rosenwald.
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| Julius Rosenwald |
Born in 1862, to a
German-Jewish couple, and whose father was a clothier, Julius followed the same
career. Unfortunately, his first business went bankrupt, during the Recession
of 1885. In 1890, Rosenwald married Augusta Nusbaum, a
daughter of a competing clothier. With an
entrepreneurial spirit, Julius tried again, with a new business. He had heard
about other clothing manufacturers who had begun making clothes, according to
standardized sizes, from data collected during the Civil War. So,
he convinced his brother and cousin to set up a business doing the same. It was
called Rosenwald and Weir Clothiers, was based in Chicago, and was the major
supplier to Sears, Roebuck & Company. The business became so successful,
that in 1895, Julius became one of
its investors, eventually serving as the president of Sears from 1908 to 1922.
He was also its chairman until his death; and his son, Lessing, assumed
chairmanship at that time, serving in that role unti 1939.
After the
1906 financial reorganization of Sears, Julius became friends with Goldman
Sachs's senior partner, Paul J. Sachs. Paul often stayed with Julius and
his family, during his many trips to Chicago; and the two would discuss
America's social situation, agreeing that the plight of African-Americans was
the most serious in the United States.
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| Paul J. Sachs |
Paul introduced Julius to
two prominent educators and proponents of African-American education, William
H. Baldwin and Booker T. Washington. As
the founder of Tuskegee University, Dr. Washington, who had gained the respect
of many American leaders including U.S. President, Teddy Roosevelt, had also obtained financial support from other
wealthy philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie, George Eastman and Henry
Huttleston Rogers. He encouraged Julius, as he had others, to address the poor
state of African-American education in the U.S.
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| Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington |
At this point, Julius beagn to truly devote
his time, energy, and money to philanthropy. In his words, written in 1911:
"The horrors that are due to race prejudice come home to the Jew
more forcefully than to others of the White race, on account of the centuries
of persecution which they have suffered and still suffer."
In 1912, Julius
was asked to serve on the Board of Directors of Tuskegee Unversity, a position
he also held for the remainder of his life. He gave a significant amount of
money to the school, so that Dr. Washington could spend less time
traveling to seek funding, and devote more time towards management of the
school. Dr. Washington also urged Julius
to provide funds for the construction of six, small African-American schools,
in rural Alabama, which were constructed and opened in 1913 and 1914 and
overseen by Tuskegee University.
Along
with other family members, Julius established the Julius Rosenwald Fund, in
1917, for "the well-being of mankind." The Rosenwald Fund donated millions in
matching funds to support the education of African-American children, in the
rural South, as well as other philanthropic causes, in the first half of the
20th century. He was the principal founder and backer for the Museum of Science
and Industry, in Chicago, to which he gave more than $5 million and served as president
from 1927 to 1932.
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| Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago |
Julius
also commissioned one of Chicago's largest philanthropic housing developments,
in the mid-1920s: the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments, at 47th St. and
Michigan Ave (aka The Rosenwald). It was one of the first American housing
developments to include a mix of residential, commercial and social uses. In
addition to the apartments, the development also included 14 stores along the
47th Street side of the property, four of which were occupied by Black-owned businesses.
Julius invested $2.7 million in the project, receiving only a 2.4% return
during the first seven years. The building still stands and received
National Register of Historic Places designation in 1981. It is now often used
as a film set.
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| Rosenwald Apartments |
Over the
course of Julius’s life, the Rosenwald Fund donated over $70 million dollars
to schools, colleges, universities, museums, Jewish charities and Black
institutions. The rural school
building program was one of the largest programs administered by the Rosenwald
Fund. Using state-of-the-art architectural plans designed by professors at
Tuskegee Institute, the Fund spent more than $4 million to build more than
5,000 schools, 217 teachers' homes, and 163 shop buildings in 883 counties in
15 states, from Maryland to Texas. The Rosenwald Fund used a system of matching
grants. Black communities raised more than $4.7 million to aid in construction. These schools became known as Rosenwald
Schools.
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| Rosenwald School |
In the 1930s, the NAACP launched a national campaign to
achieve equal schools within the “separate, but equal” framework of the U.S.
Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, upholding the constitutionality of state laws
requiring racial segregation in public facilities. This case came to be
after free-born, African-American (although, an Octoroon: someone of seven-eighths
Caucasian descent and one-eighth African descent; yet, still classified as
Black), Homer Plessy, bought a first
class train ticket, and sat in the Whites only car, in New Orleans, Louisiana. He
was arrested and subsequently sued. The case eventually escalated to the Supreme
Court.
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| Homer Plessy |
Eventually,
the NAACP won several victories with its campaign, particularly around salary
equalization, as African-American teachers were paid significantly less than
White teachers, except in Washington DC, where they were all Federal employees,
so had to be equally paid. Public schools were technically desegregated in the
United States, in 1954 by the US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of
Education. However, many schools were still de
facto segregated due to
inequality in housing and patterns of racial segregation in neighborhoods. Republican
President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, enforced the Supreme Court's decision by
sending US Army troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to protect the Little Rock Nine students' entry to school in 1957, thus setting a precedent for the Executive
Branch to enforce Supreme Court rulings related to racial integration. He was
the first President since Reconstruction to send Federal troops into the South
to protect the rights of African-Americans.
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| Federal Troops escorting the Little Rock Nine into school |
With increasing urbanization, many rural Rosenwald Schools were
abandoned. However, in 2002, the National Trust for Historic Preservation began a campaign to preserve many of The Rosenwald
Schools, and by 2009, many communities had restored them. Click here to
read more about the preservation programs.
Some schools have been put to new uses.
Walnut Cove Colored School in Stokes County, North Carolina, won a National
Preservation Honor Award for its rehabilitation for use as a senior citizens’
community center. The Hope Rosenwald School, in Pomaria, South Carolina, is
also a community center. The Highland Park School in Prince George’s County,
Maryland had been in continuous use by the school system. It was recently
renovated for use as a Headstart Center.
Julius Rosenwald died at
his home in the Ravinia section of Highland Park, Illinois, on January 6, 1932. At that time Rosenwald Schools accommodated one-third
of all African-American children, in Southern schools, equalling over 500,000
students. Research has found that these schools accounted for a sizable portion
of the educational gains of rural Southern blacks. This research also found
significant effects on school attendance, literacy, years of schooling,
cognitive test scores, and Northern migration, with the highest gains in the
most disadvantaged counties. Click here to read more information abut
individual Rosenwald Schools.
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| 1939 Rosenwald School Graduates |
Unlike
other endowed foundations, which were designed to fund themselves in
perpetuity, The Rosenwald Fund was intended to use all of its funds for
philanthropic purposes. As a result, the fund was completely spent by 1948.
Money extremely well-spent.
SOURCES: Wikipedia,
Preservation Nation, Google Images
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