A Black education leader and the son of a Jewish immigrant worked together to help create nearly 5,000 schools for Black children in the Jim Crow South. Their story is now being told in a major exhibition at the National Building Museum.
“A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington and the 4,978 Schools that Changed America” opened Feb. 28 at the Northwest Washington museum.
In 1912, the philanthropist Julius Rosenwald and educator Booker T. Washington embarked on what is considered one of the most influential partnerships of the 20th century. Together, their efforts led to the construction of thousands of schools for Black children across 15 states, mostly in rural Southern communities.
“The museum exhibit is about … nearly 5,000 communities that yearned, that thirsted for education for their children, because they were either getting no education in the South or very little education,” said Dorothy Canter, the president of the Julius Rosenwald Campaign, which loaned some objects to the museum for the exhibition.
Rosenwald Schools, named for their primary donor, were often the first schools in a Black community and helped improve education across the South, according to the National Park Service.
“These were not just school buildings, they were acts of belief in a better future, built through partnership across divides,” the exhibition’s photographer, Andrew Feiler, said in the press release.
By 1928, one in three rural Black schoolchildren in the South attended a Rosenwald School.
Notable alumni include Rep. John Lewis, a prominent civil rights leader who helped organize the 1963 March on Washington; renowned activist, author and poet Maya Angelou; former Washington Post editor and columnist Eugene Robinson; and Medgar Evers, the NAACP’s first field secretary in Mississippi.
Now, only about 600 Rosenwald Schools remain. Some have been restored and serve as community and learning centers, but many are at risk of collapse, according to a press release.
The Julius Rosenwald & Rosenwald Schools National Historical Park Campaign proposes a National Historical Park comprising a visitor center in Chicago, a small number of Rosenwald Schools across the South and a wider network of Rosenwald Schools associated with the park but not contained within it.
The campaign will dedicate a historic marker at the site of the former Scotland Rosenwald School located on Seven Locks Road in Potomac in May.
Seven tabletop architectural models of the rural schoolhouses are on display at the National Building Museum, including the Ridgeley Rosenwald School, built in 1927 in Prince George’s County, and San Domingo School, one of four surviving Rosenwald Schools in Wicomico County, Maryland.
“For that era, they were state of the art,” Canter said of the school buildings. “The schools did not have electricity, they did not have heat, they did not have bathrooms, but they had big windows where they got light.”
Another, larger model illustrates a two-teacher school with the roof and ceiling removed so viewers can see the building’s interior. Folding doors, when closed, formed two separate classrooms, and when opened, allowed the space to serve as a community center on weekends.
Artist Mark Wittig used computer-aided design software, a laser cutter and hand woodworking tools to “bring these historic school buildings to life,” according to his website.
The exhibition also features 22 black-and-white photographs by Feiler, architectural drawings, an introductory film titled “Rosenwald: Toward a More Perfect Union” and a recreated period classroom environment.
What can viewers of the exhibition learn from Washington and Rosenwald? “They can learn how to be better people,” Canter said. “They can learn the importance of working together. They can learn the importance of partnerships.”
It was Washington’s vision to construct the schools, made possible by Rosenwald’s philanthropy. Local Black communities fundraised and contributed labor and land, and Rosenwald provided major support and required local school boards to maintain the schools and pay the teachers, according to the press release.
“[Washington] and Julius Rosenwald were very different people, culturally and in terms of education,” Canter said. “Booker T. Washington rose up from slavery. He yearned for education. He walked across the state of Virginia to get that education at Hampton [University].”
The son of German Jewish immigrants, Rosenwald came from modest beginnings in Springfield, Illinois. He dropped out of high school to learn the clothing trade and eventually became the president of Sears, Roebuck and Co., the world’s largest retailer in the early 20th century.
“He was a man measured not by profit, but by purpose, a testament to the Jewish value that wealth should serve humanity,” Dazia Wallerson, Combat Antisemitism Movement’s African-American Alliance manager, said at Rosenwald’s November induction into the American Jewish Hall of Fame.
Washington, on the other hand, saw education and embracing the Christian faith as the way for fellow Black Americans to escape poverty and gain economic independence.
“Here are two men of different backgrounds and different cultures, and they came together [to] work as a partnership,” Canter said. “They both were very practical, sensible men. … They worked together in a time when whites and Blacks were not working together, and they brought about real change in this country.”
