Episode 3: Returning Home
African Americans, faced with discriminatory laws and widespread prejudice, needed allies in their effort to empower their communities.
Between 1912 and 1914, educator and author Booker T. Washington partnered with German-Jewish immigrant and president of Sears, Roebuck & Company, Julius Rosenwald, to build six schools in rural Alabama. These schools became known as the Rosenwald Schools and reflected the shared belief of Washington and Rosenwald that education was key to combating generations of oppression.
From 1917 to 1938 nearly 5,000 Rosenwald Schools were constructed across 15 states, serving more than 700,000 Black children and operating well into the 1950s. The Julius Rosenwald Fund provided seed money and local Black communities covered 50% or more of the construction costs, allowing them to chart their own course for success.
By 1928, more than 20% of Black schools in the South were Rosenwald Schools. Born from the collaboration of a Black educator and a Jewish philanthropist, the schools were credited with raising literacy rates and school attendance in underserved areas.
For nearly a half-century the Rosenwald Schools would bear witness to African Americans’ will for self-empowerment through education and collective action.
After the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education mandated desegregation, the Rosenwald Schools began to consolidate with white schools. According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, only about 500 of the original structures remain standing.
Andrew Feiler, a Georgia-based Jewish American photographer and author, profiles 53 of the remaining schools in his book, A Better Life for Their Children. Photographs and stories from the book have been exhibited at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta.
Among the former Rosenwald Schools preserved as cultural museums or historic sites is the Noble Hill-Wheeler Memorial Center in Georgia, whose curator, Valerie Coleman, is a descendant of the school’s original builder.
The five-part series “Segregation Scholarships” is a production of B Squared Communications in association with The WNET Group’s Chasing the Dream initiative.
Major funding forMajor funding for Chasing the Dream is provided by The JPB Foundation with additional funding from Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III.
