Booker T. Washington & Julius Rosenwald: Rosenwald Schools and Beyond

The Jewish Philanthropist's Commitment to the Uplift of Black Americans

On March 25th, 1968, ten days before his assassination, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made this definitive statement to the 68th Annual Convention of the Rabbinical Assembly: Probably more than any other ethnic group, the Jewish community has been sympathetic and has stood as an ally to the Negro in his struggle for justice. Though Dr. King said these words in the late 1960s, Jewish involvement in Black American liberation was already true over half a century before. Nowhere was this more illustrated than in the relationship between educator Booker Taliaferro (T.) Washington and Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald.

Booker T. Washington was born on a slave plantation owned by James Burroughs in Franklin County, Virginia. According to his autobiography Up From Slavery, the year was 1858 or 1859. Booker’s mother’s name was Jane and his father was an unknown White man from a neighboring plantation. Similar to countless Black Americans who descended from people taken during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Washington recounts:

Of my ancestry I know almost nothing. In the slave quarters, and even later, I heard whispered conversations among the coloured people of the tortures which the slaves, including, no doubt, my ancestors on my mother's side, suffered in the middle passage of the slave ship while being conveyed from Africa to America. I have been unsuccessful in securing any information that would throw any accurate light upon the history of my family beyond my mother.

Booker would go on to choose his last name from his mother’s husband whose name was Washington Ferguson. Ferguson was a slave on a plantation in Malden, West Virginia where Booker and his mother relocated after the Civil War. Though the Ferguson family was poor and worked very hard, Booker’s mother saw his interest in learning to read and bought him books. In 1872, Washington left West Virginia and walked 500 miles to enroll at Hampton Normal Agricultural Institute in Virginia. He graduated with high marks in 1875, and in 1881 left for Alabama to establish the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University).

Under Washington's leadership, Tuskegee became a leading school in the country. At his death (1915), it had more than 100 well-equipped buildings, 1,500 students, a 200-member faculty teaching 38 trades and professions, and a nearly $2 million endowment.

In 1900, Washington founded the National Negro Business League based in Boston Massachusetts. Historian Joseph Bernardo writes:

Booker T. Washington believed that solutions to the problem of racial discrimination were primarily economic, and that African American entrepreneurship was vital. Thus, he founded the league to further the economic development of the African American businesses in order to achieve social equality in the American society.  Members in the league included small business owners, farmers, doctors, lawyers, craftsmen, and other professionals. The league maintained directories for all major US cities and incorporated African American contacts in numerous businesses.

Historian Tricia Martineau Wagner explains that Washington visited the famed Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1900. When he saw how successful the Black town was, he dubbed it Negro Wall Street (Black Wall Street).

Julius Rosenwald was born in 1862 to Samuel and Augusta Hammerslough. Samuel and Augusta were Jewish immigrants from Germany who settled in Springfield, Illinois. Young Rosenwald attended Springfield public schools and in 1879, began his professional career with Hammerslough Brothers, wholesale clothiers in New York City. In 1885, Rosenwald returned to Illinois to become president of Rosenwald & Weil, a retail men's clothing store. In 1893, Sears, Roebuck & Company moved its headquarters from Minneapolis to Chicago and asked Rosenwald to become vice president. The University of Chicago Library states that Rosenwald:

Served Sears, Roebuck successively as vice president (1895-1910), president (1910-1925), and chairman of the board (1925-1932). Under his leadership, Sears developed its lucrative nationwide mail-order business, established savings and profit-sharing plans for employees, and became America's largest retailer.

Julius Rosenwald became very wealthy and dedicated much of that wealth to philanthropic endeavors, especially on behalf of Black Americans. As I write in my book, Zionism & the Black Church, Rosenwald’s rabbi, Emil G. Hirsch was one of the Jewish founders of the NAACP and encouraged Rosenwald’s efforts on behalf of the Black community. In the Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 3, No. 4, Rosenwald is quoted saying:

Whether it is because I belong to a people who have known centuries of persecution, or whether it is because I am naturally inclined to sympathize with the oppressed, I have always felt keenly for the colored race.

The National Park Service in Chicago provides further background on Rosenwald’s efforts on behalf of African-Americans.

More than half of Rosenwald’s philanthropic efforts benefited African Americans and these efforts began with his support of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCAs) facilities. YMCAs could be found in white communities across America but YMCAs in African American communities often lacked the resources of their white counterparts.

The YMCA approached Rosenwald in 1910 with a proposal to build a new location in Chicago. He agreed, but only if a facility for African Americans was also constructed. “I won’t give a cent to this $350,000 fund,” Rosenwald told the group, “unless you will include in it the building of a Colored Men’s YMCA.” The YMCA agreed, and opened the Wabash Avenue YMCA in 1913.

Chicago’s Wabash Avenue YMCA, situated in the city’s historic Bronzeville District, thrived as a center of civic and social activity for the city’s burgeoning African American community. It was there in 1915 that historian Carter G. Woodson founded “The Association for The Study of Negro Life and History,” responsible for establishing Negro History Week which eventually evolved into what is now celebrated nationally as Black History Month.

Rosenwald also built affordable housing for Black families in Chicago called Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments, or Rosenwald Courts. Rosenwald Courts was a 421-unit housing project that became a model for the country. The building, “featured blond brick exterior and modernist lines that were inspired by European social housing projects.” Residents of Rosenwald Courts included African-American legends like Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole, Quincy Jones, Joe Lewis, and Jesse Owens.

Though it is only available by scheduling a screening, I highly recommend the Aviva Kempner film, Rosenwald: The Remarkable Story of a Jewish Partnership with African American Communities. I had the honor of being the keynote speaker for the film’s showing at the 2014 Carmel Film Festival in the San Francisco Bay Area. Rosenwald explains that the Jewish philanthropist followed the work of Booker T. Washington and read Up From Slavery. The two men met in 1910 at a fundraising event in Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel where Washington was the keynote speaker. Soon after their meeting, Rosenwald became a board member of the Tuskegee Institute.

Rosenwald and Washington shared great mutual respect and admiration which only grew during their powerful but brief collaboration. At a luncheon in honor of Washington at Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel in 1911, Rosenwald praised Washington with words hauntingly similar to Rabbi Heschel’s introduction of Dr. King at the Rabbinical Assembly.

The wise, statesmanlike leader who is our guest today, is greatly serving two races, which, but for his ministry of conciliation might drift into irreconcilable antagonism. He is helping his own race to attain the high Art of self-help and self-dependence, and he is helping the white race to learn, that opportunity, and obligation, go hand-in-hand, and that there is no enduring superiority save that which comes as the result of serving. His own rise from slavery as told by him with the simplicity of truth, to the place of guide, of one race, and friend and counselor of two races, is prophetic of the widening opportunity of his people. Happy the race which follows his sane, wise, earnest leadership! Happy the nation which in the words of the lake Justice Brewer, knows and honors a Washington whether he be George or Booker.

Rabbi Heschel on Dr. King in 1968:

Martin Luther King is a voice, a vision and a way. I call upon every Jew to harken to his voice, to share his vision, to follow in his way. The whole future of America will depend upon the impact and in­ fluence of Dr. King. May everyone present give of his strength to this great spiritual leader, Martin Luther King.

In 1912, Washington asked Rosenwald about funding a project that would establish primary schools for Black children being shut out in the Jim Crow segregation system. Rosenwald agreed to provide a third of the money. The other two-thirds would come from the Black and White communities as Rosenwald’s desire was to see the two peoples work together for the betterment of the nation. He felt this would be possible if the broader White community would have a direct share in the process. The first school was built in Loachapoka in Lee County near Tuskegee Alabama, and from 1913 to 1932, over 5,300 Rosenwald Schools were built throughout the segregated south and beyond.

The following is a letter from Washington to Rosenwald as recorded in the Journal of Negro Education. The letter is dated October 14, 1915, almost exactly one month before Washington’s untimely death.

My dear Mr. Rosenwald:

In acknowledging receipt of your check for Thirteen Thousand Dollars ($13,000.00) you do not know how grateful we are for the privilege of having some part in the expenditure of this money which is accomplishing so much good. In fact, when we realize how thoroughly you are trusting us in the expenditure of this money, it makes us feel very humble and at the same time increase our sense of responsibility in a genuine way.

I often wish that you could have time to hear and see for yourself some of the little incidents that occur in connection with this work. I wish you could hear the expressions of approval that now come from white people – white people who two years ago would not think of anything bearing upon Negro education. I wish you could hear the expressions of gratitude othered over and over again by the most humble classes of colored people.

Let me repeat, that we counted a great privilege to have some little share in this glorious work.

Of course, we shall be very glad to send you all the information you desire for the album including photographs, etc. We have already taken measures to get the photographs and the other information which you have suggested.

I am planning to see you in Chicago sometime the first week in November and go over matters a little more in detail.

Yours very truly,

(Signed) Booker T. Washington

The partnership of Washington and Rosenwald was a key component in educating the post-slavery population, helping pave the way for Black success like the era of Black Wall Street and the Harlem Renaissance. After establishing the Rosenwald Fund, Julius Rosenwald also provided fellowship grants for Black students to further their education beyond high school. Rosenwald Fellows included some of the most iconic Black figures in American history. These include sociologist and pan-Africanist, W.E.B. Du Bois; writer, Langston Hughes; opera singer Marion Anderson; author and activist, James Baldwin; artist Lawrence Jacobs; photographer Gordon Parks Jr.; Dr. Charles Drew—Dunbar High School graduate physician who revolutionized ways to process and store blood plasma; and poet Maya Angelou.

Ms. Shelby King, a Sandy Level Rosenwald School alum

Today, some 500 Rosenwald Schools still exist, and a small percentage of those as historical sites. Recently, members of the senior staff of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel (IBSI) participated in a plaque dedication of the Sanly Level Rosenwald School in Surry County, North Carolina. Among the distinguished guests was Ms. Shelby King, a Sandy Level Rosenwald School alum. “As children, we didn’t even know it was a Rosenwald School. It was just our school.” As stated in the film Rosenwald: The Remarkable Story of a Jewish Partnership with African American Communities, the Black children would see pictures of Julius Rosenwald in their classroom and often ask their teacher, “who is that White man?” It became a teaching moment in which the children learned of the Jewish businessman who partnered with a Black educator to write a new chapter in American history — a thriving Black-Jewish alliance decades before the civil rights movement.

IBSI joins organizations like the Woodson Center in preserving the Rosenwald School buildings as well as the legacy of two American giants, Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald.