The lecture “A Better Life for Their Children: A Rosenwald Schools Journey” will be held at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 5, at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture, 428 N. Arthur Ashe Boulevard, Richmond.
Born to Jewish immigrants, Julius Rosenwald rose to lead Sears, Roebuck & Company and turn it into the world’s largest retailer. Born into slavery, Booker T. Washington became the founding principal of Tuskegee Institute. In 1912 the two men launched an ambitious program to partner with Black communities across the segregated South to build public schools for Black children.
This watershed moment in the history of philanthropy—one of the earliest collaborations between Jews and Black Americans—drove dramatic improvement in African American educational attainment and fostered the generation who became the leaders and foot soldiers of the civil rights movement. Of the original 4,978 Rosenwald schools built between 1912 and 1937 across 15 southern and border states, only about 5...