The killing of George Floyd and the economic devastation of COVID-19 have sparked a resurgence of Jewish engagement with the Black community. There is an opportunity to build on a century of civil rights work and philanthropy.
In the early 20th century, Julius Rosenwald contributed to building more than 5,300 schools for Black children and over 30 YMCAs, supported Tuskegee Institute and other historically Black colleges and universities, built housing developments for Blacks, and helped support individual Black educational opportunities—funding a long list of Blacks such as James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelo, Rita Dove, Ralph Ellison, Dr. Charles Drew, and Marian Anderson.