Clayton County embracing history in effort to renovate Rosenwald School
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The 4,978 schools that fueled a movement
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Julius Rosenwald, the son of Jewish immigrants who fled religious persecution in Germany, turned Sears, Roebuck & Co. into America’s largest retailer. Booker T. Washington, who was born into slavery, created the Tuskegee Institute and led the college for more than 30 years.
Their groundbreaking partnership in the early decades of the 20th century led to a transformative initiative: the creation of 4,978 schools for African American children in 15 Southern and border states.
The program reshaped America. Economists at the Federal Reserve said the Rosenwald Schools were the most significant factor in the narrowing of the South’s racial education gap between World War I and II. Further, they were a meaningful force in the rise of the civil rights movement. Educating Blacks helped belie the canard that African Americans were intellectually inferior and many of the leaders and foot soldiers of the movement attended Rosenwald schools.
Photographer Andrew Feiler at the Carver School in Coffee County, Georgia, working on his project documenting the sites of former Rosenwald schools. (Jim Cottingham/ via JTA)
A restored classroom at the Pine Grove School in Richland County, South Carolina, one of the Rosenwald schools funded by the Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald to educate Black children in the segregated South. (Andrew Feiler/ via JTA)
Rep. John Lewis, who represented Georgia s 5th District for 33 years before his death in 2020, attended a Rosenwald school as a child. (Andrew Feiler/ via JTA)
A portrait of Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald at the Noble Hill School in Bartow County, Georgia one of his namesake Rosenwald schools for Black children in the segregated South. (Andrew Feiler/ via JTA)