Provided/Fisk University, John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library, Special Collections WASHINGTON Congress approved a measure to create a multi-site national park to preserve the legacy of Julius Rosenwald, the Chicago philanthropist and Sears, Roebuck and Co. executive known for his groundbreaking gifts providing educational opportunities to Black students during the Jim Crow era.
If signed into law, the legislation, sponsored by Illinois Democrats Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Danny Davis, requires the Interior Secretary to study sites associated with Rosenwald in Chicago and in 15 southern states where he bankrolled the historic “Rosenwald Schools.”
Rosenwald, the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany, was born in Springfield in 1862 and raised in a house across the street from where Abraham Lincoln once lived.