summer 2004 newsletter - Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina

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PAGE 6JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF SOUTH CAROLINAJulius Rosenwald(1862-1932)Jewish Philanthropist in the Southby Doris BaumgartenAs the nation celebrates the 50th anniversary ofBrown vs. Board of Education, the landmark SupremeCourt decision that overturned school segregation inAmerica, it may be difficult to imagine just how dismalthe prospects were for African-American children, at theheight of the Jim Crow era, to get an education. In therural South conditions were particularly bleak.An important force for change came from anunlikely source. Chicago-born philanthropist JuliusRosenwald allied himself with Tuskegee Institute’sBooker T. Washington for the purpose of buildingschools and libraries for black students across theregion. Son of German-Jewish immigrant parents,Rosenwald made his fortune as C.E.O. of Sears,Roebuck, and Company. Between 1917 and 1932, theRosenwald Foundation provided seed-money for morethan 5,300 schools in 15 states, including 500 in SouthCarolina. By 1928, one in every five schools for ruralblack children was a Rosenwald School, educating onethirdof the school-age population.Rosenwald not only contributed financially butalso concerned himself with the construction details. Hewanted the best designs for natural lighting andventilation. Health and hygiene were not overlooked andplans included specifications for wells and privies.Rosenwald felt strongly that the success of theschools depended on local involvement. Communitieswere required to share the costs of construction andequipment, as well as upkeep and maintenance of thebuildings. Cost-sharing could be monetary, in-kind, or“sweat-equity”—that is, contributions of labor. Thefoundation’s seed-money amounted to as little as onefifthof the total cost; the rest came from local schoolboards, businesses, and residents, white and black.Oak Grove SchoolOAK GROVE SCHOOL built in 1924 on four acres of land as aone-teacher school.Total cost $1,670Contributions: Negroes $70Public $1,200Rosenwald $400None of these three Rosenwald Schools built in AikenCounty, South Carolina, is still standingSchool photographs courtesy of the Fisk UniversityArchives. Portrait from the Dictionary of AmericanPortraits (Dover Publications, 1958). Map courtesy ofTom Hanchett.
SUMMER 2004 VOLUME IX - NUMBER 2PAGE 7Seivern SchoolSEIVERN SCHOOL built in 1923-24 on four acres as a twoteacherschool.Total cost $2,708Contributions: Negroes $1,142Public $66Rosenwald $800Raised in Springfield, Illinois, young Julius hadjoined the fledgling Chicago concern named Sears,Roebuck and Company in 1897. Capitalizing on the RuralFree Delivery system instituted the following year by theU.S. Post Office, he helped Sears become the world’slargest retailer with the publication of the “Wish Book”distributed to thousands of rural households. Through thisthick, enticing catalog, anyone could order householdgoods and farm supplies, from clothing to canningequipment, medical supplies to tractor parts, seeds,chickens, and even an entire build-it-yourself house.Rosenwald credited Chicago’s SinaiCongregation, which he attended as a youth, for instillingin him the Jewish values of Tzedakah and Tikkun Olam.He supported many Jewish and non-Jewish causes,including the Federation of Jewish Charities, HullHouse, and the Museum of Science and Industry inChicago, Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, theJewish Theological Seminary in New York City, andblack YMCAs and YWCAs in cities across the country.REFERENCESPeter Ascoli. Address given to South Carolina PreservationSociety, Columbia, S.C., April 10, 2003.Fisk University Archives, Nashville, Tennessee.Mary S. Hoffschwelle, Preserving Rosenwald Schools(Washington D.C.: National Trust for Historic Preservation,n.d.).Allen Riddick, Aiken County Schools (Aiken, S.C.: RocketPublishers, 2004).Website: www.rosenwaldplans.orgAiken Graded SchoolAIKEN GRADED SCHOOL built under the 1924-25 budgetand outfitted for nine teachers.Total cost $33,500Contributions: Negroes $3,500Whites $1,500Public $27,000Rosenwald $1,500According to grandson and biographer Dr.Peter Ascoli, Rosenwald’s Jewish heritage gave him aparticular affinity with African Americans. “The horrorsthat are due to race prejudice,” Rosenwald wrote in1911, “come home to the Jew more forcefully than toothers of the white race, on account of the centuries ofpersecution which they have suffered and still suffer.”The philanthropist refused to allow his name tobe used on any of the schools he helped bring intobeing, preferring that their names reflect communitypride. Poignantly, most of the remaining schools,whether abandoned or converted to other uses, todayare referred to as “Rosenwald Schools” by people livingnearby.ADDITIONAL SOURCESJames Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South,1860–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,1988).Edwin Embree and Julia Waxman, Investment in People: TheStory of the Julius Rosenwald Fund (New York: Harper andBrothers, 1949).Adam Fairclough, Teaching Equality: Black Schools in theAge of Jim Crow (Athens: University of Georgia, 2001).Thomas W. Hanchett, “The Rosenwald Schools and BlackEducation in North Carolina,” North Carolina HistoricalReview LXV: 4 (October 1988).Louis Harlan, Separate and Unequal: Public SchoolCampaigns and Racism in the South States, 1901–1915(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1958).Alicestyne Turley-Adams, Rosenwald Schools in Kentucky,1917–1932 (Frankfort: Kentucky Heritage Council and theKentucky African American Heritage Commission, 1997).
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