Julius Rosenwald built 5,000 schools for Black children

Person: Julius Rosenwald
Lived: 1862–1932
Field: Retail & philanthropy
From: American

The story

Julius Rosenwald was born in Springfield, Illinois, in 1862 to German Jewish immigrants, and learned the values of tzedakah (charity) and tikkun olam (repairing the world) at his family's synagogue. He became president and part-owner of Sears, Roebuck and Company and turned it into one of America's largest retailers. Through his friend Paul Sachs of Goldman Sachs he came to see the plight of African Americans as the most serious social problem in the country, and Sachs introduced him to the educator Booker T. Washington.

In 1912 Rosenwald joined the board of the Tuskegee Institute, led by Washington, and the two became partners. Under Jim Crow, Black children in the South attended chronically underfunded segregated schools, and in many places there were no schools for them at all. At Washington's urging, Rosenwald funded six small schools in rural Alabama, overseen by Tuskegee, which opened in 1913 and 1914. The programme grew rapidly. Rosenwald required local communities, Black and white, to raise matching funds and required white school boards to agree to operate and maintain the schools. Black rural communities raised millions of dollars and often donated land and labour, and the buildings used modern plans designed by Tuskegee professors.

In 1917 he created the Rosenwald Fund, designed to spend all of its money rather than exist for ever. By the time of his death in 1932 the project had built about 5,000 schools, shops and teachers' homes across 15 states, from Maryland to Texas. The National Park Service estimates they benefited over 600,000 students, and about a third of Black children in the South were educated in them. Students and teachers called him 'Cap'n Julius', and his portrait often hung on school walls beside those of Abraham Lincoln and Booker T. Washington.

Economists who later studied census and military records found large effects on literacy, years of schooling and test scores, with the greatest gains in the most disadvantaged counties. A 2021 study found that attending a Rosenwald school also increased life expectancy.

After the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision many of the buildings were abandoned, but former students and preservationists have saved others. At least 60 are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and in 2015 the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the Rosenwald Schools National Treasures.

Why it matters

Rosenwald Schools gave hundreds of thousands of Black children an education they were otherwise denied, including future civil rights leaders, writers and teachers.

About Julius Rosenwald

Clothier who turned Sears, Roebuck into America’s great mail-order retailer, then helped build nearly 5,000 schools for Black children across the segregated South.

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Julius Rosenwald

1862–1932 · Retail & philanthropy

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