1917 - Education

Education

The Julius Rosenwald Fund established by Sears, Roebuck president Rosenwald, now 55, works to help blacks help themselves (see 1911). Following the dictates of Jewish morning prayers that urge giving the needy an opportunity to work rather than giving them money or food, Rosenwald has been impressed by the efforts of Urban League founder William Baldwin Jr. and the late Tuskegee Institute head Booker T. Washington, whom he assisted beginning 6 years ago with money to finance construction of new schools for blacks in Alabama. By 1931 the Rosenwald Fund will have financed 5,295 school buildings from Maryland to Texas (they will become known as the Rosenwald schools), but Rosenwald insists that local governments assume responsibility for operating the schools, and it will be difficult to construct and maintain them in the face of opposition from the Ku Klux Klan and other hostile whites. Rosenwald also insists that some of the support for the schools come from the black community, however impoverished it may be (farmers in one village will plant a small area in cotton, calling it the Rosenwald Patch, and donate the proceeds to the school fund).