In his best selling autobiography Up From Slavery (1901), Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) tells his story of growing up under slavery and then during Reconstruction, his adjustment to new freedoms, his work with the Tuskegee Institute (a school that remains in operation to this day), and the struggles he encountered along the way. Washington is remembered as an ambitious advocate of practical, industrial training as a means of lifting blacks and whites out of poverty.
Washington believed that lifting Black America out of poverty came primarily through economic advancement, and that legal protections and softening of racist attitudes among Whites were secondary responses that would surely follow.
While he supported legislation to secure equal rights for Black America, he also advocated for vocational training, free enterprise. patience, and thrift as the best paths to progress.
As an educator, he was instrumental in transforming Tuskegee Institute into Tuskegee University and expanding educational opportunities for Black Americans.
In the segregated South of the early1900s, Black children often received their education in churches and lodge halls because local White governments refused to fund schools for Blacks.
Having experienced deep racial disparities in the rural South firsthand, Washington dreamed of a school-building project for Black communities that could help begin to lift them out of poverty.
Recognizing that Black-White education gap, Washington dreamed of constructing high-quality schoolhouses that would be financially and socially supported by surrounding Black communities.
In 1912, Washington presented his ideas to Julius Rosenwald, a wealthy American philanthropist who was already a member of Tuskegee's board of trustees and well-known for working for on problems to racial inequality.
With Rosenwald's financial contributions, Washington's hopeful dream soon became a reality.
In a little over a decade, Washington and Rosenwald's effort had built thousands of schools.
Washington's vision guided both the physical design and the substance of the schools' educational curriculum.
In total, Rosenwald donated $4.3 million ($75 million today) to build schools in 15 states. The schools became social centers and sources of pride for the communities they served.
The almost 5,000 schools built in the rural American South between 1912 and 1932 became know as "Rosenwald schools".
The school-building project was the brainchild of Black intellectuals affiliated with Tuskegee Institute. Washington insisted that the schools be designed by Black architects.
Washington and Rosenwald were both firm believers that true lasting progress occurs in communities that are self-empowered and work together. They wanted each community to be a stakeholder in the enterprise.
Rosenwald's charitable funding acted only as seed money, with matching contributions from community members who would eventually take over the schools themselves.
The objective was for parents and children in these rural Black communities to have a clear sense of ownership.
The Rosenwald schools were a product of its hopeful vision of the future.
The Rosenwald schools offered two generations of Black Americas a quality education in pleasant, well-functioning new schoolhouses.
Sadly, Washington did not live to see his schoolhouse project completed. In the fall of 1915, he fell ill while visiting New York City. He returned to Alabama, where he died a short time later at the age of 59. He was buried in the Tuskegee University Campus Cemetery.
Rosenwald continued with the school-building effort that Washington had envisioned.
During the first half of the 20th century, the Rosenwald schools helped close the Black-White academic achievement gap.
By the 1930s, one out of every three Black children in the South was educated at a Rosenwald school.
The schools emphasized not only the so-called "3 Rs" (reading, writing, and arithmetic) but, also life skills like, cooking, canning, sewing, and carpentry, in preparation for adulthood.
Researches at the Chicago Federal Reserve argue that in the regions where "the Rosenwald Rural Schools Initiative built most of its schools, the education gap between Southern-born Black and White males narrowed sharply in areas such as school attendance, literary, and cognitive-test score. Using census data and World War II's records, the researchers found that Rosenwald's programs explained a stunning 40 percent narrowing of the racial education gap."
In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education that school segregation and the concept of "separate but equal" were unconstitutional.
While this was a victory for racial justice and equality before the law, it was also the beginning of the end for the thousands of Rosenwald schools throughout the American South.
Integration efforts brought the Rosenwald school era to a close.
On one hand, Rosenwald schools were a source of pride and achievement for Black Americans throughout the rural South; on the other hand, their demise began with the judicial victory which set the whole country-not just the South- on the difficult path towards racially integrated school systems and, hopefully, educational equality.
A century after the first Rosenwald schools were built, their legacy remains a positive testament to the power of philanthropy when applied to a pragmatic, optimistic goal.
Graduates of Rosenwald schools include novelist Maya Angelou and Congressmen John Lewis, both who played key roles in the civil rights movement, along with tens of thousands of others whose lives were transformed for the better by the schools.
Sources: Up From Slavery, 1776 Unites, Thinkr.Org
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