Born to Jewish immigrants, Julius
Rosenwald rose to lead Sears, Roebuck & Company and turn it into the
world’s largest retailer. Born into slavery, Booker T. Washington became the
founding principal of Tuskegee Institute. In 1912 the two men launched an
ambitious program to partner with black communities across the segregated South
to build public schools for African American children. This watershed moment in
the history of philanthropy—one of the earliest collaborations between Jews and
African Americans—drove dramatic improvement in African American educational
attainment and fostered the generation who became the leaders and foot soldiers
of the civil rights movement.
Of the original 4,978 Rosenwald schools
built between 1912 and 1937 across fifteen southern and border states,
only about 500 survive. While some have been repurposed and a handful remain
active schools, many remain unrestored and at risk of collapse. To tell this
story visually, Andrew Feiler drove more than twenty-five thousand miles,
photographed 105 schools, and interviewed dozens of former students, teachers,
preservationists, and community leaders in all fifteen of the program states.
The book and exhibition of this work is A
Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the
4,978 Schools that Changed America. The
exhibition is on view at the Filson through August 4, 2023. Author, photographer, and exhibition curator
Andrew Feiler will share images and stories from his extraordinary journey into
the history of Rosenwald schools.