The documentary features interviews with a number of people, including Peter Ascoli, grandson and biographer of Rosenwald, civil rights leader Julian Bond, Stephanie Deutsch, Richard J. Powell, journalist Eugene Robinson and director George C. Wolfe.

The film begins with an account of Rosenwald's rise from a job in the clothing business of his father, a German-Jewish immigrant, to the chairmanship of Sears-Roebuck.

Shocked by reports of anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia, he realizes that America's treatment of Negroes is no better and marshals his fortune to improving their condition.

Other Rosenwald-supported projects depicted in the film include establishing 25 YMCA-YWCAs for African Americans, founding the Museum of Science and Industry, building the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments, a housing project for some of the many blacks moving to Chicago in the Great Migration; and helped pay for the training of the Tuskegee Airmen.

The documentary concludes by chronicling the influence of the Rosenwald Fund, which awarded grants to many black artists and writers in the mid-twentieth century, including numerous African Americans who have become well known.