Rosenwald School

[1] The need arose from the chronic underfunding of public education for African-American children in the South, as black people had been discriminated against at the turn of the century and excluded from the political system in that region.

To promote collaboration between black and white people, Rosenwald required communities to also commit public funds and/or labor to the schools, as well as to contribute additional cash donations after construction.

[2] After the Civil War, Republicans established public schools and funded colleges and universities as part of their Reconstruction era efforts to rebuild the South.

The collaboration of Rosenwald and Washington led to the construction of almost 5,000 schools for black children in the eleven states of the former Confederacy as well as Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland.

Research has found that the Rosenwald program accounts for a sizable portion of the educational gains of rural Southern black persons during this period.

Julius Rosenwald and Sachs often would discuss America's social situation, agreeing that the plight of African Americans was the most serious problem in the United States.

[citation needed] The millions in the South had been disenfranchised at the turn of the century and suffered second-class status in a system of Jim Crow segregation.

[citation needed] Sachs introduced Rosenwald to Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), the famed educator who in 1881 started as the first principal of the normal school that he developed as Tuskegee University in Alabama.

Washington, who had gained the respect of many American leaders including U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, also had obtained financial support from wealthy philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie, George Eastman, and Henry Huttleston Rogers.

It donated more than $70 million (equivalent to $887,701,000 in 2023) to public schools, colleges, universities, museums, Jewish charities, and black institutions before the funds were depleted in 1948.

The Rosenwald Fund was based on a system of matching grants, requiring white school boards to commit to maintenance and black communities to aid in construction.

After the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision (which declared school segregation unconstitutional), the buildings were frequently abandoned or dismantled.

Walnut Cove Colored School in Stokes County, North Carolina, won a National Preservation Honor Award for its rehabilitation for use as a senior citizen community center.