Theodore R. Johnson’s Feb. 29 op-ed, “These giants of Black history are forever linked,” noted that Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois differed widely on the type of education they considered most important for Black students at the turn of the 20th century.
Both admired and worked with Julius Rosenwald, who had helped make Sears, Roebuck and Co. into a retailing powerhouse. It was Washington who recruited Rosenwald, the son of Jewish immigrants, to the board of the Tuskegee Institute and who discussed with him the deplorable lack of schools for African American children across the South, especially in rural areas. The two men paired Rosenwald Fund grants with contributions of land, labor and money to bring public schools, retail buildings and teachers’ homes to 5,000 communities. In the NAACP publication the Crisis, Du Bois wrote often of his support for this work. The Rosenwald Fund also awarded nearly 900 fellowships to talented individuals, two-thirds of whom were Black. Du Bois received three such grants, one of which enabled him to complete his masterful work “Black Reconstruction in America.”
When Rosenwald died in January 1932, Du Bois wrote: “He was a great man. But he was no mere philanthropist. He was, rather, the subtle stinging critic of our racial democracy.”It’s this legacy that the campaign to build a Julius Rosenwald and Rosenwald Schools National Historical Park seeks to honor.
Stephanie Deutsch, Washington
The writer is the author of “You Need a Schoolhouse: Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald, and the Building of Schools for the Segregated South.”
