The Julius Rosenwald & Rosenwald Schools National Historical Park Campaign is driving interest in creating a multi-site national park honoring Julius Rosenwald, a visionary philanthropist who helped create schools in the South during the Jim Crow era. The need to preserve the original school structures has created a new sense of urgency for the campaign, which envisions a National Historical Park comprising a state-of-the-art visitor center in Chicago; a small number of Rosenwald Schools throughout the South; and a wider network of Rosenwald Schools associated with the park but not contained within it.
The schools, which educated one-third of Black children across 15 southern states in the years before the end of legal segregation, were established through partnerships first with Booker T. Washington and then with nearly 5,000 African American communities. Graduates of the Rosenwald schools include the late civil rights icon John Lewis and poet Maya Angelou.
The schools were a source of pride in their communities, and only about 600 of them – roughly 12 percent – survive today. Some have been restored and serve as community and learning centers, but many are at risk of collapse.
“A National Historic Park ensures that this remarkable American story sits at the center of our national memory, not at its margins,” said Dorothy Canter, president of the Rosenwald Park Campaign. “The Rosenwald Schools must be preserved for generations to come, not only as historical sites, but as examples of democracy in action. In the face of poverty and discrimination, communities united – contributing land, labor, materials and money – to secure education for their children and a better future.”
In February, U.S. Senator Whip Dick Durbin, D-IL, introduced the Julius Rosenwald and Rosenwald Schools National Historical Park Act. If passed, the bill would designate a site to be determined within the original 40-acre site that once made up the Sears merchandising complex or close to it. Three Rosenwald Schools are also included in the legislation.
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