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"I was absolutely committed to giving everything I had to bettering myself in the classroom. I had no doubt that there was a way out of the world I saw around me and that this was the way. My parents, like most poor black parents of that time, agreed. To them, education represented an almost mythical key to the kingdom of America’s riches, the kingdom so long denied to our race.” - Congressman John Lewis, Rosenwald Graduate
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The Community Steps Up
Rosenwald and Washington visiting Tuskegee in 1915.
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Both Rosenwald and Washington believed that the community should be involved in building and raising funds for the schools.
"One thing I am convinced of, and that is that it is the best thing to have the people themselves build (school)houses in their own community. I have found by investigation that many people who cannot give money would give half a day or a day's work and others would give material in the way of nails, brick, lime, etc." - Booker T. Washington, letter to Rosenwald, 1912.
African American communities across the South rose to the challenge and, using Rosenwald's matching grant, created schools for their children in which they felt pride-of-ownership.
"You do not know what joy and encouragement the building of these schoolhouses has brought to the people of both races in the communities where they are being erected." - Letter from Washington to Rosenwald in 1913, as the first schools were being constructed.
They used every means possible - from donating the land to bake sales to fundraisers to in-kind donations such as providing the labor and tools needed - to leverage Rosenwald's donation and build schools for their children. On their trips to visit the schools, Rosenwald and Washington observed that the entire town was affected, as the school became the center of community life, and as residents worked to upgrade their own homes in response to the new, modern schoolhouse.
Loapachoka School in Alabama, the first Rosenwald School, completed in March 1913.
Rosenwald School in Chehaw, AL, one of the first six Rosenwald Schools to be built, completed in 194.
"I have never seen a set of people who have changed so much within recent years from a feeling of almost despair and hopelessness to one of encouragement and determination." - Letter from Washington to Rosenwald after visiting the new schools.
The children who attended these schools and who observed their parents commitment to their education learned two profound lessons they took with them into adulthood:
the importance and liberating potential of education, and the incredible power of community action. |
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