Julius Rosenwald Schools NHP

This is not yet a national historical park, but it should be! A campaign is underway to recognize Julius Rosenwald and the Rosenwald Schools as a National Historical Park. The son of German-Jewish immigrants, Julius Rosenwald was the business genius behind Sears, Roebuck & Co., the Amazon of its day in the early 20th century. When he became rich beyond his dreams, Rosenwald teamed up first with Tuskegee Institute founder Booker T. Washington and then with local African American communities to build schools for their kids throughout the Jim Crow South. Over three decades, nearly 5,000 schools were built across 15 states, educating a third of Black children in the South - giving a head start to luminaries like Congressman John Lewis, writer Maya Angelou and Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson. Rosenwald also founded a fellowship program that awarded grants to a who's-who of Black achievers from Nobel Prize winner Ralph Bunche to singer Marian Anderson. For more information about the campaign, visit rosenwaldpark.org