11/7/2023 0 Comments Sears roebuck julius rosenwald![]() So it's pretty incredible, and I say it's the greatest philanthropist you've never heard of. The famous one of this chairwoman in front of the American flag - it was a Rosenwald. Gordon Parks took photographs here under a very segregated D.C. Their great Migration series was done under Rosenwald. KEMPNER: Jacob Lawrence - you go to MoMA right now. B Du Bois, the historian John Hope Franklin, the Nobel laureate diplomat Ralph Bunche, the poet Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Marian Anderson. The recipients - it is an honor roll for African-Americans like you wouldn't believe. SIEGEL: And he gave grants both during his own lifetime and then through the fund that survived him. One out of 3 young African-Americans in that period - we're talking from the teens up through the '40s - had gone to a Rosenwald school. You know, I recently showed the film, and afterwards, people stood up and said, I went to that school it made the difference in my life. Maya Angelou talks about going to the school and a lot of descendants of relatives. John Lewis, a great civil rights Congressman. SIEGEL: Columnist for The Washington Post. KEMPNER: Eugene Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize. SIEGEL: And you interviewed people who went to these schools. SIEGEL: How many did he build ultimately? How many Rosenwald schools were there in the South? Washington says to him, OK, you're offering me money what we really need in Alabama are schools for young kids. The philosophy for it was give while you live. And then when he turned 50, he decided to give a lot of money away. said to him, you know, I want you to join the Board of Tuskegee. Washington's book "Up From Slavery." And he realized that the Jim Crow South was awful and that he had to do something. But then he had a revelation when he read Booker T. Emil Hirsch - a principle in Judaism about repairing the world. And years later, when he accumulated so much money as the head of Sears, he listened to two things - his rabbi's preaching, Hirsch, about Tikkun olam. He was born in Springfield, Ill., which actually was a precursor to where his life would be because the family whom was across the street from Abraham Lincoln. SIEGEL: And first, tell us about Julius Rosenwald's roots. Aviva Kempner's documentary is called "Rosenwald." Welcome to the program once again.ĪVIVA KEMPNER: Wonderful to be here, Robert. SIEGEL: And as Julius Rosenwald made money, he also gave a lot of it away and a lot of it to help African-American education. ROSENWALD: Most large fortunes are made by men of mediocre ability who tumbled into a lucky opportunity and couldn't help but get rich. His wealth was estimated at $400 million. He turned Sears, Roebuck, the revolutionary catalog marketer, into the Walmart or the Amazon of its day. Don't be fooled by believing because a man is rich that he is necessarily smart. JULIUS ROSENWALD: Most people are of the opinion that because a man has made a fortune, that his opinions on any subject are valuable. In Aviva Kempner's new documentary film about him, there's a clip of Rosenwald from a 1929 newsreel. Julius Rosenwald was one of the most famous men in America, a hugely successful businessman and a very important philanthropist especially when it came to supporting African-Americans in the days of segregation.
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