Julius Rosenwald Biography Gail Heriot

I saw in the New York Times obits that former Sears, Roebuck CEO Arthur Wood died recently.  He was best known perhaps for his role in building the Sears Tower–which was then the world’s tallest building.  His obit reminded me of my intention to blog about another Sears, Roebuck CEO, Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932), whose biography I picked up just recently.

Its title is long:  “Julius Rosenwald:  The Man Who Built Sears, Roebuck and Advanced the Cause of Black Education in the American South.”  And that title pretty much tells the story.  But let me elaborate just a tad.  Rosenwald is credited with making Sears the largest mail-order firm in the world.  That’s accomplishment enough for almost any man.  But Rosenwald went on to become one of the most generous and creative philanthropists of his generation.  It’s for his financing of schools for black children in the Jim Crow South that he is best remembered today. 

It began with a gift of $25,000 to Tuskegee Institute in 1912, which was then under the leadership of the charimatic (and these days much-underappreciated) Booker T. Washington.  Together they devised a plan to build thousands of “Rosenwald Schools” across the rural South with challenge grants to the local government authorities.   The schools were small–just a little better than one room–but they provided a chance at education for thousands of young black children.  In the end, there were over 5000 and 4000 little libraries to go with them.  No doubt there are many Americans alive today who learned to read at a Rosenwald School.

I was on a rather remote island in the South Carolina Low Country about a year ago (I finally got the right shoes), and I came across a rundown structure that I thought might have been a schoolhouse.  Someone had been cleaning it out and there were books thrown away that had been rained on and were beginning to mold.  I picked one of them up–“Great South Carolinians.”  Its copyright was 1940. As I was paging through it, I noticed that on its title page it was stamped “For Use in Colored Schools.”  I tucked it under my arm and took it with me and wondered if I might be looking at one of the old Rosenwald Schools.  I still don’t know, but I like to think it was.

Here’s to you Mr. Rosenwald.  Yours was a life well-lived.