He saved every penny he made as a teenager, but discovered he didn’t even have enough for the roughly four-hundred-mile journey from Malden, West Virginia, to the Hampton Industrial and Normal School. He slept wherever he could, sometimes hitching a ride on a freight train, stopping to work when the hunger gnawing in his belly couldn’t be sated by food that he foraged. He walked most of the way, and when he arrived at the school, he didn’t look like the kind of students they admitted.
He presented himself to the woman in charge, a white woman named Mary Mackie. Because African Americans had been denied the opportunity for education for hundreds of years, testing their knowledge as a requirement for admission was largely pointless. Instead, Mackie wanted to see if he was the kind of student who was willing to work hard. She told him to tidy a nearby classroom. Booker knew this was his chance, so he cleaned the classroom. And then he cleaned it again. And then he cleaned it a third time. Over and over, he swept the floors. The blackboards gleamed.
Finally, he pronounced the room clean enough and nervously waited while Mackie ran her handkerchief over the top of the blackboard, along the baseboards, around the clock, and over the door frame. All of them were spotless. Booker was offered admission. And a position as the school’s janitor to pay for his tuition.
Hampton was founded by Samuel Armstrong, son of Hawaiian missionaries. Armstrong came to the United States to attend college, and left college to enlist in the Union Army, where he commanded all-Black regiments of troops. He saw that, despite being excellent soldiers who fought valiantly and trained rigorously, few of them could read. Lack of literacy was not because of a lack of ability, it was because generations of enslavers greatly feared what could happen if Black people became educated. Enslavers made it illegal to teach enslaved people to read, and consequently, few of their parents knew how to read, even if they were free. Education was liberation, and the enslavers knew it.[4]
After the Civil War, Armstrong convinced the American Missionary Association to support beginning an industrial and normal school for African Americans. (For centuries, teacher preparation programs were called “normal” schools. The idea was that the colleges prepared teachers by instructing them on the “norms” of pedagogy and curriculum.) Armstrong believed strongly in the vocational model of schooling, reasoning that after hundreds of years of enslavement, white people should be responsible to help guide the formerly enslaved, to help them find employment, and to assist in the development of their moral character.
Booker was immediately taken with Armstrong’s philosophy. Other Black leaders of the time were not. In Booker T. Washington’s autobiography, Up from Slavery, he described Armstrong as “a great man—the noblest, rarest human being it has ever been my privilege to meet.” Booker eventually joined the faculty at Hampton.[5]
A friend, John Denison, wrote a tribute to Armstrong in an 1894 edition of The Atlantic, the same magazine that published the likes of Katie Bates. He said, “With astute insight, Armstrong not only saw exactly the character and function of the African nature; he took in the organic value of a New England Deacon, a Boston millionaire, a Quaker philanthropist, and a Virginia legislature; he understood the gearing by which they could be united; he understood the relation of Providence to organisms of all kinds.”[6] That Quaker philanthropist was Anna Jeanes.
Armstrong, however, did not believe that the Black students he was educating should be allowed to vote, and he encouraged the Black community to divest itself from the hard-won political gains they had made throughout the South after the Civil War ended. In The Education of Blacks in the South, historian James D. Anderson recounts how Armstrong felt that “the votes of Negroes have enabled some of the worst men who ever figured in American politics to hold high places of honor and trust.”[7] Armstrong encouraged Black leaders to refuse elected office, at least for a few generations, until whites could steer them into the kind of moral framework they believed would benefit them.
Notably, the framework that Samuel Armstrong and his acolytes used as a model for Black education was “fundamentally different from and opposed to the interests of freedmen,” says Anderson, and Armstrong “developed a pedagogy and ideology…that did not challenge traditional inequalities of wealth and power.”[8]
Here again is the AND, the nuance that we must embrace with history. Our minds want to categorize people into one of two camps: Good or evil. Angel or demon. Most often, that viewpoint denies people the fullness of their humanity and can overlook positive contributions or ignore negative impacts. The fact is that Sam Armstrong had paternalistic and harmful ideas, and he was also beloved by thousands, including students like Booker T. Washington.
Armstrong answered the call from Alabama officials looking for a white leader for their new Black industrial school in Tuskegee, Alabama. Armstrong basically told them, “I can’t recommend any white people. But I know a Black man who would be perfect for it.”
When Booker arrived at Tuskegee in 1881, he found absolutely nothing. Alabama allocated some money for teacher salaries. But they gave zero dollars for buildings or materials or books. In order to make this school a success, Booker was going to have to come up with the money himself. He threw himself into fundraising, speaking for ten minutes in Atlanta, only to hop on a train and head to Boston. He spent years working on Andrew Carnegie to donate the money for a library. He befriended wealthy whites, who were taken by his humble attitude and his ability to make them feel like they were doing something truly important with their money.
Washington’s autobiography was originally published in installments in The Outlook, a weekly Christian magazine. The ensuing book sold thirty thousand copies in two years. Since its publication, Up from Slavery has never been out of print. A friend recommended the book to Julius Rosenwald, and after JR read it, he found himself inspired in unexpected ways.
Rosenwald first met Washington at a luncheon in 1911. He invited a few dozen prominent Chicago business leaders to join him at a new hotel overlooking Lake Michigan. The day was hot, and the men gazed out over the water, sweat soaking their backs. Booker was the first guest of color at the new hotel.[9]
Two months before the luncheon with JR, Booker had been assaulted on the streets of New York, beaten with a walking stick by a man who said he was alarmed by the sight of a Black man near his apartment. When the police arrived, they didn’t believe that the man who had been attacked, whose face was now dripping blood, was the famous Booker T. Washington. The front page of The New York Times read: “Booker T. Washington, head of the Tuskegee Institute for Negroes, was beaten last night in the hall of an apartment house at 11½ West Sixty-third Street by Albert Ulrich, a white resident of that house. Ulrich pursued Dr. Washington along Central Park West to Sixty-fourth Street. In his flight he fell several times and was kicked by others who had joined the pursuit without knowing who the fleeing man was. His scalp was cut in two places, his right ear was split, and his face was cut and scratched.”[10]
At the Chicago luncheon, JR addressed the assembled business leaders: “Whether it is because I belong to a people who have known centuries of persecution or whether it is because I naturally am inclined to sympathize with the oppressed, I have always felt keenly for the colored race.”[11]
Later that same day, Booker and JR attended a gala dinner with four hundred people. They dined on cream of asparagus soup and Neapolitan ice cream, and JR introduced Booker to the crowd. Booker spoke of how any inferiority of Blacks was not intrinsic but came from the fact that they had been enslaved for two hundred fifty years and had no education. He mentioned that in the forty-five years since emancipation, Blacks had built thirty-five thousand church buildings across the South with their own money, and that Blacks would support the YMCAs that Rosenwald had donated money to establish.
JR was modest, saying he didn’t believe he needed to be thanked for his donation, but that he liked donating to YMCAs because they had the ability to bring races together. He said, “There is no problem which faces the American people that has more importance than this problem of how to have these two races live congenially and try to uplift each other.”[12] He surveyed the audience, which was about two-thirds white and one-third Black, and felt good that his work seemed to be having an effect.
I don’t want to paint the picture that JR was without blemish: in letters to his wife, Gussie, he wrote about how he took Booker to tour the Sears plant the day following the luncheon and gala, and he ate with him and a Black physician in the cafeteria. He referred to them as “culled,” or “darkies,” and said he noticed that his workers were curious that he was “showing two ‘n*****s’ around.” He put the N-word in quotation marks.[13] Samuel Armstrong used the same kinds of language in his writings and conversations.
Within a short time, Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald began writing to each other. JR rented a train car and visited the Tuskegee Institute, bringing his wife, rabbi, and other Jewish friends. What he saw at Tuskegee impressed him—he found it better than any facility for whites he had ever seen, expressing that what Booker had done had “inspired [him] beyond words” and that Booker had engaged in “the greatest work of any man in America.”[14] JR joined the board of Tuskegee and began donating money.
Back in Chicago, race relations began to occupy more of JR’s thoughts and conversations. He said, “A harelip is a misfortune, a club foot is a deformity, but side whiskers are a man’s own fault. And race prejudices are side whiskers that are a man’s own fault.”[15] JR was invited to join the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which he did, even arranging for the Chicago chapter to meet at his temple. He served on its board and gave speeches on its behalf.
Booker T. Washington wrote to Teddy Roosevelt, who was also on the board of Tuskegee, saying that he was excited JR had agreed to sit on the board, and that JR was among the strongest men who had ever joined it.[16]
On another visit to Tuskegee, Booker drove JR through the countryside, where they passed a shack, at significant risk of collapse, a single window hanging on for dear life. Booker pointed out the shack and told JR that it was a school, and it was representative of what the state of Alabama provided to Black children.
White northern philanthropists had made inroads with Black education, he explained, describing the work of women like Anna Jeanes. But it was difficult to do good work when students had to hold an umbrella over the teacher when it rained. JR was aghast. Many of the places in the South where school was taught were worse than stables that housed farm animals.
The following month, JR sent a letter to Booker marked “personal.” In the letter, he posed a question: “If I gave you $25,000, how would you spend it?” (For context: this is nearly $800,000 in modern money.) Booker replied that the money would be a godsend, and that it would accomplish more than anyone could even realize.[17]
By the time JR turned fifty, he was richer than any child of a working-class immigrant could ever have imagined. How should I celebrate this milestone? JR wondered to himself. In the quiet of the evenings, he talked with Gussie about taking a special trip. And he would vacation, but JR was envisioning something even more grand. He decided instead to do what Oprah and Ellen would later become well-known for. But instead of YOU GET A CAR AND YOU GET A CAR, he decided on a version of YOU GET A CHECK AND YOU GET A CHECK. He and his family had everything they could ever want in life, and what good were vast piles of wealth doing locked up in a bank?
So he made grants to Hull House, to Jewish charities, to an orphanage, to a tuberculosis sanitorium, and to the Tuskegee Institute, eventually parting ways with $687,000 of his fortune, which is now worth more than $21 million.[18] Though he had long been generous with his time and money, after turning fifty, he felt lighter, less encumbered by the weight of riches. (And yes, I know you’re thinking I would really like to be encumbered by the weight of riches right now. Weigh me down, massive fortune! I can take one for humanity! I understand.)
Some time later, JR received another letter from Booker. Turning it over in his hand and sliding a letter opener beneath the flap, the paper that spilled out contained a proposition that would change America forever.
“Of this sum there was $2,100 left unused at the end of the year. Let me use this unspent money to erect six one-room schools for negroes in the rural section near Tuskegee,” the letter asked.[19]
Booker believed in JR’s philosophy that people appreciate gifts more when they are required to contribute. Much of JR’s philanthropy throughout his lifetime was made in the form of matching grants. “I will give you $50,000 for the YMCA, but you also have to put in $50,000,” JR might offer. Making the recipient contribute funds demonstrated that there was public support for the initiative, and it meant that the recipient was likely to take care of the resources it received.
Booker’s proposition included a series of matching grants, where JR would contribute funds, but the state would also have to contribute, and so would the local Black community. Given what Booker knew about state commitment to education throughout the South, he saw the writing on the wall: the responsibility of keeping up the buildings would have to be shouldered by locals and not the state. If the community wasn’t interested in raising funds, they would not be interested in keeping the building up. This meant that money would only go where the community was invested.
JR wrote back, saying, “I approve.”
Y’all, please sit down, and remain seated for the rest of our journey, because I am about to tell you about something that has never happened anywhere else in the world, before or since.
Over the next nearly two decades, Julius Rosenwald, in partnership with the Tuskegee Institute and thousands of Black communities, built nearly five thousand schools in the United States. Five thousand schools. And not just schools: Houses for teachers. Buses for students. Gymnasiums. Cafeterias. Libraries.
If you came to me and said, “Hey, I built a school,” I would say, “Dang, good for you! That’s impressive!” If you built five schools, my mouth might hang open for a few minutes while you told me the whole story. If you built fifty schools, I would probably call my mom and share the good news with her. But five thousand schools? I almost don’t even know what to do with that information. Five thousand, y’all, okay? Five thousand. Five followed by three zeroes. Do you know how many children can be educated in five followed by three zeroes schools? A lot. A lot.
Booker built an infrastructural system to make sure that there was buy-in from local communities, that they furnished the building supplies from local sources, that they could line up a teacher, that they were prepared to contribute their resources to it. He took states to task, reminding them how stupid they looked if they walked away from free money.
JR formed the Rosenwald Fund and hired people to help run it. He sent employees directly to communities, and he visited some of the schools himself. One of JR’s employees wrote: “I have never seen greater human sacrifices made for the cause of education. Children without shoes on their feet gave from fifty cents to one dollar and old men and old women, whose costumes represented several years of wear, gave from one to five dollars.” The employee went on: “It should be borne in mind that funds with which this project was completed came from people who represented a poor working class, men who worked at furnaces, women who washed and ironed for white people, and children who chopped cotton in the heat of the day for money to go in their snuff boxes.”[20] Everyone did what they could, where they were, with the resources available to them. JR was a rich man with staff. He could well afford to fund five thousand schools. Some of the community members could give only fifty cents. JR may be out here getting maximum credit, but those small gifts mattered. That fifty cents was a sacrifice for some. The widow who pushed five dollars into the collection basket deserves just as much respect as the millionaire.
Initially, most of the schools had two rooms, built to exacting standards. Rosenwald insisted on huge windows for natural light and repeatable designs that were easy to construct and maintain. Soon, demand for schools was so great that architects had to draw up plans for seven- and eight-room facilities. Schools were built at first of wood, and later their construction, spread across fifteen states, was moved to brick.
One examination of the historic impact of the Rosenwald schools found that nearly 90 percent of Black students in Alabama were educated in Rosenwald schools from the time they were built, beginning in 1917, until schools were legally integrated—for some, not until the 1960s. Across the entire American South, more than six hundred thousand African American children attended a Rosenwald school.[21]
But the true reach was far greater than just the hundreds of thousands of children who had the opportunity to receive an education. It’s easy to make the argument that the five thousand schools impacted millions, maybe even tens of millions. Not only did a child receiving an education affect their immediate family, it affected that child’s children, and their grandchildren, and their communities at large. Civil rights icon John Lewis, members of the Little Rock Nine, Maya Angelou, and Medgar Evers all attended schools that were made possible by Julius Rosenwald and the widows, the children, the men working two jobs, the sharecroppers, and the infirm, who all gave to the schools.
