One of the most significant institutions of Black education in the United States was the Rosenwald School, a local school developed in part through the philanthropy of Julius Rosenwald. Although many of the physical schools no longer remain in Arkansas, their legacy survives through the students educated in them.
Julius Rosenwald was born in 1862 in Springfield, Ill., to Jewish immigrant parents. He never finished high school or attended college but went into the clothing business instead in 1878. He invested $35,000 in the stock of Sears, Roebuck and Co. in 1895, and in a little more than 30 years, it grew into $150,000,000. He became president of the company in 1908 and chairman in 1922. Rosenwald became a trustee of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1912 and made gifts to the rural school movement being carried out by the institute, primarily through close contact with his friend Booker T. Washington, whose autobiography, “Up From Slavery,” inspired his philanthropic vision. Washington had a goal of providing safe, purpose-built school buildings for Black students, and Rosenwald wholeheartedly supported Washington’s dream.
Rosenwald believed that a philanthropist should focus on expendable rather than endowment resources. He felt that donors needed to make sure that their contributions would make the most impact within their lifetimes. The needs and problems of future generations, he believed, should be left to the philanthropists of the future to solve.
In 1917, Rosenwald established the Julius Rosenwald Fund, aimed specifically at creating more equitable opportunities for Black people in the South. State records indicate that at the time the fund ceased sponsoring school building programs, it had aided in the building of 389 school buildings (schools, shops, and teachers’ homes) in 45 counties in Arkansas. (A total of 4,977 schools, 217 teachers’ homes, and 163 shop buildings were built in 15 states across the South with the assistance of more than $4.3 million from the Rosenwald Fund.) The fund contributed over $300,000 to Arkansas.
The state or counties owned and maintained all of the schools, and the land was usually donated by a white landowner. Rosenwald (and Washington as well) believed very strongly in the local communities playing a hands-on role in the development of the schools. Unlike many charitable organizations, the Rosenwald Fund would help a school only if the community itself had raised some of the money, matching the grant through cash, materials or labor so that it would have a strong commitment to the program. In fact, many building campaigns were initiated by local Black leaders, and the schools built represented the community’s determination to provide a decent education for its students. In Arkansas, R.C. Childress of Little Rock was the Rosenwald building agent during most of the time of the fund’s existence.
Most of the Rosenwald Schools in Arkansas were built in the southeastern half of the state, where there was a greater need for school facilities for Black students, but schools were built as far northwest as Franklin and Logan counties. To aid in the design and construction of the schools, Samuel Smith, general field agent for the Rosenwald Fund, developed a series of floor plans and specifications for a variety of schools, using the most up-to-date innovations in school design. The blueprints were published in a book titled “Community School Plans” and could be obtained from the Rosenwald Fund through the state’s education office. Smith felt that having a stock set of blueprints and specifications would allow any community to build a quality school without having to hire an architect, and the school plans turned out to be one of his greatest legacies. Although plans were provided, it was not necessary for schools to be built using the standard plans; any non-standard plan used, however, had to be approved by the Rosenwald Fund.
In 2002, Rosenwald Schools gained national attention when the National Trust for Historic Preservation named all Rosenwald Schools one of America’s 11 most endangered places. A few years later, efforts spearheaded by the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program found that 18 Rosenwald buildings of the original 389 remained in Arkansas. Today, a few of the buildings have been rehabilitated, and some schools have active alumni associations. Some no longer exist; the Chicot County Training School in Dermott, for example, collapsed in 2020. A few of the structures have been listed on the National Register for Historic Places, such as the Rosenwald Schools in Malvern, Delight, and the Sevier County community of Oak Grove. Most Rosenwald Schools, however, are vacant and deteriorating, lacking markers to indicate their important place in Arkansas’s history.
— Ralph S. Wilcox
This story is adapted by Guy Lancaster from the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas, a project of the Central Arkansas Library System. Visit the site at encyclopediaofarkansas.net.
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