Do you know about the Rosenwald Schools, built for rural Black students 100 years ago?
It rises in a lonely wooded field in Lockhart, Texas.
On a façade that faces East Market Street, one spies six windows wrapped around a simple portico. A stroll around the exterior of the two-story building reveals a sturdy structure that has survived several public roles and a long period of abandonment.
It is a Rosenwald School.
Built in 1923, it served segregated Black students from the area and their six teachers.
When I first visited the grounds of the boarded-up school in 2016 for a story on historic Lockhart, I had never knowingly encountered any of the 527 Rosenwald campuses that were built in rural Texas with the help of the Julius Rosenwald School Building Program.
A total of 4,978 of these schools were constructed across the South during the early 20th century. They were built with matching grants from the fund set up in 1917 by the namesake Jewish merchant who led and partly owned Sears, Roebuck & Company, then the largest retailer in the U.S.
Rosenwald generated the fund at the suggestion of educator and civic leader Booker T. Washington, who urged self-sufficiency among African Americans and especially vocational education..
Many of the schools, built on locally owned land with local planning and labor, were founded in freedom colonies of independent, land-owning African Americans for whom slavery was part of living memory.
I'm going out on a limb to guess that many readers — like myself in 2016 — had never encountered a Rosenwald School, or the movement that inspired them. If you are curious, however, visit "A Better Life for Their Children," a magnificent photographic exhibit at the Bullock Texas State History Museum through Feb. 23.
Then keep your eyes open. The schools are everywhere, especially in East Texas. True, some have disappeared. Others have been abandoned. Still others have been converted into civic projects, like churches, museums or community centers.
What will I see at the history museum?
The first thing the visitor notices inside the large first-floor gallery dedicated to temporary historical exhibits is the wide open spaces. Oftentimes, this gallery is packed with objects. "A Better Life for Their Children," in contrast, consists mostly of large black-and-white prints of photos taken by Andrew Feiler across the South and first exhibited in Atlanta.
Localizing the images, Bullock's curators have added historical artifacts — here a desk, there a teacher's chair, over there, a pot belly stove, a lunch tray, a typewriter — preserved from Texas Rosenwald Schools.
In addition, the Bullock produced a large, useful map that visualizes the distribution of the schools in Texas.
To the left of the entrance, one finds a large photograph of Elroy and Sophia Williams taken by Feiler at the Hopewell School at Cedar Creek in Bastrop County. The couple holds a portrait of Sophia's grandparents, Sophia Veal and Martin McDonald, former slaves who acquired and donated the land for the school.
"One of five Rosenwald Schools built in Bastrop County, Hopewell School opened in 1922 and served the town of Cedar Creek until the 1950s," a wall text explains. "Later, as former students, teachers and their descendants became aware of the school’s historical significance, they rallied the community in an effort to save the building. Restoration work began in 2016, and today the former schoolhouse serves as a community center."
Nearby is the original portrait of Veal and McDonald from the 1920s.
"After emancipation, Martin McDonald farmed and raised livestock until he earned enough money to buy land," a wall text reads. "After his death, his widow Sophia Veal donated land for the construction of the Hopewell School in 1919. Although Martin never attended school himself, the donation provided educational opportunities for family and neighbors. Martin and Sophia’s daughter Artelia McDonald Brown was the school’s first teacher, and her daughter Sophia Williams, attended as a student."
This kind of story — particular yet universal — is repeated throughout the exhibit. It is clear that, 100 years ago, Black parents, whose children were excluded from the white school system, wanted the best for their children's future. With the help of outside money, they built that future for them with their own hands and other resources.
One of my favorite photos, typical of the period, shows the students and teachers at Jefferson Jacob School (1917–1957) in Jefferson County, Kentucky, neatly lined up on the steps to the building.
"Two teachers and 55 students were photographed in the 1920s in front of the Jefferson Jacob School," a wall text reads. "Early in the school building program, Booker T. Washington sent Julius Rosenwald photographs like this of schoolchildren and teachers standing proudly in front of their schools. Rosenwald was deeply moved by these images, and they contributed to his decision to expand the initiative."
How did the schools schools come about?
Born to Jewish immigrants, Julius Rosenwald rose to steer Sears, Roebuck & Company and turn it into the world’s largest retailer. Born into slavery, Booker T. Washington became the founding principal of Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, in Alabama.
Rosenwald and Washington met in 1911. At that time, Black public schools in the South were usually in informal facilities with poor materials and operated on a tiny fraction of the money provided for educating white children. Many communities did not even have public schools for Black students. Rosenwald donated millions of dollars to build the new schools.
"Rosenwald and Washington, forging one of the earliest collaborations between Jews and African Americans, attacked this education challenge with originality and sophistication and created the program that became known as Rosenwald schools," the introductory text from the exhibit reads. "From 1912 to 1932, the Rosenwald schools program built 4,977 schools for African American children across 15 southern and border states. One final school was added in 1937. This program drove dramatic improvement in African American educational attainment and fostered the generation who became the leaders and foot soldiers of the civil rights movement."
How did the exhibit come about?
Of the original 4,978 Rosenwald schools, about 500 survive.
To tell this story through images, Feiler drove more than 25,000 miles, photographed 105 schools and interviewed dozens of former students, teachers, preservationists and community leaders in all 15 of the program's states.
This is not his first epic project about cultural history. Feiler’s work has been featured in the Smithsonian, Architect and Preservation magazines as well as on CBS This Morning, PBS, and NPR. His prints have been displayed in galleries and museums such as the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, and International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina.
"Andrew Feiler is a photographer and author and fifth-generation Georgian," a wall text reads. "Having grown up Jewish in Savannah, he has been shaped by the rich complexities of the American South. Feiler has long been active in civic life. He has helped create over a dozen community initiatives, serves on multiple not-for-profit boards, and is an active advisor to numerous elected officials and political candidates.
"His art is an extension of his civic values."