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GENERAL RESOURCES

National Trust for Historic PreservationRosenwald Initiative

Fisk University’s Rosenwald Card File
Created as the program ended in the early 1930s, this was an attempt to list every Rosenwald school ever built. Many entries include photos taken in the early 1930s.

The Library of Congress offers this list of Rosenwald websites.
 
Wikipedia offers this very partial list of extant Rosenwald buildings.
 
Advocates propose that the federal government create a Rosenwald National Historical Park. Their website includes an extensive feasibility study by the US Department of the Interior.
 

BOOKS

Peter Max Ascoli, Julius Rosenwald: The Man Who Build Sears, Roebuck and Advance the Cause of Black Education in the American South, Indiana University Press, 2006. (Available from Amazon)

Stephanie Deutsch, You Need a Schoolhouse: Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald, and the Building of Schools for the Segregated South, Northwestern University Press, December 30, 2011 (Available from Amazon) NPR Story about You Need a Schoolhouse.

Mary S. Hoffschwelle, The Rosenwald Schools of the American South. (University Press of Florida, 2006).

Adam Fairclough, A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

Andrew Feiler, A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools That Changed America (Available on Amazon)  Feiler’s magnificent photos are also touring in an exhibit. Search the web to see if it will be near you.

Norman H. Finkelstein, Schools of Hope: How Julius Rosenwald Helped Change African American Education (Available on Amazon) (especially for middle school readers)

Marti Rosner, Frye Gaillard, Ezra Wants to Know: The True Story of the Rosenwald Schools (Available on Amazon) (especially for young readers)

ARTICLES

Rosenwald Schools_and Black Education in NC, Thomas Hanchett
This 1988 article on North Carolina\’s Rosenwalds remains one of the best introductions to the Rosenwald Schools story.

Black Schools Restored as Landmarks, Erik Eckholm, New York Times, January 14, 2010

FILM & VIDEO

Longleaf Productions:  3-minute trailer
 
 
The Bridge that Brought Us Through: Rosenwald Schools in South Carolina
 
Monuments with Blackboards: The Rosenwald Schools of Virginia
 
(These are the first three installments of a planned series by Longleaf Productions: filmmakers Tom Lassiter and Jere Snyder of Winston Salem, NC.)
 

Under the Kudzu, Film by Claudia Stack about a Rosenwald school in Pender County, NC.

The Rosenwald Schools, An Aviva Kempner Film

Individual Buildings

WALNUT COVE COMMUNITY CENTER, NC

NOBLE HILL, GA

LI’L RED – DREW, MISSISSIPPI

ROSENWALD SCHOOLS IN YOUR STATE

Every state has a State Historic Preservation Office. If you search “Preservation” with “Rosenwald Schools” and your state’s name, you will tap into some of the resources. In North Carolina, for instance:
 
 
* “African American Education in North Carolina: NC Digital Collections”  Includes two collections: documents related to Rosenwald Schools; School Planning Building Photographs