Rosenwald Schools in Chattanooga, Tennessee
Julius Rosenwald & Booker T. Washington. This unlikely friendship fostered the education of over 663,000 African American students. Photo courtesy of The Rosenwald Project
by Jennifer Crutchfield, National Park Partners
In 1912, a friendship was forged between a former slave and the child of Jewish immigrants that educated over 663,000 African American students across the rural South. This improbable kinship between Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald changed lives, fostered community growth and altered the landscape of philanthropy. The Rosenwald Schools required matching funds from white school boards in addition to self-help and matching construction funds from African-American communities. Their unique matching model empowered communities as the driving force defining what the school and education meant to them.
Booker Taliaferro Washington, born a slave in Virginia, was the revolutionary leader of the Tuskegee Institute and was devoted to creating opportunities for African-American families to improve quality of life through educational achievement. Noted expert Deborah Morowski points out that the Tuskegee curriculum helped students achieve a sense of personal and collective efficacy and concluded that the social studies curriculum provided an opportunity for the empowerment of African-American students during a time marred by segregation, inequity and cultural division.
This Rosenwald School in Chattanooga was named for Roland W. Hayes, a Chattanooga man who became the world’s greatest concert tenor, this school was the three-teacher style of the Rosenwald School models. Photo courtesy of Fisk University, Rosenwald Database
Students from Rosenwald Schools became thought leaders, change-makers and social justice icons with names like Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, Congressman John Lewis and Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. who learned from the institutions supported by Sears magnate Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington.
Chattanooga was still reeling from the final floods before the Tennessee Electric Power Company (the precursor to TVA) harnessed the power of the River with a hydroelectric-producing dam. During those early decades of the 1900s, flooding had created spirals of disease and devastation as the downtown fell victim to raging waters dozens of times. The city, a beacon of hope and culture in the South, became home to eight (8) schools built between 1922 and the program’s end in 1932.
As Americans reflect on the impact of Rosenwald Schools, leaders in education, politics, architecture, medicine and other professions who it produced emerge who worked hard in communities across the United States, and indeed worldwide, to achieve equity, opportunity and access to education, economic achievement and the American dream.
“I can feel the connection that runs from the Rosenwald Fund and Sears and Roebuck in Chicago, to Tuskegee in Alabama, to the civil rights movement in the American South, to the political movement that created the first black president. It’s a wonderful feeling to know that I’ve lived through most of that.”
- Julian Bond, civil rights leader, whose father was a Rosenwald Fellow who worked for the Rosenwald Fund [69]”
Roland Hayes School Song. “We’re the kids from Roland Hayes School and our work is bound to show!” Courtesy of The Roland Hayes, Riverside, Bozentown Reunion Committee
Today, the work of these two men and the legacy of change represented by the Rosenwald Schools is being honored in a project that will preserve and learn from the sites that remain. Hundreds of guests joined the Moccasin Bend Lecture Series to hear Doctor Dorothy Canter and her talk, “The Legacy of Julius Rosenwald and the Rosenwald Schools National Historical Park Campaign.”
Visit the National Park Partners channel on YouTube to enjoy that fascinating discussion and our event page for information about upcoming events in this annual series sponsored by Tennessee State Representative Greg A. Vital. National Park Partners supports the work of the National Park Service sites in the region and is managed by a community board, including Chattanooga News Chronicle publisher, John Edwards. Dedicated to protecting, preserving and interpreting our National Treasures, the organization’s team is looking for alums from Chattanooga’s Rosenwald Schools to celebrate their role in our community.
Built during a time when communities were split by segregation and divided by color, these schools began a tide of change. None of the original buildings in Chattanooga are still in use, but their legacy remains and the team at National Park Partners is eager to collect history, stories and photographs. Alums are invited to click here to share stories from Bakewell School, Booker T Washington, Chickamauga School, Georgetown School, Hixson School, Roland W. Hayes, Summit School or Washington School.