Great find in the Lessing Rosenwald collection at the Library of Congress

by | Jan 6, 2015 | Film Production

We came across something remarkable at the Library of Congress this week. One of our researchers was there to look at some photos of Lessing Rosenwald, who donated a collection of rare books that has been one of the key components of the Library of Congress’s Rare Book and Special Collections division since his death in 1979. Born in 1891, Lessing was the first child of Julius and Augusta Rosenwald, and followed in his father’s footsteps in the 1930s as president of Sears Roebuck.


Lessing in July 1913 with Edith Goodkind, who he would marry in November of that year
Photo credit: Courtesy of Peter Ascoli

Descendants of the Rosenwalds talk about the divide between Lessing, Adele and Edith Rosenwald, who grew up in a close-knit middle class household, and Marion and William Rosenwald, who came of age after Julius Rosenwald had made his fortune at Sears. Unlike Lessing, Adele and Edith, Marion and William felt a certain distance from their parents as Julius and Augusta’s social and civic obligations began to take up more and more of their time.


Julius Rosenwald with his son Lessing, circa 1895
Photo credit: The estate of Nancy Salazar

Staff at the Library of Congress recently came across Lessing Rosenwald’s “baby book,” a beautiful volume that contains pictures of Lessing as a baby with his two sisters and mother, handwritten notes by his parents about his weight, when he started crawling, and even a lock of his hair from his first haircut. This amazing album sheds some light on the loving family circle Lessing grew up in and it’s a great complement to his legacy, the Rosenwald Room at the Library of Congress and the remarkable collection he so generously donated to the institution.


Augusta Rosenwald with her first three children, Edith, Adele and Lessing
Photo credit: Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection archive

Thanks to the staff at the Library of Congress for making this great collection available to all!

Forgotten Gordon Parks Photos Of His Hometown Discovered

by | Jan 2, 2015 | Rosenwald Grant Recipients

In 1950, while working for Life magazine, Gordon Parks returned to his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas to photograph his classmates from the segregated Plaza School. Parks previously received a Rosenwald fellowship in 1942 to work at the Farm Security Administration. Known for his striking images that highlighted racial issues in America, Parks’ portrait of his former classmates offers a glimpse into the lives of African Americans on the cusp of the civil rights movement. Although the series was originally intended to be a Life cover story, the magazine never published the photographs, which were soon forgotten (you can read about another discovery of lost Parks’ photographs in a previous blog post).

An article in The New York Times details how the photographs were uncovered in the archives of the Gordon Parks Foundation by a curious curator at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. The museum will be opening an exhibition of the lost photos on January 17. The photographs themselves depict intimate moments from the lives of Parks’ now-adult classmates, most who were struggling to survive under the burdens of racism and segregation. Accompanying the photographs are Parks’ own words, his notes possibly intended as an introduction in Life magazine. Although there is no official explanation for why the story never ran, the exhibit’s curator speculates the spread was too political and newsworthy for the magazine.