by Cieslafdn | Nov 14, 2014 | Social Justice Work
The black and white footage of the statuesque Justice Department attorney John Doar, escorting James Meredith to attempt to register at the University of Mississippi, are unforgettable in U.S. Civil Rights history. Doar died November 11 at age 92 in New York. Of Doar’s distinguished legal career, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), an interviewee in The Rosenwald Schools, stated, “Every major step in the South in those days- he was there.” In his seven years as the second highest ranking Civil Rights attorney at the DOJ, in addition to to successfully prosecuting the killers of Civil Rights volunteers James Chaney. Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner, Doar won a conviction of the gunman who killed Selma voting rights volunteer and Detroit mother Viola Luozzo.
There were Rosenwald Schools in every Southern U.S. state, as well as Maryland and Texas. Doar tried Civil Rights cases in nearly all those states, sometimes appearing in courtrooms in three states on the same day.
The pioneering attorney who died this Veterans Day, served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War Two. He graduated Princeton University, where the 6’4″ Doar played on the basketball team in the mid-1940’s. His first years at Justice were under President Eisenhower. After the Civil Rights Movement, Doar served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, where he led an impeachment inquiry against President Nixon in 1973. One of the young attorneys on his staff was Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Historians have said the Civil Rights Movement was fought on three fronts, equality of education, public demonstration. and legal battles, Julius Rosenwald’s support of Black schools exemplifies the former, and the work of John Doar, the latter.
John Doar, far left, w/ Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, and then-Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall:
by Cieslafdn | Nov 14, 2014 | Film Production
In our upcoming film about Julius Rosenwald, we plan to talk a little bit about the great Reform rabbi Emil Hirsch. Hirsch was the rabbi at Sinai Congregation in Chicago around the turn of the 20th century and had a great influence on Rosenwald’s personal philosophy of charity. An intense orator, Hirsch was well-known in the city for his fiercely held beliefs about social justice and for the way he would lecture his own congregants, some of the wealthiest men in Chicago, if he felt they had acted selfishly or unjustly in their business affairs.
Hirsch must have been physically imposing as well, and one of the most interesting facts in his early biography is that, before he was ordained as a rabbi, he played football at University of Pennsylvania. Picturing Rabbi Hirsch on the college gridiron (with no padding at that time, of course) is the sort of detail that can really bring a figure from history to life in a documentary film, so it’s been disappointing that we haven’t yet turned up a photo of the rabbi from that time in life.
Our first stop, of course, was University of Pennsylvania’s archives. Penn has an extensive online archive of its own history and, surprisingly, you can actually view yearbooks from when Hirsch attended in the early 1870s online. Here’s an example of the “University Record” from 1871, where you can see Hirsch’s name as the treasurer of the class of ’72 on the very first page. Unfortunately, yearbooks from this time did not include headshots of students.
Not only did Hirsch play football at Penn, according to this document from the Penn archives, he was actually part of the first football game played at the university in 1871. American football was just in its infancy at that time and was mainly played at East Coast universities. The 1871 game, which pitted the seniors (including Hirsch) against the underclassman, was also recounted on page 26 of the 1872 yearbook, but again, with no pictures.
Football stayed popular at Penn after this inaugural game, and team photos exist in Penn’s archives for the 1878, 1879 and 1880 team. Kudos to Penn for keeping such a wonderful archive of its early sports teams, but we can’t help feeling a bit disappointed – if Hirsch had played football at Penn only a few years later than he did, we might have a photo of him with the team to use in The Rosenwald Schools.
by Cieslafdn | Nov 6, 2014 | Ciesla Foundation
Top Barack Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett made an appearance in the September 28th episode the CBS drama “The Good Wife.” According to The Washington Post, Jarrett played herself and urged the main character, Alica Florrick to run for Illinois state’s attorney. Jarrett is the great-granddaughter of Robert Robinson Taylor, the seminal Tuskegee Institute architect, and the granddaughter of Robert Rochon Taylor, who was the first manager of Julius Rosenwald’s Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments. We have interviewed Jarrett’s mother, who grew up in the MBGA, for our upcoming documentary about Julius Rosenwald.
Read more about Jarrett’s CBS cameo at The Washington Post.
by Cieslafdn | Nov 4, 2014 | Rosenwald Screenings
On Saturday, October 25, Aviva Kemper, producer and director of The Rosenwald Schools, presented on the panel “Jewish History on the Big Screen: Documentary Filmmakers” at the conference “Crossing Borders: Southern Jews in Global Contexts”, in Austin, Texas. Kempner screened an excerpt from The Rosenwald Schools and discussed filmmaking vis-a-vis Jewish history. The panel was moderated by Hollace Ava Weiner, author, curator, archivist, and former president of the Southern Jewish Historical Society. Other panelists were filmmakers Cynthia Salzman Mondell and Allen Mondell, founders of Media Projects of Dallas, whose films include West of Hester Street, and Make Me A Match.
The excerpt from the film was warmly received, and we look forward to showing the completed film next fall at their annual meeting in Nashville.
For more details on “Crossing Borders”, including a panel on Blacks and Jews: The Genealogical Record, moderated by Leonard Rogoff of the Jewish Heritage Foundation of North Carolina, click here.
During the screening of The Rosenwald Schools
Eli Evans, who will appear in The Rosenwald Schools, spoke at the conference
by Cieslafdn | Oct 3, 2014 | Rosenwald Grant Recipients
The Christian Science Monitor reports that a large multimedia exhibit at the new National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta were designed by the talented director and playwright George C. Wolfe. The article talks about Wolfe’s childhood, growing up in segregated Frankfort, Kentucky. Attending the Rosenwald School in Frankfort was a highlight of Wolfe’s childhood. He will speak about the school and his mother, a teacher at “Rosenwald,” in our upcoming documentary about the Rosenwald Schools.
You can read more about the museum and Wolfe at the Christian Science Monitor.
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