by Cieslafdn | Aug 4, 2014 | Social Justice Work
The Northwest Current reported last month that plans to create a memorial to Carter G. Woodson in the District of Columbia are moving forward. The city council is reviewing plans that were recently approved by the National Capital Planning Commission.
Why Woodson? Woodson was a prominent African American educator, writer and historian who is perhaps best known today for promoting the first Negro History Week in the mid-1920s, a celebration of African American history that lives on today in Black History Month. Woodson lived for many years in Washington D.C. and his historic home, which is owned by the National Park Service, is only a few steps from the proposed memorial site at Q and 9th Streets, NW.
In 1927, around the same time he founded Negro History Week, Woodson completed the first history of the Rosenwald Fund’s school-building program (which was winding down and would end in 1932). The Rosenwald Fund opened its archives (which present a rich demographic picture of rural African American communities in the early 20th century) and provided funding to Woodson to complete this important historical work. Woodson’s work was never published, but the manuscript is stored with the Rosenwald Fund Papers at Fisk University in Nashville.
At this same point in his life, while living in Washington in the mid-1920s, Woodson also crossed paths with a young Langston Hughes. Through a friend of his mother’s, Hughes got a job as Woodson’s personal assistant and began doing clerical work in Woodson’s office. Hughes writes in his autobiography that despite realizing the importance of Woodson’s research, he disliked the position so much that he soon quit and began work at the Wardman Park Hotel. Woodson was a good literary connection for Hughes, but the job at the Wardman Park Hotel gave him the opportunity to become the famous “busboy poet,” when he slipped three of his poems to a critic named Vachel Lindsay who was dining at the hotel. Lindsay introduced Hughes to publishers who would later print some of his most famous works.
Woodson was a great historian and a great Washingtonian. Kudos to the city for recognizing him with a new statue and memorial park.
by Cieslafdn | Jul 31, 2014 | Rosenwald Grant Recipients
Adrian Higgins writes for The Washington Post about the historic home of African American poet Anne Spencer. Spencer lived most of her life in segregated Lynchburg, Virginia, and her Victorian home became a salon of sorts for Harlem Renaissance figures. Her social circle contained many past Rosenwald fellows as well, like Marian Anderson, James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes. In Lynchburg, Spencer formed a local chapter of the NAACP and spoke out against segregation on public transportation. Spencer’s home and garden has been restored by the combined efforts of her descendants and a Lynchburg garden club, and both can be visited today.
Read more at The Washington Post.
by Cieslafdn | Jul 30, 2014 | School Restorations
Recently, our intern Nat McMaster visited three Rosenwald Schools near his hometown in South Carolina. The three are in varying states of repair, but Nat captured the beauty of each with his photographs. His report and photos are below:
1. Howard Junior High School ~ 431 Shiloh Street, Prosperity SC
Also known as the Shiloh School, Howard Junior High School – located on the property of Shiloh African Methodist Episcopal Church – served African-American students from in and around Prosperity between 1925 and 1954. It features four distinct classrooms, an assembly area, and large walls of windows on the front and back of the building. In the 1930s, two classrooms were added to the original structure and connected by a dogtrot.
Currently, Shiloh AME Church is the process of renovating the school for use as a social hall and other church functions. The school itself is not open to visitors, but you are welcome to wander around the surrounding cemetery and take pictures.
Howard Junior High School is listed on the national register of historic places.
2. Hannah Rosenwald School ~ 61 Deadfall Road, Newberry SC
Located south of Newberry on the property of Hannah AME Church, Hannah Rosenwald School is also known as the Utopia School, after the surrounding community. The school features three classrooms, three cloakrooms, and an entry hall. It is notable for being built on a north-to-south orientation, whereas most schools in South Carolina were built east-to-west. Hannah School was closed in the 1960s when rural county schools were consolidated with the Newberry and Silverstreet school systems.
Though it currently sits in disrepair and houses some old church furniture and other assorted items, the Hannah AME Church is looking to Heritage Preservation Services for a grant to begin renovation. The church also possesses the marble dedication tablet, which reads ROSENWALD SCHOOL, ERECTED 1925.
Hannah Rosenwald School is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
3. Hope Rosenwald School ~ 1971 Hope Station Road, Pomaria SC
Though a total of 26 Rosenwald Schools were built in Newberry County alone, Hope Rosenwald School is one of only a few to be completely renovated. The school is located on the property of Saint Paul AME Church, outside Pomaria, and serves as a community center for the surrounding area.
It was constructed in 1925 on land sold to Newberry County by the Hope family for a mere five dollars. It was consolidated with the Newberry school system in 1954. The building contains two main classrooms, a kitchen (formerly an “industrial room”), and two cloakrooms. There is no known outhouse or privy to have been located on the property; if there was one, it was lost even before the consolidation of the schools. Three batteries of large windows adorn the front of the building, and two adorn the rear, however no windows are located on the sides of the building.
Hope Rosenwald School is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
More about the history and design of the schools is on the S.C. Dept. of Archives and History website. All photographs belong to Nat McMaster and the Ciesla Foundation.
by Cieslafdn | Jul 30, 2014 | Social Justice Work
Douglas Brinkley, who (with Johnny Depp) co-edited and wrote the introduction for the 2013 posthumous release of Woody Guthrie’s lost novel, House of Earth, will discuss his new book (co-written with Luke Nichter) The Nixon Tapes: 1971-1972 at two locations in the District of Columbia next week. House of Earth was a powerful novel written by Guthrie under his Rosenwald fellowship in the early 1940s.
First on August 6th at 7PM, Brinkley and Nichter will be at Politics and Prose, a bookstore in Northwest Washington. Then, on August 8th at noon, the two will appear at the William G. McGowan Theater at the National Archives.
Douglas Brinkley in 2007
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
by Cieslafdn | Jul 21, 2014 | Rosenwald Grant Recipients
Were he still alive, James Baldwin would have been 90 years old this year. His thoughts, words and the way he used them to analyze the racial climate of the time touched readers and fellow authors alike.
After winning a Rosenwald grant in 1948, Baldwin could start work on his first novel: Go Tell It On The Mountain. In this novel, he explored religion and its effect on the nature of relationships and interactions within a community. For African Americans specifically, Baldwin’s Go Tell It On The Mountain looks at the repressions, moral hypocrisy and inspiration that comes from being entrenched in the church community.
Portrait of James Baldwin, 1955
Photo Credit: Library of Congress, Carl Van Vechten Collection
The experiences of racial tension in Harlem, life in France with the expatriates, and travels around the country during the Civil Rights era shape the the enduring image and legacy of Baldwin. In the 1940s he fled the abuse, frustration and despair that came with being a young black man in America.
For him, “It wasn’t so much a matter of choosing France—it was a matter of getting out of America. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me in France but I knew what was going to happen to me in New York. If I had stayed there, I would have gone under, like my friend on the George Washington Bridge,” he told the Paris Review.
The characters in Baldwin’s work, reflect this feeling. They’re as frustrated and downtrodden as Baldwin, hiding their fear and clutching on to their anger. But he reaches beyond this to the everyday interactions, manifestations of love and compassion that humanized the characters. Black youth for generations to come have identified with his stories, such as “Sonny’s Blues”.
Walter Dean Myers, who made a career writing children’s stories, was one of the many inspired by Baldwin to write stories where, as Myers explained, “black children [are] going to get a sense of who they are and what they can be.”
Myers died earlier this month, but much like his mentor Baldwin, his work remains an integral part of the African American literary canon.
A friend of Myers is quoted in his New York Times obituary saying that Myers “wrote about disenfranchised black kids, particularly boys, and he wrote about them with extraordinary honesty and also with compassion.” Undoubtedly some of this honesty and compassion was passed down from Baldwin, who also created a literary space where young black males could find themselves and their sense of belonging.
By Anakwa Dwamena
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