New interviews for The Rosenwald Schools

by | Jun 1, 2012 | Film Production

Filming for the upcoming The Rosenwald Schools is moving forward. On May 16th and 17th, we filmed several interviews with experts and descendents of people who either worked with Julius Rosenwald or were touched by his philanthropy.

ON MADAM C.J. WALKER


A’Lelia Bundles with Aviva Kempner
Photo credit: Michael Rose

First up, on May 16th, was A’Lelia Bundles, who fondly recalled her great-great-grandmother, Madam C.J. Walker, a famous African-American entrepreneur from the early 20th century. Madam Walker started out as a washerwoman but “promoted herself” little by little until she ran her own hugely successful business producing hair care products for African-American women. Walker, whose factory was in Indianapolis, was generous and community-minded as well, and was one of the principal donors to the Julius Rosenwald YMCA on Senate Avenue in Indianapolis, giving $1,000 to the cause. This incredibly generous donation was the largest by a black donor to a Rosenwald YMCA, putting her on a level with the donations from white Indianapolis businessman and helping to spearhead the pledge drive in the black community. Ms. Bundles stressed the passion for philanthropy that accompanied her great-great-grandmother’s keen business sense:

“I think [her gift of $1,000 to the YMCA] transformed her, in a way, because she realized that selling hair care products was really a means to an end, that the greater good that she could do would be to give back to her community [and] to contribute to institutions like the YMCA. […] She really saw her business as a way to make a difference.” (A’Lelia Bundles)

A’Lelia Bundles with Aviva Kempner
Photo credit: Michael Rose

Ms. Bundles, a former television producer and writer, is an excellent source for information about the life of Madam Walker. In 2001, she compiled her research into an entertaining and informative biography entitled On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker. Ms. Bundles also spoke of the positive effects of the YMCA that Rosenwald and Madam Walker partnered to fund.

“It was really the hub of political and social activity in the African-American community for many years. Although the building is no longer there, the memories and the legacy of what Julius Rosenwald and Madam Walker and others did really still lingers.” (A’Lelia Bundles)

ON HOUSING IN CHICAGO

Next we spoke to Clarence Page, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist of the Chicago Tribune. Mr. Page is an expert on the history of housing in black Chicago. In the interview, Mr. Page lauded the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments (built by Julius Rosenwald) as a timely and very practical solution to the housing shortage in the Black Belt area of Chicago’s South Side.

Clarence Page
Photo credit: Jackson Berkley

“At a time when many African Americans were coming into Chicago and looking for decent housing and many of them finding opportunity and moving up the ladder into the middle class, there wasn’t enough housing there to accommodate their needs. And so Michigan Garden Apartments, that sort of development, was a real godsend for many folks who were looking for a real community and a real place to belong. […] It became a neighborhood in itself, and this is why a lot of folks just knew it as the Rosenwald Gardens more than the Michigan Gardens, because his name was so well known, respected, and beloved by so many South Siders.” (Clarence Page)

Because of racial covenants in residential developments, even upwardly mobile black Chicagoans had trouble finding decent housing. Like many of Rosenwald’s philanthropic projects, the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments was designed to help improve the situation of African-Americans under racial segregation as a stopgap measure until integration could occur. “The Rosenwald,” as it was known by many, was a beloved and elegant building with spacious interior grounds and generously sized units.

ON DR. CHARLES DREW

On May 17th, we interviewed two experts on the life of Dr. Charles Drew, a surgeon from Washington D.C. who made use of a timely grant from the Rosenwald Fund to finish medical school. Dr. Drew was a talented, driven doctor who is most well known for his pioneering work on blood transfusions during World War II. Our first interviewee on this subject was Dr. Drew’s daughter, Charlene Drew Jarvis, a former D.C. Councilwoman who followed in her father’s footsteps by becoming a doctor of neuropsychology and working with the American Red Cross.

Charlene Drew Jarvis
Photo credit: Michael Rose

Ms. Drew Jarvis related the story of Dr. Drew’s application to the Rosenwald Fund. In 1931, Drew was already a junior in McGill University’s medical school, but was unsure if he would be able to continue due to his financial situation. His parents were struggling because of the Depression and he was no longer able to make extra money officiating basketball and football games due to the busy schedule of classes and his work at the hospital. Drew applied to the Rosenwald Fund and received a $1,000 grant that allowed him to complete medical school. Ms. Drew Jarvis read from a letter that her father wrote to the Rosenwald Fund later in life, thanking them for their support:

“The fellowship which I received from the Rosenwald Fund came at a rather needy and critical period of my training. I remain continuously grateful to the memory of the man who made such aid possible and fully conscious of the spirit in which such grants are made. It is my sincere intention to serve well as I go along from day to day. It is my constant hope that I shall be able at some time to add some new thought, discover some new process or create something which will prevent or cure disease, alleviate suffering or give men a chance to live and grow and smile more freely and thereby, in part, repay the debt, which I am happy to acknowledge.” (Dr. Charles Drew, quoted by Charlene Drew Jarvis)

Dr. Drew was also an inspirational and gifted teacher to many African-American medical students at Howard University. Our second interviewee was Dr. DeMaurice Moses, a pediatrician who was born in Washington D.C. and later served as the only black doctor in a community in Washington state. Dr. Moses was inspired to succeed by hearing Dr. Drew speak as a young child, and recalled Dr. Drew’s bold maxim, “Excellence of performance will transcend adversity and other difficulties such as discrimination.” As pioneers in the racially segregated medical profession, both Dr. Drew and Dr. Moses had to work even harder for the respect of their peers and their communities, but both rose to the task.

Dr. DeMaurice Moses and Charlene Drew Jarvis
Photo credit: Jackson Berkley

Ms. Drew Jarvis illuminated another link between Rosenwald and Dr. Drew, the black YMCA in Washington D.C. Rosenwald gave funding to the organization’s building on 12th Street NW, a building which Ms. Drew Jarvis called a “cultural icon” in the community. “For many African-American kids,” including a young Charles Drew, the 12th Street Y “was the center of their recreation and the center of their cultural upbringing.”


Photo credit: Jackson Berkley

Sadly, Dr. Drew died prematurely at the age of 45 in a 1950 car crash after falling asleep at the wheel while driving from Washington D.C. to Tuskegee, Alabama. There is an urban legend that claims Dr. Drew’s subsequent death was a result of the unwillingness of the North Carolina hospital that took him in to administer blood from a white donor. This story is probably appealing because of its irony—Dr. Drew had fought passionately against segregation of blood banks—but it is not entirely factual. Dr. Moses explained that the hospital in Burlington, North Carolina did everything it could for Dr. Drew, but pointed out the role that racial discrimination did play in the car crash itself, which was brought on by the fatigue of driving overnight.

“He was not able to simply stop his vehicle and get lodging in a hotel or motel because African-Americans could not stay in hotels or motels during that time. […] American discrimination against African-Americans actually prevented the United States and the world from the services of Dr. Drew for perhaps another fifty years.” (Dr. DeMaurice Moses, on Dr. Drew’s car crash)

ON THE RIDGELEY SCHOOL

The Ridgeley School
Photo credit: Jackson Berkley

On May 17th, at the Ridgeley School, a Rosenwald-funded school in Prince George’s County, Maryland, we interviewed two descendents of a local family instrumental in the school’s construction, Mildred Ridgley-Gray and her daughter, LaVerne Gray. Later, we talked to Joanna M. Smith, a representative of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, whose Prince George’s County chapter spearheaded the campaign to restore the school and continue to volunteer their time as tour guides for the public.

Aviva Kempner with Mildred Ridgley-Gray
Photo credit: Jackson Berkley

Both Mildred and LaVerne attended the Ridgeley School, and it was Mildred’s mother who donated the land on which it was built. Mildred stressed the role Julius Rosenwald’s philanthropy played in ameliorating the ill effects of the of Jim Crow segregation. In rural area, so-called “separate but equal” school segregation often resulted in a situation where black children literally couldn’t go to school in their community because the only schoolhouse was reserved for white children. Mildred pointed out the hypocrisy of taxes from black citizens in southern communities going to pay for a school system that excluded their children:

“If it wasn’t for Julius Rosenwald, we would not have been exposed to the curriculum that the taxpayer dollars were paying for. Ridgeley School offered that opportunity.” (Mildred Ridgley-Gray)

Mildred Ridgley-Gray
Photo credit: Jackson Berkley

Mildred also shared a humorous Sears-related memory from her childhood.

“[When] the new catalogue came in, the [old] catalogue was given to us to look at and to select clothing and to learn the names of clothing and what we wanted. We had wish lists and we could fantasize with that. […] After that, it went out into the outside toilets that we had on the farm, and we used pages from that as toilet tissue. […] The Sears catalogue was next to the Bible in our home.”

On the set with Mildred Ridgley-Gray
Photo credit: Jackson Berkley

Mildred’s daughter, LaVerne Gray spoke about the emotions she gets when she sees the restored Ridgeley School:

“When I see it all restored like this, of course it brings back all the memories of childhood. […] There’s a certain pride for what actually happened. Not just for my family, but to know that Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald [came] together and [created] something fabulous; schools for kids who otherwise wouldn’t have had the opportunity.” (LaVerne Gray)

Aviva Kempner with LaVerne Gray
Photo credit: Jackson Berkley

Part of what made the Rosenwald schools inspiring for students is that each building was designed with care, with beautiful windows yielding large light-filled classrooms. LaVerne spoke about this architectural style and also about the way the Ridgeley School is situated in the community:

“What I remember so strongly is turning that corner on Central Avenue, coming down the panhandle to get to the school. And when you get to the end, it opens up in front of you, this wonderful building. I think that’s how I got to love architecture, just something about the strength of that building.” (LaVerne Gray)

Artifacts in the restored Ridgeley School
Photo credit: Jackson Berkley

Joanna Smith is a native of Columbus, Ohio and therefore was not well informed about the Rosenwald schools prior to moving to Prince George’s County in the late 1960s. However, when she heard about the historical schools at a community meeting, she encouraged the service oriented Delta Sorority to join forces with Mildred Ridgley-Gray to restore the school. The history of the Ridgeley School is now very familiar to Ms. Smith, and she spoke positively about Rosenwald’s part in it:

“If I was in the room with Julius Rosenwald, I would certainly want to thank him for his vision of seeing that the black youth were educated. His top priority was that everyone should have a right toward education. And even though it was separate, still they should be educated. And I would thank him for his vision.” (Joanna M. Smith)


Joanna M. Smith
Photo credit: Jackson Berkley

By Michael Rose

Recently deceased cultural figures had Rosenwald connections

by | Apr 4, 2012 | Rosenwald Grant Recipients

Elizabeth Catlett

Elizabeth Catlett, painter, sculptor and former Rosenwald fellow, passed away Monday in her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Catlett was born in Washington, D.C. in 1915 but moved around a lot as a student and artist, spending time at black universities such as Howard, Hampton and Dillard and also studying at the University of Iowa and the Art Institute of Chicago. Catlett’s large body of work cements her status as one of the great African American artists of the 20th century, and her obituaries note that she was one of the last remaining links to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s. Catlett was also married to another Rosenwald fellow, artist Charles White.

One of Catlett’s best-known works, a series of linoleum-block prints called The Negro Woman, was created with the help of consecutive Rosenwald fellowships in 1946 and 1947. The abstract black and white images in this series include portraits of black women doing everyday tasks, pictures of black luminaries such as Harriet Tubman and striking images of segregation and labor organization. The images are made more powerful by their bold and matter of fact titles, such as “I have always worked hard in America” and “My right is a future of equality with other Americans.” A print from this series belonging to the Whitney Museum can be viewed online here.

“Singing Head,” Elizabeth Catlett, 1980
Photo Credit: Michael Rose
Property of Smithsonian American Art Museum

It was the Rosenwald fellowship that initially brought Catlett to Mexico, where she spent the latter half of her life. According to Daniel Schulman’s essay in A Force for Change: African American Art and the Julius Rosenwald Fund, Catlett spent the first year of her fellowship thinking creatively about how to make a sophisticated artwork that would still communicate to a mass audience. At the same time, Catlett was honing her printmaking craft (which she first studied at Howard) at the Taller de Gráfica Popular, a political printmaking collective in Mexico. The Rosenwald grant allowed Catlett the freedom to gradually develop The Negro Woman, which Schulman, a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, called “[maybe] the most successfully realized and powerful project to have emerged from a Rosenwald Fellowship.”

Harry Crews

Author and University of Florida professor of creative writing Harry Crews, who also passed away within the last week (March 28th) spoke of a connection to Sears in his early life. Crews grew up in rural Georgia in a household that contained only two books, the Bible and the “Consumer’s Bible,” the annual Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogue. As a child, he would make up stories with friends while paging through the catalogue, riffing on its idealized images.

Crews recounted this method of creative storytelling for a 2003 documentary called Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus (IMDb), a scene from which can be seen here. “See, when I was a boy, the Sears Roebuck catalogue […] came to everybody’s mailbox in the South,” says Crews in the documentary. “First thing that struck us was everybody in the Sears Roebuck catalogue was perfect. Wasn’t any baldheads, everybody had all the fingers that was coming to ‘em. Nobody had any open and running sores on their bodies. But everybody we knew had a finger missing or one eye put out from a staple glancing off a post. In other words, everybody in our world was maimed and mutilated whereas everybody in the Sears Roebuck world was perfect. And so we just started to tell stories about the people. We’d give them names.”

The Washington Post ran detailed obituaries for both Ms. Catlett and Mr. Crews.

By Michael Rose

Photographs by Rosenwald grantee Marion Palfi displayed in recent Jewish Museum show “The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951” that closed on March 25th

by | Mar 27, 2012 | Rosenwald Grant Recipients

The Rosenwald Fund continues to live on as Rosenwald Fellowship recipient Marion Palfi’s works were shown in an exhibit on display at the Jewish Museum until March 25th. The exhibit, entitled “The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951,” showed work from the famous New York-based social photography group to which Palfi belonged.

The Jewish Museum in Manhattan
Photo Credit: oh_annaluise, 2008 (flickr)

Born in Berlin in 1907, Marion Palfi grew up in a middle class household that encouraged her in various artistic pursuits. While still a teenager, she had a successful career as a performer (dancer, model and actress), but in her early twenties she gave it all up to pursue photography. By the mid-1930s, she owned a photography studio in both Berlin and Amsterdam. However, as World War II escalated, she fled Europe in 1940 to settle in New York City.

Palfi soon found work in a U.S. government war photography studio and began making contacts in the New York art and photography world, including Langston Hughes and Lisette Model (a Photo League member and also a fellow recent Jewish immigrant from Europe). Palfi’s work during this time on minority artists must have impressed the Rosenwald Fund trustees, as they offered her a substantial grant in 1946 that allowed her to take a three-year journey through the American South documenting Jim Crow segregation and racial discrimination.

Some of Palfi’s most memorable work was produced during this period from 1946 to 1949. In addition to documenting everyday life under Jim Crow, she photographed racially-charged subjects such as the Columbians, a white separatist group in Georgia who took sartorial cues from the Nazis and enforced racial segregation with violence. One of Palfi’s most significant projects was a photo documentary of the aftermath of a lynching in Irwinton, Georgia. She gained considerable access to all parts of the community of Irwinton (the Ku Klux Klan, the black community, journalists and village leaders) and produced a manuscript about the event entitled There is No More Time, which remains unpublished.

Two of Palfi’s photos, both of which were likely produced during the time of her Rosenwald grant, were on display until recently in The Jewish Museum’s exhibit about the Photo League. The Photo League was a collective of social documentary photographers (including Palfi) that was active from 1936 to 1951. The first Palfi photo, In the Shadow of the Capitol depicts a street scene in a garbage strewn alley community just blocks from the Capitol building. The second photograph, Wife of the Lynch Victim, is a haunting image of the widow of Caleb Hill Jr., who was taken in 1949 from a jail cell in Irwinton and lynched. The University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography owns a huge collection of Palfi’s work, from before and after her emigration and on a wide variety of subjects, which is accessible online here.

Although Palfi’s story is the best example, there were several other interconnections between Rosenwald Fund recipients and the Photo League. Rosalie Gwathmey of the Photo League was married to Robert Gwathmey, the social realist painter and 1944 Rosenwald Fellowship recipient. Jack Delano of the Photo League encouraged Gordon Parks to apply to the Rosenwald Fund for a grant so that he could join him as a photographer at the Farm Security Administration (Parks became a Rosenwald Fellow in 1942). Also, Gilbert D. Olmstead was a black Pittsburgh-based photographer who received a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1946 and was later associated with several Photo League members, including Weegee.

By Michael Rose

New life for Rosenwald YMCAs

by | Mar 22, 2012 | Rosenwald Fund

Celebration marking the laying of the cornerstone of the Paseo YMCA in Kansas City
Photo Credit: Unknown, published in The Outlook, October 28th, 1914

Between 1911 and the time of his death in 1932, Julius Rosenwald provided funding for the construction of African-American YMCAs in 24 cities. Although some have been lost, many have survived the better part of a century since the opening of Rosenwald’s challenge grant program.

The Butler Street YMCA in Atlanta, in operation since 1920
Photo Credit: Rob Dunalewicz, 2012 (flickr)

While African-Americans are no longer restricted from staying in other hotels, the Rosenwald YMCAs can still serve a purpose in their communities. Some of these buildings remain in active use as YMCAs, such as the ones in Atlanta, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Harlem and Chicago. Others have been adapted over the years to meet the changing needs of their communities. Brooklyn’s has become a nursing home, while Toledo’s, Dayton’s and Washington’s have been repurposed as community centers.

The Paseo Boulevard YMCA building in Kansas City, pre-renovation
Photo Credit: Equina27, 2010 (flickr)

Several others have seen more creative reuse. In Kansas City, reuse of the long dormant and increasingly blighted Paseo Boulevard YMCA as an extension of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum will be made possible through a remediation grant from the EPA, a federal grant and a massive fundraising drive in the community. The new facility, known as the Buck O’Neil Research and Education Center, will house museum archives, exhibits, conference facilities and educational areas. The Paseo YMCA is an important historical site for the Negro Leagues, as it was the location in 1920 of the formation of the Negro National League, the first African-American professional baseball league.

Murals outside the new Buck O’Neil Research and Education Center in the former Paseo YMCA
Photo Credit: Pam Morris, 2011 (flickr)

In Los Angeles, the Paul Revere Williams-designed 28th Street YMCA is in the process of being rehabilitated and expanded to provide 50 units of affordable housing to the Central Avenue community. The new building, expected to open in June of 2012, will also provide social services to its tenants and community meeting space. While no longer a YMCA, the building has stayed true to its original goal of providing housing and services to a vulnerable population.

After the YMCA in Dallas closed its Rosenwald-funded building on Flora Street in 1970 to move into a new facility closer to the emerging African-American community in Oak Cliff, the building was intermittently vacant or used as office space until it was purchased in 2002 by the Dallas Black Dance Theatre. Thanks to small and large-scale fundraising in the community, the Theatre opened its new space in 2007 after a lengthy rehabilitation of the building.

Rosenwald would likely have approved of the reuse of these structures. Rosenwald’s philosophy of philanthropy, outlined in two popular articles he wrote in 1929 for the Saturday Evening Post and the Atlantic Monthly, stressed the importance of large, flexible gifts as opposed to specific, restricted ones. The YMCAs in their original state as multipurpose community centers and temporary residences epitomize this form of flexible, unconditional philanthropy.

The Rosenwald YMCA on 135th Street in Harlem
Photo Credit: Jeff Dobbins (http://nycxplorer.com/)

Likewise, the creatively repurposed YMCAs are an extension of Rosenwald’s philosophy. The fundraising drives that have made these creative reuse projects possible have come from the same communities Rosenwald’s challenge grants energized into building the YMCAs in the first place. Biographer Peter Ascoli points out that Rosenwald knew that “it was just as likely that the concerns of today would be completely superseded by other concerns in the far distant future,” so reuse of the YMCA buildings fits with his intentions. For example, the revitalization and repurposing of the Harlem YMCA honors Rosenwald’s legacy of philanthropic giving, as it “is known less for its history than for its effort to re-establish itself at the center of the neighborhood” (The New York Times, Oct 25, 2008).

By Michael Rose

The Rosenwald Schools work in progress screens in New York City area film festival

by | Mar 22, 2012 | Film Production

The work in progress version of the upcoming documentary The Rosenwald Schools played on Tuesday, March 20th as part of the 9th Annual JCC Rockland international Film Festival. The screening was followed by a panel discussion featuring the director, Aviva Kempner, two of Julius Rosenwald’s granddaughters, Alice Rosenwald and Elizabeth R. Varet and Doria Hillsman, Communications Chair of the NAACP. Check back to this blog for updates on future screenings.

From left to right: Doria Hillsman, Aviva Kempner and Alice Rosenwald.

Elizabeth Varet with Aviva Kempner.