by datdudejbal | Jul 19, 2013 | Rosenwald Fund
Wednesday night, the building that houses the Environmental Protection Agency was officially renamed for Bill Clinton, in honor of what he and his administration (including vice president Al Gore and EPA administrator Carol Browner) accomplished during his two terms as president. Darryl Fears reports in the Washington Post that Clinton requested Woody Guthrie’s famous folk song “This Land is Your Land” be performed by a youth choir at the renaming ceremony. The song’s lyrics are very appropriate for such an occasion as they proclaim common ownership over the natural beauty of the USA.
Woody Guthrie playing guitar in 1943
Photo credit: New York World Telegram & Sun Collection, Library of Congress
Guthrie was granted a Rosenwald fellowship in 1943 to create works in a variety of mediums. We previously reported on this blog about a recently rediscovered novel that was potentially written during his Rosenwald grant period. Although it was written in 1940, “This Land is Your Land” was first recorded in 1944, soon after Guthrie had received his Rosenwald fellowship. Although neither House of Earth (Guthrie’s novel) or “This Land is Your Land” were immediately heralded as masterpieces upon their release, today it’s clear that they’re among the best products of a Rosenwald fellowship.
by datdudejbal | Jul 18, 2013 | Rosenwald Fund
It seems that every one of the Rosenwald YMCAs has a story behind it.
We first learned the background of the Buffalo YMCA from Buffalo Research, the website of a local historian in the city named Cynthia Van Ness. The “Michigan Avenue YMCA” was part of the third wave of Rosenwald-supported African American YMCAs. In the early 1910s, Rosenwald offered $25,000 towards the construction of a new building for any city’s African American YMCA that could raise an additional $75,000 within their community. This offer was renewed twice, in 1915 and 1924.
The very first Rosenwald YMCA, built in Washington D.C., was designed by Tuskegee graduate William Sidney Pittman. However, by most accounts, it was not until 1924 in Buffalo, New York, that another of the Rosenwald YMCAs would be designed by an African American architect. John E. Brent, the architect of the Michigan Ave YMCA, was a native of Washington D.C. and actually was a student of Pittman’s at Tuskegee.
Van Ness’s website lead us to an excellent work of local history by University at Buffalo’s Lillian Serece Williams, entitled Strangers in the Land of Paradise: Creation of an African American Community in Buffalo, New York, 1900-1940. Williams includes a lengthy section on the Michigan Ave YMCA. After Brent arrived in Buffalo, he worked for a series of architecture firms (notably contributing to the Art Deco Hutchinson High School, still in use and known today as Hutch Tech). In 1926, he formed his own firm and designed the YMCA as his first commission.
As with the other YMCA building campaigns, Rosenwald’s challenge grant was successful in spurring the local community into contributing. A meter that tracked the fundraising efforts was placed in the center of city at Lafayette Square. White citizens of the city also contributed, including the owner of the Buffalo Courier George Matthews. Matthews was the biggest single contributer to the YMCA, and his $100,000 investment allowed the building to be larger than planned.
Buffalo’s citizens raised the necessary funds in a short time, and according to Williams’ book, Rosenwald’s check arrived Dec 24th, 1924. As with his gift to the Washington D.C. YMCA, the date of the check recognized the Christian spirit of the YMCA by appearing as a kind of Christmas present. While this may seem ironic given that Rosenwald was Jewish, his support of the YMCA speaks to his pragmatism and open-mindedness.
The Michigan Ave YMCA opened on April 15, 1928. Williams recounts the opening ceremonies, which Rosenwald attended, in her book. Rosenwald personally lauded Brent on “the completeness and architectural beauty of the building both inside and out,” then called Brent to the podium to congratulate him on the “beautiful and successful building he had created for the colored group of Buffalo.” Indeed, the Michigan Ave YMCA was a center of the African American community for many years, with people like Brent and Matthews staying involved in its administration. Like the Senate Avenue YMCA in Indianapolis, it hosted public forums with prestigious speakers like W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary Mcleod Bethune and Walter White of the NAACP. However, as the black population of Buffalo shifted progressively eastward, the YMCA fell victim to the disinvestment of the near East Side and was ultimately demolished in 1977.
Because of population decline and large-scale abandonment, Buffalo as a city presents unique challenges to historic preservationists. Its citizens are, however, uniquely dedicated to preserving whatever possible from Buffalo’s huge stock of architectural treasures. While some of these treasures are lost to history (such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Administration Building), others (like the gargantuan Art Deco Central Terminal) have been preserved through the sheer will of passionate citizens. Unfortunately Brent’s YMCA belongs to that former category, but its memory lives on.
Brent’s name was in the air in Buffalo recently for a different commission. After painstaking research, Everett Fly and Ellen Hunt produced a successful nomination of his “Entrance Court at the Buffalo Zoo” to the New York State Register of Historic Places (which will potentially lead to its listing on the National Register of Historic Places). The nomination was interesting because the gate, which is no longer in active use by the zoo is basically unknown, and Brent’s contribution to the historic zoo (one of the oldest in the country, nestled in a Frederick Law Olmsted-designed park) was seemingly forgotten. You can read more at Fly’s blog, which also includes a picture of Brent at work and a signed drawing of his Michigan Ave YMCA.
By Michael Rose
by datdudejbal | Jun 27, 2013 | Rosenwald Fund
A new exhibit at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry commemorates the museum’s 80th anniversary by displaying 80 artifacts that tell the story of the Chicago institution since its opening in 1933. In a previous blog, we told the story of the museum’s inspiration, by Julius Rosenwald and his son William while visiting the industrial museums of Europe, and the building’s transformation from the 1893 World’s Fair to a temporary home for the Field Museum, to an abandoned white elephant on the city’s south side to the beautifully restored and rebuilt Beaux Arts masterpiece that has housed the MSI ever since.
The derelict MSI building after its previous tenant, the Field Museum of Natural History, vacated it around 1920
Photo credit: Field Museum (flickr)
In the Chicago Sun-Times, a longtime volunteer at the museum, who attended its opening in 1933 at the age of 5, reminisced that the only exhibit present for the “soft opening” (as part of the 1933 “Century of Progress” World’s Fair) was the coal mine. The working coal mine, imported from Johnston City in southern Illinois, was part of Rosenwald’s original conception for the museum and remains a popular exhibit to this day.
The historic coal mine exhibit in the Museum of Science and Industry
Photo Credit: Lenny Flank, 2012 (flickr)
Two interviewees from our film, The Rosenwald Schools were on hand for the opening of the exhibit: Julius Rosenwald’s grandson and biographer, Peter Ascoli, and Kathleen McCarthy, director of exhibits and collections at the museum, who we interviewed in December. You can read more about the opening at the Sun-Times.
The Museum of Science and Industry today
Photo Credit: Brent Newhall, 2011 (flickr)
by datdudejbal | Jun 24, 2013 | Rosenwald Fund
In a new profile for The Root, Henry Louis Gates Jr. tells the story of a remarkable early African American entrepreneur, Madam C.J. Walker. Gates says that Walker, who was born into poverty but made a fortune by manufacturing hair care products for African Americans, deserves to be better known. After you read her fascinating story, you’ll be hard pressed to argue.
Walker will be featured in The Rosenwald Schools for her collaboration with Julius Rosenwald to build a YMCA for blacks in her adopted hometown of Indianapolis, a story that Walker’s great-great-granddaughter (and biographer) A’Lelia Bundles recounted for us in an interview a year ago. Rosenwald’s YMCA-building campaign, which resulted in over 20 urban YMCAs, was one of his first philanthropic initiatives in the African American community. Rosenwald offered substantial funding towards the construction of modern buildings for African American YMCAs, but required matching funds to be raised from the local community. Madam Walker rose to the challenge when she donated $1,000 to the Senate Avenue YMCA building fund, the largest single donation made by an African American to a Rosenwald YMCA. The Senate Avenue YMCA was demolished years ago, but many Rosenwald YMCAs are still standing.
Gates talks about Booker T. Washington’s criticisms of Walker’s products (he claimed they promoted white standards of beauty) but suggests the two had more in common than Washington thought. Indeed, after a public clash at the 1912 National Negro Business League convention, the two reconciled and worked towards common causes in both Indianapolis and Tuskegee. Gates describes a photograph, pictured below, of Washington standing with Walker in front of the newly opened Senate Avenue YMCA in Indianapolis that illustrates their mutual respect.
The dedication of Indianapolis’s Rosenwald YMCA, July 1913
by datdudejbal | Jun 19, 2013 | Rosenwald Fund
Four new interviewees were added to The Rosenwald Schools on Friday, June 7th. Director Aviva Kempner (working for the first time with our great New York crew, Dan, Seth and Chapin) shot interviews with David Levering Lewis, Hasia Diner, Gara LaMarche and Maren Stange. Below are some excerpts from interviews with the first 3 of them; Stange’s interview is covered in our latest blog post on Gordon Parks.
The crew setting up the shoot
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, June 7, 2013
David Levering Lewis
David Levering Lewis is one of the leading scholars on African American history. He’s also an engaging writer and speaker who manages to keep readers of all kinds interested without sacrificing the complexity of his arguments. Having written an exhaustive two volume biography of W.E.B. Du Bois (who worked closely with the Rosenwald Fund) and an excellent article on the shared struggles and “assimilationist strategies” of African Americans and Jews in the early twentieth century, we were fortunate that Lewis agreed to add his voice to our film. In addition to presenting his thoughts on Du Bois and the Rosenwald Fund, Lewis perfectly summed up Julius Rosenwald’s modesty and legacy of promoting opportunity in this excerpt from his interview:
Julius Rosenwald once said that his own stellar success was ninety-five percent luck, but he must have known that most people were not going to have that kind of luck and they needed a significant grubstake. It seems to me that was the great concept of the Rosenwald Fund: for people who certainly needed a lot of luck, Julius Rosenwald was luck itself. (David Levering Lewis)
Aviva with David Levering Lewis, Du Bois scholar
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, June 7, 2013
Despite his amazing success as president of Sears Roebuck, Rosenwald never saw himself as exceptional, and always maintained that he was merely a competent manager who had been fortunate enough to capitalize on the opportunities presented to him. As such, he saw philanthropy as his duty: he was a trustee of the wealth he had accumulated and he tasked himself with distributing it in such a way that it would most benefit the less fortunate and the oppressed.
Hasia Diner
Dr. Hasia Diner is an expert on the history of Judaism in the USA. The author of In the Almost Promised Land: American Jews and Blacks, 1915-1935 and an upcoming chapter on Rosenwald, she made some great contributions to The Rosenwald Schools. In her interview, Diner contextualized key events like the lynching of Leo Frank (which was emblematic of the increase in Southern anti-Semitism that was concurrent with the rise of racial tension under Jim Crow), talked about Rosenwald’s complicated relationship with the Zionists of his day and brought out the intricacies of J.R.’s collaboration with Booker T. Washington. Diner also talked about Julius Rosenwald’s father, Samuel Rosenwald, who worked as a peddler immediately after arriving in Baltimore on a ship from his native Germany. Peddling a variety of goods to farmers and people without regular access to urban centers was a very common profession for Jewish immigrants during the nineteenth century, in spite of the obvious challenges of the job for the newly arrived immigrants that Diner eloquently described:
It was a very unique kind of occupation in as much as it demanded that a brand new immigrant, someone literally off the boat, go home to home, farm to farm, knock on the door and say, in a language he doesn’t know yet, “Good morning, Ma’am. How are you today?” It’s a kind of almost instant immersion into the local culture at an extremely deep level. (Hasia Diner)
Samuel Rosenwald quickly moved up the employment ladder from peddler to managing a series of stores and eventually became the owner of a successful clothing business in Springfield, Illinois. Likewise, his son started near the bottom of the garment trade in New York City, but eventually became president of one of the largest retailers in American history. Diner pointed out that this progression was somewhat paradoxical in light of Rosenwald’s later work. The belief in education as a route to social mobility that so informed Rosenwald’s philanthropy was not germane to his own trajectory, or to his family’s before him. In fact, to his lifelong regret, Rosenwald never completed high school.
Dr. Hasia Diner
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, June 7, 2013
Gara LaMarche
Gara LaMarche is the former president and CEO of the Atlantic Philanthropies. As such, he’s done a lot of thinking about philanthropic strategies and he sees Rosenwald as an early innovator in the field, even among the pantheon of better-known philanthropists from the turn of the century (like Rockefeller and Carnegie). LaMarche talked about Rosenwald’s conviction about the importance of a sunset date for his foundation (that is, a pre-determined time before which all its funds would be expended) and “his belief that perpetual foundations would become sclerotic… [straying] far from the donor’s intention,” if they were to become too “comfortable and self-perpetuating.” LaMarche argued that this aggressive approach, the avoidance of perpetual endowments in order to direct the full force of your philanthropic giving towards making a “concentrated impact on… the problems of the day,” was a good model to follow, and has been shared to an extent by modern-day philanthropists like Chuck Feeney.
Aviva with Gara LaMarche
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, June 7, 2013
By Michael Rose
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