by Cieslafdn | Aug 27, 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 | Aug 15, 2014 | Rosenwald Grant Recipients
We wrote about Gordon Parks’ “Segregation Series” last June, following the surprising rediscovery of the complete series, which Parks produced for LIFE magazine in the 1950s and which was thought to be lost.
Starting November 15th, according to The New York Times, the High Museum in Atlanta is mounting an exhibition of this series that they’re calling “Gordon Parks: Segregation Story.” The exhibit will be open until June 7, 2015.
Many of the powerful photographs in this collection have never before been seen in a gallery. Out of the more than 40 color prints depicting segregation, a select few were published in a 1956 LIFE Magazine article. From the examples we’ve seen in the media, these photographs, by the first recipient of a Rosenwald grant for photography, offer a truly unique illustration of the segregated institutions of the Jim Crow South.
Read more at The New York Times.
by Cieslafdn | Aug 13, 2014 | Rosenwald Grant Recipients
According to a review in The New York Times, the debut novel of author Jess Row, Your Face or Mine, (to be released this week) uses the science fiction concept of “racial reassignment surgery” as a jumping off point to a rumination on race and identity in the modern world. “Passing” as a member of another race is a familiar literary theme, mainly found in African American literature of the 20th century, like the works of Rosenwald fellows James Baldwin and James Weldon Johnson. Writing for the the Times, Felicia R. Lee explains:
A fan of James Baldwin’s work, Mr. Row said he set out to have “Your Face in Mine” explore the ways people try to escape their racial identities, as well as investigate their desire for racial reconciliation and deeply unconscious fears and discomforts around race.
“Passing” has been a major theme in African-American literature for over a century, and has usually meant blacks living as whites to escape bias. “Your Face in Mine” owes something to classic stories of passing like “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man,” by James Weldon Johnson (published anonymously in 1912 and under his name in 1927), and the 1931 satire “Black No More,” by George S. Schuyler, in which blacks rush to embrace a new scientific process to become white.
Read more about the new novel at The New York Times.
by Cieslafdn | Aug 12, 2014 | Film Production
Writer Kelly Kleiman wrote an amusing account about meeting Civil Rights icon Julian Bond recently over dinner. It was published on the Ten Miles Square blog at Washington Monthly.
Kleiman bond-ed with Bond by talking about the Rosenwald Fund and Julian’s father, Horace Mann Bond’s involvement with it. Julian Bond, who inspired the making of The Rosenwald Schools and serves as a consultant, is interviewed in the upcoming documentary.
by Cieslafdn | Aug 12, 2014 | Rosenwald Fund
Julius Rosenwald in 1917
Photo credit: Library of Congress, Harris & Ewing Collection
Today on August 12th would have been Julius Rosenwald’s 152nd birthday. As I am close to finishing The Rosenwald Schools I am confident that J.R. will become nationally known for his good deeds once the film is done. Every week we are receiving notice about a school being restored or how a group of people want to rebuild one. I believe that once this film is done there will be an urge to finish many more schools and know more about J.R. By his 153rd birthday the film should be traveling around the country.
by Cieslafdn | Aug 12, 2014 | Social Justice Work
Much like the Rosenwald Apartments on Chicago’s South Side, construction on the famous Merchandise Mart was begun just before the Stock Market Crash of 1929. In the early years of the Great Depression, both buildings struggled to make a profit. However, in 1945, Joseph P. Kennedy (father of JFK) purchased the building from the Marshall Field Company and successfully renovated and reinvented the iconic building. Once the largest commercial building in the world by floorspace, it is an Art Deco masterpiece of massive proportions that has housed commercial showrooms and offices for most of a century. It’s located at a picturesque point at a bend in the Chicago River where the first trading post and small businesses were founded in the early days of the city.
The Chicago Loop – the Merchandise Mart can be seen in the lower left
Photo credit: Historic American Buildings Survey via Library of Congress
Part of Kennedy’s reinvigoration of the building was introducing a “Merchandise Mart Hall of Fame,” a series of eight busts of famous merchants from around the country that face the Mart. The first seven men were elected by ballot by members of the national business community and their busts were commissioned at three annual ceremonies in 1953, 1954 and 1955. As one of the great retail magnates of Chicago history, Sears president Julius Rosenwald was part of this initial group, inducted in 1954.
Julius Rosenwald’s bust
Photo credit: Zol87 (flickr)
Today, as some commercial showrooms move out, the Merchandise Mart is being reinvented once again as a center for tech start-ups in River North, a neighborhood near Chicago’s Loop that is home to Google and Groupon. The New York Times reports that floorspace in the Mart that had formerly been used for furniture and design showrooms has gradually been given over to tech businesses by Vornado Realty Group, the owner of the Mart since 1998. Especially interesting is 1871, a non-profit organization that rents a large portion of one of the Mart’s 200,000 square foot floors, and acts as an incubator for small tech start-ups, providing networking, affordable space and even investors. The name 1871 recalls the rebuilding of Chicago after the great fire, and symbolizes the rebirth of River North and the Merchandise Mart as a hub for digital technology.
The Merchandise Mart
Photo credit: Mike Desisto (flickr)
After the initial seven busts of the Merchandise Mart Hall of Fame in the early 1950s, the series was revived once more in 1972, to include the famous retailer Montgomery Ward. Today, as the Mart is changing its image again, it may be an opportune time to make a new addition to the Hall of Fame. Montgomery Ward’s induction to the Hall of Fame was not done in the previous manner of advisory committee and national ballot – instead, according to Timothy Garvey (who wrote an article about the Hall of Fame in the Illinois Historical Journal in 1995) it was a more Chicago-centric celebration of a local luminary. Who should be added this time? Should it be Oprah Winfrey, who built her show and media empire in Chicago?
Bust of Marshall Field next to photo of Oprah Winfrey
Photo credits: Damon Taylor (flickr) and Alan Light (flickr)
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
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