by Cieslafdn | May 13, 2014 | School Restorations
Residents of Pender County, along with filmmaker Claudia Stack (http://www.underthekudzu.org/) and the Historic Wilmington Foundation are on the move recently, commemorating and sharing the history of the Rosenwald Schools in their part of North Carolina, a rural county north of Wilmington. North Carolina was the state that built the most schools with the Rosenwald Fund’s assistance and Ms. Stack has said that Pender County has perhaps the most extant Rosenwald Schools in the state.
In April, Ms. Stack joined Glen Harris at Poplar Grove Plantation in Scotts Hill, North Carolina to talk about the impact of the Rosenwald School movement in the South. Tickets are on sale now for a May 31st bus tour organized by Ms. Stack, the Canetuck Community Center and the Historic Wilmington Foundation.
Here’s Ms. Stack talking about the Rosenwald school building program, North Carolina’s Rosenwald Schools and her film, Under the Kudzu:
This is the second annual celebration and tour of the area’s Rosenwald Schools. In March of last year, Stephanie Deutsch (author of You Need a Schoolhouse and a consultant on our upcoming film, The Rosenwald Schools) joined a panel discussion at University of North Carolina Wilmington about the area’s Rosenwald legacy and also visited the Canetuck Community Senior Center, a lovely restored Rosenwald School in Pender County.
Wilmington’s StarNews also wrote a recent article about a community center in the Pender County town of Willard that has served the area since the 1980s. It’s in a building that was not funded by the Rosenwald Fund school-building program, but followed the plans for schools provided by the Rosenwald Fund. There are a surprising number of historic schools out there that aren’t “Rosenwald Schools” but used the Rosenwald plans. We blogged last year about one in South Carolina, the beautifully restored Jane Hamilton School on Daufuskie Island. The Willard Outreach community center will be part of the bus tour on May 31st.
The area has another connection to the Rosenwald story as well. Robert Robinson Taylor, founding architect of Tuskegee University, grew up in Wilmington in an integrated community made up largely of recently freed slaves. Taylor of course went on to design many of the original buildings on Tuskegee’s Alabama campus, head the school’s heralded architecture department and contribute to the architectural plans for the Rosenwald Fund’s school-building program across the South, but his years in Wilmington were formative for him. According to R.R. Taylor’s granddaughters Barbara Bowman and Lauranita Dugas, who we interviewed for The Rosenwald Schools, Taylor’s father Henry was not freed until the Civil War, but had been a semi-independent contractual builder in Wilmington even before he achieved his freedom. The integrated community in Wilmington provided an excellent upbringing for Henry Taylor’s four children, three of which attended Howard University in Washington D.C. Robert Taylor, who befriended a schoolteacher and architect from Boston, went to MIT instead, got a degree in architecture and worked at a firm in Cleveland before he was recruited by Booker T. Washington to design Tuskegee’s campus.
Robert Robinson Taylor in his later years, back in Wilmington
Photo credit: Collection of Lauranita Dugas
We’ve written more thoroughly on this blog about Robert Rochon Taylor, Robert Robinson Taylor’s son, and his partnership with Julius Rosenwald in Chicago. Robert Taylor the younger helped design and then managed Julius Rosenwald’s pioneering apartment building for African Americans on Chicago’s South Side, and dedicated his life providing high quality affordable housing for Chicagoans. He wrote a series of articles in the 1930s in the Chicago Defender that laid out his and Rosenwald’s belief in the promise of private capital to redevelop deteriorated, overcrowded urban neighborhoods like the area known as the “Black Belt” in mid-century Chicago.
The history of Pender County and Wilmington, North Carolina is rich and has some interesting connections to the work of Julius Rosenwald and the Rosenwald Fund. Kudos to Claudia Stack, Historic Wilmington and the Rosenwald School alumni and former teachers of North Carolina for organizing these events and keeping the memory alive.
by Cieslafdn | Apr 30, 2014 | Film Production, Rosenwald Screenings
Historic Takoma and We Are Takoma invited Aviva Kempner (director of The Rosenwald Schools documentary) and Stephanie Deutsch (author of You Need A Schoolhouse and a consultant on our film) to take part an excellent program about a historic school in Takoma Park, Maryland, a suburb of Washington D.C. The event, entitled “Takoma Park’s Black School & The Rosenwald Legacy,” was held at the Takoma Park Community Center on April 29th.
Attendees first heard musical selections by African American composers, played by the Takoma Park band. One of the selections was “Lift Evr’y Voice and Sing,” by James Weldon Johnson, the recipient of the first Rosenwald fellowship. Then, Diana Kohn (the event organizer) introduced the night’s discussion topic. A work in progress excerpt of the upcoming documentary, The Rosenwald Schools, was then screened for the audience.
The Takoma Park Band
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, April 2014
After the screening, Aviva and Stephanie discussed their work and the history of the two-room Rosenwald School that was built in Takoma Park on Geneva Avenue. Alumni from the school were present and shared their memories of attending the school.
Alumni of the Geneva Avenue Rosenwald School
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, April 2014
Thank you to Diana Kohn, Historic Takoma and We Are Takoma for making this event possible.
by Cieslafdn | Apr 23, 2014 | Aviva Kempner
Women in Film and Television, Nashville, gathered together a great panel of filmmakers for the Nashville Film Festival last weekend. Along with Aviva Kempner, other panelists included Joanna Lucchesi, Sr Vice President, Entertainment Division, City National Bank of Beverly Hills, who has more than 30 plus years of experience in the film and television industry, Guy Noffsinger, Senior Producer, Multimedia Specialist NASA, Washington, DC with multiple credits as producer, director and writer of NASA released Television and Film projects such as; Space Shuttle, NASA Remembers Neil Armstrong and Friendship 7, 50th Anniversary and Beth Harrington, multi award-winning independent producer, director and writer, who has been making media professionally since 1977.
Harrington premiered her new film, The Winding Stream at the festival. The Winding Stream – The Carters, The Cash Family and The Course of Country Music is a music history and performance film. Her film features members of the Carter and Cash families and includes an interview with the legendary Johnny Cash who was interviewed by Ms. Harrington 3 weeks before his death in 2003. Local television personality Demetria Kalodimos emceed the program. Kempner also showed the two work in progresses of The Rosenwald Schools to an enthusiastic audience.
Guy Noffsinger, Beth Harrington, Deborah Gordon, Demetria Kalodimos, Joanna Lucchesi, and Aviva Kempner
Thanks to Women in Film and Television, Nashville, for putting together a great event!
by Cieslafdn | Apr 23, 2014 | Film Production, Rosenwald Screenings
Thanks to the Washington Jewish Film Festival, a brand new work in progress version of The Rosenwald Schools with the added interview with Rep. John Lewis screened last Sunday, April 13th at the Washington D.C. JCC. The large audience saw both the new work in progress and a special premiere of a 9 minute sequence about Julius Rosenwald’s immigrant father and the philanthropist’s childhood in Springfield, Illinois that will be near the beginning of the film.
The event was co-sponsored by Docs In Progress, The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington, and Women in Film & Video.
The audience was very responsive to the program; many who attended gave valuable suggestions to us for how to improve the film. Thanks to all those who attended for your wonderful input!
If the funds are raised we hope to have the film ready for release in March 2014 and have a premiere at the Washington Jewish Film Festival, 25 years after director Aviva Kempner founded the festival with Miriam Morsel Nathan.
For ways to see the work in progress of the film and show it at a fundraising parlour party, contact cieslafdn@gmail.com. We would be most grateful for help in finishing the film and you would be listed among the end credits. All contributions are tax deductible.
by Cieslafdn | Apr 23, 2014 | Film Production, Rosenwald Screenings
A brand new work in progress version of The Rosenwald Schools with the added interview with Rep. John Lewis screened last Sunday, April 13th at the Washington D.C. JCC. The large audience saw both the new work in progress and a special premiere of a 9 minute sequence about Julius Rosenwald’s immigrant father and the philanthropist’s childhood in Springfield, Illinois that will be near the beginning of the film.
The event was co-sponsored by Docs In Progress, The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington, and Women in Film & Video.
The audience was very responsive to the program; many who attended gave valuable suggestions to us for how to improve the film. Thanks to all those who attended for your wonderful input!
If the funds are raised we hope to have the film ready for release in March 2014 and have a premiere at the Washington Jewish Film Festival, 25 years after director Aviva Kempner founded the festival with Miriam Morsel Nathan.
For ways to see the work in progress of the film and show it at a fundraising parlour party, contact cieslafdn@gmail.com. We would be most grateful and you would be listed among the end credits.
by datdudejbal | Apr 21, 2014 | Ciesla Foundation
A new production of A Raisin in the Sun, starring Denzel Washington, debuted in the Ethel Barrymore Theater in New York last week. The show is getting good reviews, including one by Ben Brantley of The New York Times.
Describing the set, Brantley writes:
A claustrophobic fatigue pervades the cramped, South Side Chicago apartment in which “A Raisin in the Sun” is set. And despite its often easygoing tone, a happy ending feels far from guaranteed. As designed by Mark Thompson, the Youngers’ living room cum kitchen is a narrow corridor that keeps its three generations of inhabitants in close, erosive proximity.
The kitchenette apartment where the action of A Raisin in the Sun takes place is based on the tiny shared-bath apartments that many African Americans called home in overcrowded, segregated early 20th century Chicago. After seeing the cramped conditions in the area of Chicago known as “The Black Belt,” Julius Rosenwald built the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments, a spacious, modern, well-equipped building in the heart of the neighborhood in 1929. A scene from the 1961 film adaptation, starring Sidney Poiter, will be included in The Rosenwald Schools documentary and is already incorpoated in the twenty minute work in progress, which is used for fundraising to complete the movie. For ways to see the work in progress of the film and show it at a fundraising parlour party, contact cieslafdn@gmail.com. We would be most grateful and you would be listed among the end credits.
You can read more about the new Broadway production at The New York Times.
by Cieslafdn | Apr 21, 2014 | Film Production, Social Justice Work
Jeff Labrecque interviews World War Z author Max Brooks in Entertainment Weekly about his new graphic novel, The Harlem Hellfighters. The new book, about a black infantry unit during World War I, looks great. One moment in the interview caught our eye, in connection to some research we’ve done for The Rosenwald Schools.
You use pop culture from the period as crucial plot elements, including D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, a blatantly racist film that reflected attitudes of the time — so much so that Woodrow Wilson screened it at the White House.
I had seen Birth of a Nation in college, and it just blew me away. The movie itself didn’t blow me away; it was the reaction to it. Like you said about Wilson, people loved that movie — white people. That was the Star Wars of its day.
Despite its overtly racist themes and imagery, the release of Birth of a Nation (arguably the first significant feature-length film) was indeed a major event. We learned, however, that in addition to playing to some white viewers’ racism (and even inciting racial violence in some cases), the film also galvanized the nascent NAACP. The film provided them with a nationwide target to organize against and boycott, which helped new organization find its footing and become one of the major advocacy groups for minority rights in American history. We interviewed historian David Levering Lewis about the White House screening of Birth of a Nation and its effect on the NAACP.
You can read the complete interview at Entertainment Weekly.
by Cieslafdn | Apr 21, 2014 | Film Production
More lovely interviews for The Rosenwald Schools were filmed earlier this week in Washington D.C. First of the day was Stephanie Meeks, President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Ms. Meeks told us about the National Trust’s involvement in Rosenwald School rehabilitation projects across the South, and their goal of restoring 100 of the roughly 800 extant structures in honor of the 100th anniversary of Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington’s school-building program.
Ms. Meeks said that when she initially learned about the tri-fold funding structure of the original Rosenwald Schools, she was “astounded” that the often impoverished local African American residents were expected and able to raise a third of the money necessary to build each school in the program. This matching grant strategy amplified the effect of Rosenwald’s philanthropy dollar for dollar, but it also helped community members get emotionally invested and protective of their community’s new school. Meeks sees a parallel to this in her own experience with Rosenwald School rehabilitation projects of today:
In many ways that same model is being replicated today in the rehabilitation of the Rosenwald Schools. The National Trust is working to provide technical assistance to communities as well as grant funding that we’ve been able to accrue from other philanthropists. And the communities, the students and graduates themselves, are perpetuating this virtuous circle by reaching into their own pockets, putting money forward to help with the rehabilitation costs of some of these buildings. They understand that the preservation and the restoration of the Rosenwald schools is a way of keeping this story alive and continuing to contribute to the community.
Aviva Kempner and Edwin B. Henderson, II
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, March 25, 2014
Next up was Edwin B. Henderson, II, who we met at a panel discussion last month. Mr. Henderson is a historical preservationist living in Falls Church, Virginia. His mission is to preserve the legacy of his grandfather (with whom he shares his name), an early 20th century educator who established the first black athletic league in the District of Columbia. Dr. E.B. Henderson is known for his work in physical education, but as his grandson explained to us, he always had a broader scope for African American achievement:
My grandfather, Dr. E.B. Henderson, his philosophy was that, given equal access for African Americans to physical training and fundamentals of the sports, that they would be equal or superior to their white counterparts. [He] used physical education and athletics as a tool, not in and of itself, but as a way to send qualified African Americans to Northern colleges and debunk the myth of racial inferiority.
E.B. Henderson taught students like Robert Weaver (who went on to become the first African American to serve on a presidential cabinet) and his basketball program in Washington D.C. produced such luminaries as Elgin Baylor, Dave Bing and John Thompson. Henderson’s work was given a boost in 1912 when the Julius Rosenwald-funded 12th Street YMCA opened in the U Street area of Washington, providing a basketball court to a community that was severely lacking in recreational spaces. Having failed to convince the public schools to invest in large gymnasiums for young ballplayers, Dr. Henderson was extremely grateful when the Rosenwald Y was constructed.
A student studyinh in a dorm room at the 12th Street YMCA, circa 1910-1930
Photo credit: Library of Congress via Addison N. Scurlock
We also spoke to Rabbi Howard A. Berman about the Reform synagogue Julius Rosenwald attended in Chicago, which was headed by the dynamic Rabbi Emil Hirsch. Hirsch kept Temple Sinai at the forefront of progressive Judaism by breaking down cultural barriers with other Chicago communities, harshly criticizing racism and experimenting with radical ideas like services on Sunday. By way of explaining just how far ahead of the curve Hirsch, Sinai and Rosenwald were, Berman related this anecdote:
[Rabbi Emil Hirsch] asked Jane Addams to preach the sermon during one of those Sundays [at Sinai]. This was regarded as the first time that a woman–let alone a woman, but a non-Jewish woman–would speak from a Jewish pulpit. Her topic was the moral imperative of birth control for women in the 19th century. This was an unbelievable kind of a combinations of factors. If you wanted to have the perfect storm of shock value, it happened in Sinai Temple sanctuary on that particular Sunday. But that was very much Hirsch’s vision.
Rabbi Howard A. Berman
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, March 25, 2014
Our final interviewee of the day is a Professor of English at the George Washington University in Washington D.C. Lisa Page teaches Langston Hughes’ poetry in her university courses and she graciously related some stories of Hughes’ life during his two Rosenwald Fund fellowships (1931 and 1941).
Aviva Kempner and Lisa Page, March 25, 2014
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, March 25, 2014
Page grew up in Chicago nearby the Museum of Science and Industry, one of the most visible legacies of Julius Rosenwald. Rosenwald paid for the reuse of the historic 1893 World’s Fair building and the new museum, which original bore his name. You can read more about the Museum of Science and Industry’s history on our blog here. Page had some great memories about attending the museum as a child that she shared with us:
The Museum of Science of Industry was our playground, my sister and I, growing up. Every weekend, especially in Chicago in the winter when you can’t be outside it’s so cold. The Museum of Science and Industry was a few blocks away from our house, so every Saturday we headed to the museum of Science and Industry and lived there. We lived inside the human heart, the coalmine. We’d go see the baby chicks. All of these wonderful exhibits that you got to interact with. The whisper gallery. We just went over and over again to these same places. The German submarine, Colleen Moore’s dollhouse. We just lived down there dreaming of shrinking down to size and being able to live in that palace that she put together. It was this wonderful place for us to be.
Chicks hatch every day at the Museum of Science and Industry, showing genetic diversity at work
Photo credit: Lenny Flank (flickr)
Thanks to all our great interviewees!
by Cieslafdn | Apr 21, 2014 | Film Production
Last week, the Ciesla Foundation’s Aviva Kempner and Michael Rose took a much-anticipated trip to Nashville to work on The Rosenwald Schools production. The purpose of the trip was bifold. The first was to explore the archives of Fisk, an historically black university that holds the Rosenwald Fund’s papers. After beginning in Tuskegee as a result of Booker T. Washington’s collaboration with Julius Rosenwald, the Fund’s school-building program was headquartered in Nashville for most of its duration. The second purpose was to film the alumni of a very special Rosenwald School located 35 miles northeast of Nashville in Cairo, Tennessee. Local historian Velma Brinkley coordinated our visit with alumni who still live in the area and about 15 former students graciously traveled out to their old school to talk to us on a cold, rainy day in early February.
Alumni gathered in front of the Cairo Rosenwald School
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, February, 2014
One of the best surprises of the trip to Cairo was brought to us by Lester Mae Hill, an aluma of the school. When we first arrived at the Cairo School, Ms. Hill and Ms. Brinkley showed us the school’s collection of historic photographs. In one of the photos (pictured below) Ms. Brinkley pointed out a mostly obscured photograph of Julius Rosenwald hanging above the door. While we have often read of Rosenwald’s portrait hanging in a place of honor in the schools he helped to fund, this was the first photographic evidence we’ve come across.
Students at the Cairo School. Ms. Hill is first on the left.
Photo credit: Cairo School alumni, unknown date
When we showed interest in the portrait of JR, which we didn’t see on the wall, Ms. Hill told us she had it stored in a safe place and immediately ran home to get it. Within a few minutes, she returned with a lovely, large portrait of the Sears president and educational benefactor. Some of her family members had taken the photo when the school was being remodeled and Ms. Hill was pleased to return it to its rightful place above the school’s front door. One former student told us that when he attended the school he was told it was of a benefactor of the school but did not know the name of Julius Rosenwald until recently.
Lester Mae Hill with the Cairo School’s portrait of Mr. Rosenwald
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, February, 2014
For this shoot we worked with a Nashville-based crew, Chris Conder and Steve LePard. Chris and Steve did some great work for us despite the chilly conditions in the Cairo School, which has inadequate heat for the cold spell Tennessee was experiencing during our trip.
Aviva Kempner and Chris Conder lining up a shot in the Cairo School
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, February, 2014
At the Cairo School we filmed 5 individual interviews with alumni and some group conversations. Interview topics ranged from everyday life at the school (cooking meals, playing sports and the school’s “privies”) to their childhood understanding of segregation and the struggles they went through to gain an education in a society that openly discriminated against African Americans. Many of the alumni mentioned that the entire Cairo community pitched in to support the school any way they could, and they all spoke fondly of their teacher, Professor Brinkley, who showed an uncommon dedication to his students and would often buy extra milk for students who could not afford it. His own children, including Frank who we interviewed, all became educators.
Aviva Kempner speaking the Cairo School alumni about our documentary project
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, February, 2014
In addition to filming the Cairo School alumni, we spent the better part of 3 days poring over the documents and photos that make up the Julius Rosenwald Fund Papers in the Special Collections section of Fisk’s Franklin Library. We found some great photos, including one of Julius Rosenwald with some children in front of a Rosenwald School. We plan to share it as soon as we secure permission. We couldn’t have done it without the help of Special Collections Librarian Aisha Johnson, and we’re very grateful to her. Ms. Johnson, who’s studying the Rosenwald Fund’s lesser-known library-building program, informed us that the Rosenwald Fund Papers are not only the biggest collection at Fisk’s library but also its most requested. Regular readers of our blog will know that we often link to Fisk’s outstanding Rosenwald Schools database, an online catalogue of construction information, funding totals, dates and images of virtually every Rosenwald School constructed under the Fund’s school-building program. It’s an easy to use database that should be stop number one for anyone looking into the history of a specific Rosenwald School.
Aviva Kempner with Aisha Johnson, just before Ms. Johnson’s interview
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, February, 2014
Along with Ms. Johnson, we also filmed interviews with the Dean of Fisk’s Franklin Library, Dr. Jessie Carney Smith, archivist volunteer Michael A. Powell, Fisk professor Dr. Reavis Mitchell and Middle Tennessee State University’s Dr. Mary Hoffschwelle, who has written a wonderfully well-researched and informative study of the school-building program called The Rosenwald Schools of the American South. Between visits to the library, we also got a chance to tour a bit of the historic Fisk campus. While looking at the 1873-built Jubilee Hall, we started talking to a student who turned out to be an official campus tour guide, and she gave us a little of the history of the building. While the all-female dorm’s “courting room” is no longer used for that purpose, the residents of Jubilee Hall still do keep a curfew.
Entrance to Jubilee Hall
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, February, 2014
The centerpiece of Fisk’s campus is Cravath Hall, which houses a beautiful and renowned collection of permanent murals by the great artist (and Rosenwald fellow) Aaron Douglas. Today the former library is used as the university’s administration building, but we were able to walk in and view the lovely Douglas murals in the old card catalogue room.
Aaron Douglas mural above built-in card catalogue
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, February, 2014
All in all, a great trip to Tennessee. It was made even better when we found a great Jewish deli right behind our hotel.
Noshville, on Broadway in Nashville’s West End
Photo credit: The Ciesla Foundation, February, 2014
By Aviva Kempner and Michael Rose
by Cieslafdn | Apr 21, 2014 | Ciesla Foundation
The AFI Theater in Silver Spring is screening a series of baseball films in March and April, including one of the Ciesla Foundation’s previous productions, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (1999). Their description is below:
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HANK GREENBERG
April 6, 2014 at 5:15 pm
AFI Silver Theatre, Silver Spring, MD
Tickets $5!
In person: filmmaker Aviva Kempner
This Peabody Award-winning film is a humorous and nostalgic documentary about an extraordinary baseball player who transcended religious prejudice to become an American icon. Hammerin’ Hank’s accomplishments for the Detroit Tigers during the Golden Age of Baseball rivaled those of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. America’s first Jewish baseball star was a beacon of hope to American Jews who faced bigotry during the Depression and World War II.
DIR/SCR/PROD Aviva Kempner. US, 1999, b&w and color, 95 min, 35mm. RATED PG
Co-presented by the Washington Jewish Film Festival and Women in Film & Video of Washington, DC.
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