by Cieslafdn | Sep 6, 2012 | Rosenwald Grant Recipients
A set of six murals by the great African American artist Hale Woodruff are kicking off a tour of several cities at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Woodruff, one of the most celebrated American painters of the twentieth century, chose the slave rebellion on the Amistad as the subject for these murals which originally hung at Talladega College in Alabama. The recently restored murals were completed in 1938, five years before Woodruff received consecutive Rosenwald Fellowships to work and teach in New York, where he would stay until he retired decades later. After Atlanta, the murals will travel between now and 2015 to Dallas, New York, Washington D.C., New Orleans, Hartford, Detroit and finally Birmingham, so be on the lookout for them at a museum near you. Thanks to our neighbor, Robert Mallet, for letting us know about the exhibit in Atlanta.
Hale Woodruff working on a mural, 1942
Photo credit: Library of Congress via Office of War Information
By Michael Rose
by Cieslafdn | Sep 5, 2012 | Rosenwald Grant Recipients
A theatrical production of Ralph Ellison’s seminal 1952 novel, Invisible Man premieres tonight at the Studio Theatre in Washington D.C. Ellison began working on Invisible Man in 1945, with the resources provided to him by a Rosenwald Fellowship. This is the second staging of Oren Jacoby’s theatrical adaptation of the novel, which had never before been adapted in any form. The Studio Theatre’s show features the same director and star as the early 2012 premiere production at the Court Theater at the University of Chicago. Jessica Goldstein describes the most striking feature of the stage design in today’s Washington Post, the 650 light bulbs that light up the eponymous character’s underground dwelling. Information about the schedule and tickets can be found on the Studio Theatre’s website.
Ralph Ellison, 1961
United States Information Agency via Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons
by Cieslafdn | Aug 31, 2012 | Rosenwald Fund
Montrose Morris over at Brownstoner.com, a website about residential property in Brooklyn, has written a great blog about the historic African American YMCA on Carlton Avenue and Julius Rosenwald’s role in its construction. The story of the the Rosenwald-funded YMCAs is an inspiring one, and the Carlton Ave branch is one of two funded by Rosenwald challenge grants (the other is found on 125th Street in Harlem). A historical photo of some patrons of this branch can be seen here, at the NYC YMCA’s website, and the photo below is a gallery of other Rosenwald YMCAs.
Gallery of photos of nine Rosenwald Y.M.C.A. Buildings
Image from The Crisis, September 1922, courtesy of the Modernist Journals Project
By Michael Rose
by Cieslafdn | Aug 31, 2012 | Rosenwald Fund
The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago reports that its annual Julius Rosenwald Memorial Award will go to its Board Chairman, David A. Sherman, in recognition of his outstanding service in stewarding the organization through the recent economic downturn. Rosenwald was a founding member of the Associated Jewish Charities of Chicago, a forerunner to the Federation, and served as its first president. Sherman will receive the award on Monday, September 24th, 2012 at the Hilton Chicago.
For more info, visit www.juf.org
By Michael Rose
by Cieslafdn | Aug 29, 2012 | Rosenwald Fund
The Anthony Bowen YMCA recently distributed flyers to Northwest Washington D.C. residents informing them about the upcoming October 2012 opening of a new building for the YMCA. In the flyer, Angie Reese-Hawkins, President & CEO of the YMCA of Metropolitan Washington recounts a little of the history of the YMCA and then writes eloquently on the YMCA’s mission:
“The new Y unites the right minds and resources to serve this diverse community, honoring Anthony Bowen’s passion to create a place where all can grow. Each time this Y has been resurrected, it has met the personal and social needs of the community, region and nation. Join us as we write history again, by being part of a legacy that will positively impact your life and the lives of generations to come.”
The D.C. YMCA on 12th Street NW, shortly after it opened
Image from The Crisis, November 1914, courtesy of the Modernist Journals Project
Anthony Bowen, who was born into slavery in Prince George’s County but purchased his freedom, organized the original African American YMCA in D.C. before the Civil War. After a series of temporary locations, the YMCA moved in 1912 into a new building on 12th Street NW funded in part by a Julius Rosenwald challenge grant. The D.C. YMCA was the pilot project of this program and the first of many YMCAs to be funded by Rosenwald. Its generous, modern spaces influenced the design of the buildings that followed it. In the 1980s, the YMCA moved into a new building on W Street NW, which is next door to the new YMCA that will open later this year at 14th and W Streets NW.
The Anthony Bowen YMCA basketball team
Image from The Crisis, July 1911, courtesy of the Modernist Journals Project
You can read more about the Anthony Bowen YMCA on their website. There are also a couple of interesting videos on their Vimeo channel, one featuring Thomas B. Hargrave Jr. discussing the origins of the D.C. YMCA all the way back in 1853 and another with Janice Williams of the YMCA talking about the more recent history of the organization. It’s great to see this YMCA getting renewed and revitalized again. As Angie Reese-Hawkins and other people who are passionate about the YMCA will tell you, it’s been a positive force in the community for over 150 years.
By Michael Rose
by Cieslafdn | Aug 23, 2012 | Rosenwald Fund
Theater J in Washington D.C. has released its schedule for the 2012-2013 season and several of the productions sound very intriguing. One is The Hampton Years, by Jacqueline E. Lawton, which will have its world premiere on May 29th at Theater J and run until June 30th. Lawton’s play, based on a true story, is set between 1939 and 1946 at Hampton University and deals with two young artists named John Biggers and Samella Lewis who are taught by an Austrian Jewish immigrant named Viktor Lowenfeld. The small cast includes two more artists, Rosenwald Fund grantees Elizabeth Catlett and Charles White, who, according to an interview with Lawton, play the part of “mentors and instigators” to the young artists. It’s a fascinating story and it resonates with the Rosenwald Fund in two ways. It’s another example of a remarkable pre-Civil Rights partnership between Jews and African Americans, but it also shows how Rosenwald fellows often went on to mentor other artists.
Coming this November to Theater J is a play about another Rosenwald fellow, Woody Guthrie. Woody Sez: The Life & Music of Woody Guthrie tells the story of Guthrie’s life through music. The cast consists of four “actor/musicians” who will play a variety of parts and instruments. This production is one of many tributes taking place this year, marking what would have been the late Guthrie’s 100th birthday. Woody Sez plays from November 8th to December 2nd at Theater J.
By Michael Rose
by Cieslafdn | Aug 10, 2012 | Rosenwald Fund
Astronaut John Mace Grunsfeld was recently on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” to talk about NASA’s new Mars rover, Curiosity. Curiosity landed on Mars early Monday (August 6th) morning and has already sent back many black and white images. Grunsfeld explained how this rover differs from earlier ones–its chemistry laboratory is much more sophisticated–and talked about its primary mission: finding evidence of historical life on Mars by studying and doing tests on the dirt it recovers.
Grunsfeld’s background is linked to Julius Rosenwald in a couple of ways. His grandfather, Ernest Grunsfeld Jr., was Rosenwald’s nephew and designed the Adler Planetarium and the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments, an innovative apartment complex that housed many famous Chicagoans, including Quincy Jones and Joe Louis.
Also, growing up in Hyde Park, Chicago, Grunsfeld has said he became interested in science early in life through visits to the nearby Museum of Science and Industry, another Rosenwald-funded project that was initially known as the Rosenwald Industrial Museum. Rosenwald was inspired to create the Museum of Science and Industry after seeing similar museums in Vienna and Munich, and his hope was that the exhibits detailing industrial technology would motivate new scientific innovation by museum goers.
You can watch the segment from “The Colbert Report” on Hulu.
By Michael Rose
by Cieslafdn | Aug 6, 2012 | Rosenwald Fund
Rashida Jones, who’s become a familiar face in NBC’s critically-lauded sitcoms (like “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation”) and modern romantic comedies (like I Love You, Man and Our Idiot Brother) is currently promoting her newest film, Celeste and Jesse Forever. Jones stars in the film with Andy Samberg and it’s also her first screenwriting credit. Jones explains in a Washington Post interview that the film draws from moments in her personal life with close friend and co-writer Will McCormack.
Rashida Jones’s family has an interesting connection to Julius Rosenwald. Her father is the great musician and producer Quincy Jones, who was born in the Rosenwald-funded Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments in Chicago in 1933. Barbara Bowman (whose father helped design the apartment complex) recalled in an interview with us last year that Quincy Jones’ mother was a secretary to the building manager and his father was the carpenter in the building.
You can read more about Celeste and Jesse Forever at the Washington Post.
By Michael Rose
by Cieslafdn | Jul 30, 2012 | Film Production
When we started thinking about making a film on the life of Julius Rosenwald, the story of the Rosenwald schools seemed like his most amazing accomplishment. In making the film, we have come to realize that his many other philanthropic projects (including Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, the black YMCA building program, his work within the Jewish community in Chicago and the Rosenwald Fund grants to up and coming black artists and intellectuals) merit changing the title of film to something broader than the current working title, The Rosenwald Schools.
We would love to know if you have an idea for a new title for the film. The creator of the winning title will be listed under “Special Thanks” in the credits of the completed film. Please follow this link to a page where you can input your ideas: Title Input Contest
by Cieslafdn | Jul 25, 2012 | Rosenwald Grant Recipients
On Monday evening, July 23rd, Harvard Law professor Dr. Kenneth Mack presented his new book, Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer, to a spirited crowd at Politics & Prose on Connecticut Avenue in Northwest Washington D.C. Dr. Mack explained that, while the story of civil rights lawyers like Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston is a familiar one to most people, his book is at once a more detailed history of the era and a reflection on the subjective experience of a group of characters who found themselves “representing their race” in the legal profession.
Dr. Mack read two passages from Representing the Race at Politics & Prose, the second of which dealt with a little known civil rights attorney named Pauli Murray who argued that legally there was no distinction between equal rights for blacks and equal rights for women, preferring to refer to them as a single issue: “human rights.” Mack treats her personal life in some depth in the book, explaining how her “unresolved crisis of identity,” as a biracial, potentially transgendered, individual, contributed to her drive to fight discrimination through the law. Because Murray was profoundly uncomfortable in society—due to her position at the margins of both race and gender—she serves as an ideal case study for Dr. Mack’s book. Like the other attorneys he discusses, Murray obtained a kind of agency and freedom from her individual discomfort by taking on the role of an outspoken trial lawyer for civil rights cases.
Pauli Murray, 1946
Photo credit: Library of Congress, New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection
Murray graduated from Howard Law School in 1944 and, according to the Chicago Defender, received a Rosenwald Fund grant “to analyze the extension of minority rights under New Deal labor and social legislation and court rulings, and for graduate work at Harvard.” As the top graduate of Howard, Murray was a prime candidate for Harvard, but her application was denied because of her gender. Murray’s appeal of this decision to the Harvard administration is a great read and is published in Rebels in Law, Voices in History of Black Women Lawyers, edited by J. Clay Smith Jr. In it, she diplomatically argues for the practicality and inevitability of including women in the study of law but also uses wit in a revealing way. “Very recent medical examination reveals me to be a functionally normal woman with perhaps a ‘male slant’ on things, which may account for my insistence upon getting into Harvard.” This sounds cheeky if you haven’t read Dr. Mack’s book. In fact, Murray had actually requested examination by doctors to see if she was a hermaphrodite and had also explored the use of male hormone injections. Mack uses this quote to demonstrate how Murray’s personal incompatibility with existing social categories drove her “insistence” upon success in the legal battle against discrimination.
Murray’s connection to the Rosenwald Fund is an intriguing one. She later explained that in her application to the fund, she had stated she would like to attend Harvard Law but hadn’t yet been accepted. Then, when she saw in the newspaper that a grant was awarded for her to continue study at Harvard, she was as surprised as anyone. This public mix-up added fuel to the fire of her appeal. Although ultimately she was unsuccessful in her bid to attend Harvard (she went to University of California, Berkeley instead) the experience probably helped cement in her mind the congruence of discrimination against blacks and discrimination against women, which she summed up perfectly with the term “Jane Crow.” Murray was ahead of her time once again, but not by much. Just six years later, Harvard Law admitted its first female students, to little fanfare and almost no blowback from alumni.
Another Rosenwald fellow figures in Dr. Mack’s new book. Robert Lee Carter also attended Howard Law School and went on to become a high-ranking NAACP lawyer who argued in front of the Supreme Court during Brown v. Board of Education. Newspapers reported in 1940 that Carter had received a Rosenwald grant “For a study of the constitutional protection which American courts have given civil liberties since 1900, at Columbia University,” work that was pertinent to the legal argument that ultimately would demonstrate the unconstitutionality of institutionalized segregation. Mr. Carter passed away earlier this year.
Robert Lee Carter, circa 1940s
Photo credit: Library of Congress, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People records
By Michael Rose
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