Congressman John Lewis last week was honored with the National Book Award for his work March: Book Three. The congressman made reference to his time in a Rosenwald school as a youth and spoke about the nation today, and the future he sees and hopes for. Although Rosenwald may have died many years ago, those touched by his life are still being honored for their exceptional additions to society; and through extension thus honor Julius Rosenwald.
Carl Johnson, the last of Tuskegee Airman to graduate, still vividly remembers the challenges against segregation and bigotry the Tuskegee airmen from World War II had to overcome. The Tuskegee Institute, the historically black university founded by Booker T. Washington provided the airmen with rooms, food, hangars and flight instructors. It wasn’t until 2007 that Carl Johnson and other Tuskegee Airmen were collectively awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Colin Powell, who served as the first black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, “You showed America that there was nothing a black person couldn’t do.” The nation’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture features their plane, the Spirit of Tuskegee. We salute them for their service!
The Julius Rosenwald Fund financed the building of Moton Field, the primary flight facility for the training of the African American pilots at Tuskegee Institute. The Rosenwald film closes with a segment about the airmen and includes footage of Eleanor Roosevelt (a board member of the Rosenwald fund) visiting and praising them. The upcoming release of the Rosenwald DVD and Extras will also feature a segment about the Tuskegee Institute and its mission.
In 1951, John Dudley, Harold and Frances Suggs, and Eleanor Darden Stewart led a student organized walkout of their all-black Adkin High School in Kinston, NC to demand better conditions at the school. On Saturday, September 24 they were among the first members of the public to visit the new National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Back in 1951, they came up with a list of demands including a proper gym, a vocational shop, more classrooms and a home economics area, and took them to a board of education meeting in Kinston. Despite the school board’s initial declaration of a lack of resources within 18 months the students got everything they asked for.
Adkin High School was a “Rosenwald school” built in 1928 for African American students with the help of philanthropist Julius Rosenwald who helped build many such schools across the South in the early 1900s. You can read more about the walkout here.
Visitors to the National Museum of African American History will have the opportunity to view desks from the Rosenwald Hope School in Pomaria, South Carolina.
She remembers the smells of the hair pomades in the factory, where women stirred ointment by hand in great, black vats.
She remembers her mother taking her to Madam C.J. Walker’s beauty school in Indianapolis in the 1960s to have her hair styled in an Afro.
She remembers growing up with remnants of the black wealth created by Walker, who built an empire in the early 1900s selling hair scalp ointments and whose accomplishments will be on display at the Smithsonian’s new African American Museum of History and Culture, which opens Sept. 24.
In honor of this humble and generous philanthropist’s birthday, the Ciesla Foundation team is happy to announce that the enriched ROSENWALD DVD package will be completed and released in time for Hanukah and Christmas purchases.
Once we started reading through the transcripts the team concluded that the stories of Rosenwald’s generosity, the schools, and the artists the Fund supported were so rich that we wound up editing them into three hours of extras. These extras will constitute a separate disc to accompany the film’s DVD. We also have commissioned Teaching for Change to write the Study Guide that will be provided in the DVD and online.
In order to accomplish this monumental task we are grateful to our numerous funders. We were very excited to receive funding from two prestigious foundations, Ford Foundation and Righteous Persons Foundation, to create the three hours of extras and study guide.
In order to provide free copies of the enriched ROSENWALD DVD to high schools and colleges we are embarking on a final fundraising drive. We welcome all contributions and suggestions of which individuals, foundations or corporations might give for this purpose. All contributions are tax deductible, please see our donations page, here.
We were very pleased that The National Museum of American Jewish History inducted Julius Rosenwald into its Hall of Fame during its Only in America Gala on June 1st. The exhibit helped draw in a crowd during the July 4th holiday weekend where the museum saw over 3,100 visitors setting a new attendance record! Senator Cory A. Booker made a speech at the gala that can be viewed here.
Finally, the Foundation would like to congratulate its founder and director of Rosenwald, Aviva Kempner, on her recent invitation to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences after over three decades of committing herself to film and producing four highly-acclaimed motion pictures that celebrate Jewish lesser known heroes and culture!
Enjoy the end of summer and check the website for venues the film is showing all over the country. Julius Rosenwald’s example of bringing communities together is needed as much now as a hundred years ago.
Thank you for all of your support with the film! Rosenwald and its inspiring message could not have spread this far without all of the generous contributions and word of mouth publicity from our fans.
Congratulations to George Wolfe (who went to a Rosenwald school) and his new musical, Shuffle Along for their Drama Desk Awards wins on June 5th! The production won awards for “Outstanding Musical”, “Outstanding Choreography” (Savion Glover), “Outstanding Costume Design for a Musical” (Ann Roth), and “Outstanding Wig and Hair Design” (Mia M. Neal)! We wish the production the best as it heads into the Tony Awards next week!
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