page_title: Rosenwald School
section_title: Significance of the Rosenwald-Washington collaboration
hierarchical_section_title: Rosenwald School / Significance of the Rosenwald-Washington collaboration
caption_attribution_description: English: Virginia Historical Highway Marker located in Washington, Virginia
context_page_description: In informal usage, a Rosenwald School was any of the more than five thousand schools, shops, and teacher homes in the United States that were built primarily for the education of African-American children in the South during the early twentieth century. The project was the product of the partnership of Julius Rosenwald, a Jewish-American clothier who became part-owner and president of Sears, Roebuck, and Company and the African American leader, educator, and philanthropist, Booker T. Washington, who was president of Tuskegee Institute.
  The need arose from the chronic underfunding of public education for African-American children in the South, as black people had been discriminated against at the turn of the century and excluded from the political system in that region. Children were required to attend segregated schools.
  Rosenwald was the founder of the Rosenwald Fund. He contributed seed money for many schools and other philanthropic causes. He required local communities to raise matching funds to encourage their commitment to these projects.
context_section_description: In the segregated schools of the South, African American children were sent to woefully underfunded schools. The collaboration of Rosenwald and Washington led to the construction of almost 5,000 schools for black children in the eleven states of the former Confederacy as well as Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland. As a result of their collaboration, approximately one-third of African American children were educated in these schools.
  The Rosenwald-Washington model required the buy-in of African American communities as well as the support of white governing bodies. Black communities raised more than $4.7 million to aid in construction , plus often donating land and labor. Research has found that the Rosenwald program accounts for a sizable portion of the educational gains of rural Southern black persons during this period. This research also found significant effects on school attendance, literacy, years of schooling, cognitive test scores, and Northern migration, with gains highest in the most disadvantaged counties.
caption: Washington Graded School in Washington, Virginia.  Partly funded by the Julius Rosenwald Fund.
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