Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald, and the Building of Schools for the Segregated South

Time Period
1877 to 1924
1925 to Today
Media Type
Video
Topics
Black History
Education
Presenter
Stephanie Deutsch

On May 16, 2013, Stephanie Deutsch delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald, and the Building of Schools for the Segregated South."

Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee Institute, and Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears, Roebuck, and Company, first met in 1911. By charting the lives of these two men both before and after the meeting, Stephanie Deutsch offers a fascinating glimpse into the partnership that would bring thousands of modern schoolhouses to black communities in the rural South. By the time segregation ended, the "Rosenwald Schools" that sprang from this unlikely partnership were educating one third of the South's black children.

Deutsch, a writer and critic living in Washington, D.C., is the author of You Need a Schoolhouse: Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald, and the Building of Schools for the Segregated South.

The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Want to listen to an audio-only version of this lecture? Listen now on Soundcloud.