Browse Items (1 total)
- Description is exactly "The Rosenwald school building program was an outgrowth of Prof. Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute. In 1912 philanthropist Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932), a president of Sears, Roebuck & Co. in 1909, allowed Tuskegee to use some of the money he had donated to the Institute for the construction of six small Black schools in rural Alabama, which were opened in 1913 and 1914 respectively. In 1917 Rosenwald set up the Julius Rosenwald Fund, a philanthropic organization based in Chicago, and in 1920 the Rosenwald Fund established an independent office in Nashville, Tennessee. By 1928, one in every five rural schools for Black students in the South was a Rosenwald School.
By 1932, the year of its conclusion, the Rosenwald Fund had constructed 4,977 new schools, 217 teachers' homes, and 163 shop buildings, constructed at a total cost of $28, 408, 520 serving 663, 615 students in 883 counties across 15 Southern states.
Lauderdale County had approximately seven Rosenwald Schools across the county, from Smithsonia in the West to Rogersville in the East. Those seven schools were: Anderson; Bethel; Coffee; Hewitt; Mt. Olive; Mt. Zion; Shiloh, with Bethel, founded in May of 1917, being the first known Rosenwald School to open in Lauderdale County (Florence Times, Fri., May 11, 1917). In her dissertation, "The Place Names Colbert and Lauderdale Counties," p. 156, Sandra Sockwell says that land for the Coffee Rosenwald School was purchased in 1917 but doesn't note the month. "
Sort by:
