Rosenwald School - Julius Rosenwald

Julius Rosenwald

Julius Rosenwald (1862–1932) was a German-Jewish immigrant's son and became a clothier by trade, after learning the business from relatives in New York City. His first business went bankrupt; however, another he began in Chicago, Illinois became a leading supplier to Richard Sears' business. Sears, Roebuck and Company was a growing mail-order business which served many rural Americans. Anticipating demand by using the variations of sizes in American men and their clothing determined during the American Civil War, Rosenwald helped plan the growth in what many years later marketers would call "the softer side of Sears": clothing. In 1895, he became one of its investors, eventually serving as the president of Sears from 1908 to 1922. He was its chairman until his death in 1932.

After the 1906 reorganization of the Sears company as a public stock corporation by the financial services firm of Goldman Sachs, one of the senior partners, Paul Sachs, often stayed with the Rosenwald family at their home during his many trips to Chicago. Julius Rosenwald and Sachs would often discuss America's social situation, agreeing that the plight of African Americans was the most serious problem in the United States.

Sachs introduced Rosenwald to Booker T. Washington, the famed educator who in 1881 had been the first principal of the normal school which grew to become Tuskegee University in Alabama. Dr. Washington, who had gained the respect of many American leaders including U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, had also obtained financial support from wealthy philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie, George Eastman and Henry Huttleston Rogers. He encouraged Rosenwald, as he had others, to address the poor state of African-American education in the U.S.

In 1912, Rosenwald was asked to serve on the Board of Directors of Tuskegee, a position he also held for the remainder of his life. Rosenwald endowed Tuskegee so that Washington could spend less time traveling to seek funding and devote more time towards management of the school. As urged by Dr. Washington, Rosenwald provided funds for the construction of six small schools in rural Alabama, which were constructed and opened in 1913 and 1914 and overseen by Tuskegee.