|
A Rosenwald School was the name informally applied to over five thousand schools, shops, and teachers' homes in the United States which were built primarily for the education of African-American children in the South in the early 20th century. The need arose from the chronic underfunding of public education for African-American children in the South, as blacks had been disenfranchised at the turn of the century and excluded from the political system in that region. Black children were required to attend segregated schools. Julius Rosenwald, an American clothier who became part-owner and president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, was the founder of The Rosenwald Fund. He contributed seed money for many of the schools and other philanthropic causes, requiring local communities to raise matching funds to increase their commitment to these projects. To promote collaboration between white and black citizens, Rosenwald required communities to commit public funds and/or labor to the schools, as well as to contribute additional cash donations. White school boards had to agree to operate and maintain the schools, and millions of dollars were raised by African-American rural communities across the South to fund better education for their children. Despite this program, by the mid-1930s, white schools in the South were worth, per student, more than five times what black schools were worth per student (in majority-black Mississippi, this ratio was more than 13 to one).〔Neil R. McMillen, ''Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow, at 84'' (University of Illinois Press 1990)〕 ==Julius Rosenwald== Julius Rosenwald (1862–1932) was born to a German-Jewish immigrant family. He 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. The millions in the South had been disenfranchised at the turn of the century and suffered second-class status in a system of Jim Crow segregation. Black public schools and other facilities were chronically underfunded. Sachs introduced Rosenwald to Booker T. Washington, the famed educator who in 1881 started as the first principal of the normal school which he developed as Tuskegee University in Alabama. 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 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 toward management of the school. As urged by 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rosenwald School」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|