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

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 African American 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 African American 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." (Introduction by Paul Levengood) The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.