Restoring Historic Schools Controversial

Thaddeus A. McDonald carries his family legacy with him, his graceful longhand filling a tattered notebook that reads like a novel.

At 67, McDonald still walks with ease on land bought more than 100 years ago by his grandfather, a slave who moved from Tennessee to Texas, where he worked until Emancipation set him free.

He beams as he recalls how Martin McDonald, unable to read or write, signed an “X” to the deed for land in Bastrop County that his family still owns.

McDonald stops near a one-story wood structure with boarded-up windows and chipped white paint. Smiling, he flips through notebook pages and points.

“And in 1923, they built this here Rosenwald School,” McDonald says. “The first teacher was my auntie, Antelia McDonald.”

The school building on his property is one of 527 in Texas and more than 5,000 across the South built in the early 1900s with the help of Chicago philanthropist Julius Rosenwald. Rosenwald schools helped educate blacks in rural areas.

Conflicting Theories on Donor’s Motives

The Texas Historical Commission is leading a project to restore the buildings and spread their history. Schools in Lockhart and Seguin are now on the National Register of Historic Places. No one knows how many others still exist in Texas, but 24 buildings have been found so far.

“Julius Rosenwald did more than build schools,” says Karen Riles, head of the commission’s Rosenwald project. “His legacy in African American education is more than just a physical building. He provided African Americans with the ability to help themselves, and that was really a symbol of his personal philosophy of self-help.”

But some historians say projects like the one in Texas wrongly glorify Rosenwald, the son of a Jewish immigrant and a businessman who made his fortune as president of Sears & Roebuck during the Industrial Revolution.

Critics say Rosenwald used his wealth to limit the education of blacks by buying into the controversial work of Booker T. Washington, himself criticized for his commitment to vocational training.

Amilcar Shabazz, an assistant professor of American studies at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, says Rosenwald believed blacks should be educated to prepare them “for that status as a racially subordinate working class.”

Though he does not want to offend Rosenwald’s family, Shabazz calls the legacy “a part of history that you have to interpret wisely.”

“All philanthropy is not ideologically free,” he says. “You can’t ignore the question of why they give.”

Elizabeth Ihle of James Madison University’s School of Education and Psychology in Harrisonburg, Va., adds: “Some people feel that he really set the African American people back by offering all of this industrial training.”

Peter Ascoli, in Chicago, defends his grandfather’s motives. “He really believed that there was an affinity between blacks and Jews. He felt they were both being persecuted,” he says. “Don’t forget: This was an era when Jews couldn’t go to country clubs.”

And, he notes, Rosenwald and Washington teamed up on several projects supporting higher education for blacks. He cited a teaching fellowship for black doctors in white medical schools as one way to bolster black medical schools and black professionals.

Making Education a Little More Equal

The Rosenwald Fund was created in 1917, six decades after the abolition of slavery. Yet segregation still ruled in the South. Little money or attention went to education of black children, many of whom lived in rural areas and worked on family farms.

Black children attended classes at local churches, in farmhouses or under oak trees, using secondhand books from white schools. Blacks worked desperately to raise money and find land and labored to build schools, often with whites’ help.

Rosenwald’s fund was a major contributor, donating $4.7 million over 30 years. He required that blacks, whites and local governments match funds, and that all donate land and labor. He also funded busing--”very, very revolutionary,” Riles says.

The Rosenwald Fund did not solve all educational problems of the time, she adds, but “education became a little more equal.”

Shabazz, however, suggests that the Rosenwald schools should be remembered not for the man but for educational setbacks that blacks worked so passionately to overcome. “They were prepared to have that education almost at any cost,” he says.

Bert Benade, 72, volunteers at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, founded by Rosenwald. He lauds Rosenwald’s actions as being louder than his critics’ voices, citing donations totaling $22 million.

Among 1,100 beneficiaries: opera singer Marian Anderson; author Langston Hughes; scholar W.E.B. DuBois, who fiercely criticized Washington’s philosophy; and McDonald, who says Rosenwald helped spark a love for learning.

“We have lawyers, TV personalities. We have bankers. We have a lot of ministers, lots of preachers, and a whole lot of elementary and middle school teachers,” he says. “I couldn’t name them all.

“The school has been an invaluable asset to our people,” he says, locking the door. “So we would like to maintain it as a constant legacy to us.”