New Film Puts the Spotlight on an Early Civil-Rights Donor - The Chronicle of Philanthropy:
As civil-rights activists and donors grapple with how to build momentum around the Black Lives Matter movement, many Americans are getting an inside view about an unusual philanthropic approach to promoting racial equality with the release ofRosenwald, a new documentary about Julius Rosenwald, an early-20th-century benefactor.
Mr. Rosenwald, who made a fortune as chief executive of Sears, Roebuck and Company, helped provide top-notch education and fellowships to at least two generations of African-Americans who would go on to become some of the most prominent cultural, political, and scholarly leaders of their day, and drivers of the civil-rights movement of the 1950s, ’60s and beyond. Among them: Rep. John Lewis and author Maya Angelou.
Aviva Kempner, the filmmaker who created the documentary, hopes its release will stimulate new thinking about how the lessons of the past can inform today’s effort to promote racial equality.
"We really need to make an assessment of the cycle of poverty, just like during the Jim Crow era when African-Americans were stuck and relegated to the fields," says Ms. Kempner. "We need to talk about giving hope to young kids, especially young men."
She got the idea for the film after hearing civil-rights leader Julian Bond give a talk about the Chicago philanthropist. He noted that at the urging of Booker T. Washington, Mr. Rosenwald helped build more than 5,300 schools for African-American children in the rural South and Southwest. And through his Julius Rosenwald Fund, he supported fellowships that launched the early careers of African-American artists, writers, and intellectuals, including Langston Hughes and Marian Anderson. (Mr. Bond’s father and uncle received Rosenwald fellowships.)
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