Dear President Biden,
Julius Rosenwald was the son of German-Jewish immigrants. After following his uncles into the retail clothing trade and serving as an executive at Sears, Roebuck, and Company, he amassed great wealth. His faith – the Hebrew concept of tzedakah – motivated him to use his fortune to support a variety of philanthropic causes.
After meeting Booker T. Washington in 1912, Rosenwald poured his time, energy, and money into a project to build schools for African American students in the segregated south. This collaboration succeeded in the building of more than 5,000 “Rosenwald Schools” which, in many instances, were the first permanent educational facilities some African American communities had ever seen. In an era of separate and unequal education these facilities provided quality educations for one-third of all Black elementary school children in the southern states and changed the course of the lives of millions of people for the better.
Rosenwald’s life and legacy had a real impact on our nation. His desire, however, to remain unheralded means that most, if not all, of his contributions have been lost to time and the passage of history. That must change.
I write today to urge you to use your authority to establish a new national park unit commemorating the life and legacy of Julius Rosenwald and the Rosenwald Schools his philanthropy helped to build. Rosenwald’s story is a powerful tale of industry, faith, interracial cooperation, and belief in the importance of helping others to make a way out of no way. This history must be preserved and shared to benefit and inspire current and future generations.
