Description
In these excerpts from 2019 interviews with Muriel Branch, Wilbert Dean, Nan Butler Roberts, and Rebecca Kinney, they describe the work of Black communities across Virginia to establish schools for their children in the early 20th century, a time when little to no public money was put toward black education. They are called Rosenwald schools because they were partially funded by grants from the Rosenwald Fund, a foundation established by Julius Rosenwald, an Illinois businessman and philanthropist. He and Booker T. Washington designed the initiative to engage the communities it benefited: rather than financing the entire construction project, Rosenwald provided partial funds—no more than half the total cost of the project—that had to be matched by the community and by a county school board appropriation.
