What do you think?
Rate this book
A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools That Changed America
A Sarah Mills Hodge Fund publication
Born to Jewish immigrants, Julius Rosenwald rose to lead Sears, Roebuck & Company and turn it into the world’s largest retailer. Born into slavery, Booker T. Washington became the founding principal of Tuskegee Institute. In 1912 the two men launched an ambitious program to partner with black communities across the segregated South to build public schools for African American children. This watershed moment in the history of philanthropy―one of the earliest collaborations between Jews and African Americans―drove dramatic improvement in African American educational attainment and fostered the generation who became the leaders and foot soldiers of the civil rights movement.
Of the original 4,978 Rosenwald schools built between 1917 and 1937 across fifteen southern and border states, only about 500 survive. While some have been repurposed and a handful remain active schools, many remain unrestored and at risk of collapse. To tell this story visually, Andrew Feiler drove more than twenty-five thousand miles, photographed 105 schools, and interviewed dozens of former students, teachers, preservationists, and community leaders in all fifteen of the program states.
A Better Life for their Children includes eighty-five duotone images that capture interiors and exteriors, schools restored and yet-to-be restored, and portraits of people with unique, compelling connections to these schools. Brief narratives written by Feiler accompany each photograph, telling the stories of Rosenwald schools’ connections to the Trail of Tears, the Great Migration, the Tuskegee Airmen, Brown v. Board of Education , embezzlement, murder, and more.
Beyond the photographic documentation, A Better Life for Their Children includes essays from three prominent voices. Congressman John Lewis, who attended a Rosenwald school in Alabama, provides an introduction; preservationist Jeanne Cyriaque has penned a history of the Rosenwald program; and Brent Leggs, director of African American Cultural Heritage at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has written a plea for preservation that serves as an afterword.
Born to Jewish immigrants, Julius Rosenwald rose to lead Sears, Roebuck & Company and turn it into the world’s largest retailer. Born into slavery, Booker T. Washington became the founding principal of Tuskegee Institute. In 1912 the two men launched an ambitious program to partner with black communities across the segregated South to build public schools for African American children. This watershed moment in the history of philanthropy―one of the earliest collaborations between Jews and African Americans―drove dramatic improvement in African American educational attainment and fostered the generation who became the leaders and foot soldiers of the civil rights movement.
Of the original 4,978 Rosenwald schools built between 1917 and 1937 across fifteen southern and border states, only about 500 survive. While some have been repurposed and a handful remain active schools, many remain unrestored and at risk of collapse. To tell this story visually, Andrew Feiler drove more than twenty-five thousand miles, photographed 105 schools, and interviewed dozens of former students, teachers, preservationists, and community leaders in all fifteen of the program states.
A Better Life for their Children includes eighty-five duotone images that capture interiors and exteriors, schools restored and yet-to-be restored, and portraits of people with unique, compelling connections to these schools. Brief narratives written by Feiler accompany each photograph, telling the stories of Rosenwald schools’ connections to the Trail of Tears, the Great Migration, the Tuskegee Airmen, Brown v. Board of Education , embezzlement, murder, and more.
Beyond the photographic documentation, A Better Life for Their Children includes essays from three prominent voices. Congressman John Lewis, who attended a Rosenwald school in Alabama, provides an introduction; preservationist Jeanne Cyriaque has penned a history of the Rosenwald program; and Brent Leggs, director of African American Cultural Heritage at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has written a plea for preservation that serves as an afterword.
144 pages, Hardcover
Published May 1, 2021
4 people are currently reading
155 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
Read
January 21, 2022We've all heard about Carnegie libraries, but not so much about these Rosenwald schools-- equally important infrastructure, of dozens of schools built for African Americans through the philanthropy of Julius Rosenwald, who partially paid for these schools, and the African-Americans who saved up money to fund these schools.
June 30, 2022
I read this book in about one hour. It's an extraordinary story from our history. Julius Rosenwald (white, Jewish businessman and former president of Sears, Roebuck & Co) and Booker T Washington (black founder of the Tuakegee Institute) paired up and started a program to build schools for black students. The schools are known as "Rosenwald Schools" and almost 5,000 were built.
December 12, 2021
I can’t imagine someone putting together a better photo essay on the Rosenwald schools. Until they do, it’s 5 stars for Feiler’s noble effort.
October 2, 2023
This book centers around large scale black and white photos of many of the 500 or so Rosenwald schools that still exist, as well as some of the former staff, graduates, and donors of land. The forward by John Lewis, who writes of how eagerly he attended a Rosenwald school in rural Alabama, is poignant. His two-room school had no running water and required chopped wood to heat, but to Lewis as a child -who attended dressed in the same overalls and work shoes he used on his family's farm- it was an oasis of learning and possibility.
Julius Rosenwald, a Jewish businessman who began his life as a child of immigrants and rose to lead Sears, Robuck & Co., joined with educator Booker T. Washington and Black communities across America to build 4,978 schools from 1913-1937 for Black children who were so often denied an education due to segregation and discrimination.
This book is a moving testimony to people who worked to create opportunity for upcoming generations, and how their good deeds rippled through time.
Julius Rosenwald, a Jewish businessman who began his life as a child of immigrants and rose to lead Sears, Robuck & Co., joined with educator Booker T. Washington and Black communities across America to build 4,978 schools from 1913-1937 for Black children who were so often denied an education due to segregation and discrimination.
This book is a moving testimony to people who worked to create opportunity for upcoming generations, and how their good deeds rippled through time.
July 21, 2023
We were lucky enough to be in Memphis for the Liberty Bowl with our Jayhawk football team. On our way home we decided to stop at the Lorraine Hotel and the Civil Rights Museum. Both were awesome but heartbreaking on so many levels. However, there happened to be an exhibit next to the museum called "A Better Life for Their Children..." which displayed the black and white photos and stories of the Rosenwald schools by Andrew Feiler. Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington's work to build 5,000 black schools in the South during Jim Crow was not taught in my history classes, and consequently I didn't teach it to my own students when I taught school. It is important to all Americans that they know that almost 5,000 schools were built by a Black man and a Jewish man together! And many of the hundreds of thousands of the leaders of the Civil Rights' Movement were Rosenwald students!
January 16, 2022
A collection, or “coffee table book”, of photographs and vignettes describing “one of the most dramatic - and effective - philanthropic initiatives the country has ever seen.” Booker T. Washington & Julius Rosenwald collaborated to help found thousands of schools for African American children in the early 1900s, a program that had long-lasting results.
Wide in scope by presenting images of dozens of schools, but shallow in depth by not presenting vignettes in the most compelling or interesting manner.
Wide in scope by presenting images of dozens of schools, but shallow in depth by not presenting vignettes in the most compelling or interesting manner.
April 25, 2022
Andrew Feiler created a masterful book here with simple, poignant prose and striking black and white photographs of the Rosenwald schools.
As a social studies educator who wrote her senior history paper on Progressive Education in the Parker School District, I got ridiculously excited to read about these schools, many built around the same time as the schools that I studied, as well as their impacts on the community.
I highly recommend this book.
As a social studies educator who wrote her senior history paper on Progressive Education in the Parker School District, I got ridiculously excited to read about these schools, many built around the same time as the schools that I studied, as well as their impacts on the community.
I highly recommend this book.
June 9, 2022
Powerful images and accompanying narratives fill this history and impact of Rosenwald Schools, telling part of the story of education in post-Emancipation America. We are asked to reflect on the public-private partnership aspect of a philanthropic effort to level an unequal playing field in education for Black students.
The book is both beautiful and moving, thought provoking and encouraging that change is possible.
The book is both beautiful and moving, thought provoking and encouraging that change is possible.
September 9, 2025
This. This is the stuff.
Highest recommendation.
Thank you: to the photographer, to Fulton County Public Library for the loan, and University of Georgia Press for publishing.
Highest recommendation.
Thank you: to the photographer, to Fulton County Public Library for the loan, and University of Georgia Press for publishing.
December 31, 2021
This is a neat art book of images from the Rosenwald schools. I really enjoyed going through it but would have loved even more of the stories behind the images.
March 22, 2022
My only complaint is that I wish there were more specific locations like towns or roads or coordinates. I like looking stuff up on maps as I read. I’m a map creeper.
June 27, 2021
Read for the JCC Book Selection Committee. Here is the review I wrote for the committee, adhering to their stingy word count requirement.
In 1912, Julius Rosenwald was the very wealthy president of Sears, Roebuck. Booker T. Washington was the principal of the Tuskegee Institute, the premier university for African-Americans in the Jim Crow south. Over the next twenty years, they “harnessed the passions of African-American communities” to build nearly 5,000 schools, ensuring that students (among them Maya Angelou and Medger Evers) had that “better life.” This book tells the story in luminously beautiful black and white photographs, supplemented with anecdotes from students, teachers, and historians. In his heartfelt Foreword, John Lewis recalls the two-room Rosenwald school he attended in rural Alabama. It lacked running water; it lacked central heat. But “[i]t was beautiful, and it was our school.”
A few further opinions: I would have liked a better organized, more thorough description of the program itself, and more data on how many lives were changed and how they were changed. But Feiler is a photographer, a visual artist. For him, the photos said all that needed to be said.
In 1912, Julius Rosenwald was the very wealthy president of Sears, Roebuck. Booker T. Washington was the principal of the Tuskegee Institute, the premier university for African-Americans in the Jim Crow south. Over the next twenty years, they “harnessed the passions of African-American communities” to build nearly 5,000 schools, ensuring that students (among them Maya Angelou and Medger Evers) had that “better life.” This book tells the story in luminously beautiful black and white photographs, supplemented with anecdotes from students, teachers, and historians. In his heartfelt Foreword, John Lewis recalls the two-room Rosenwald school he attended in rural Alabama. It lacked running water; it lacked central heat. But “[i]t was beautiful, and it was our school.”
A few further opinions: I would have liked a better organized, more thorough description of the program itself, and more data on how many lives were changed and how they were changed. But Feiler is a photographer, a visual artist. For him, the photos said all that needed to be said.
July 12, 2022
This book had great pictures. I never knew about Rosenwald schools or that Dunbar High in Little Rock, AR was one and thus related to Central High.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews