\u201cIt\u2019s a wonderful story of cooperation between this philanthropist who did not have to care about black people, but who did, and who expended his considerable wealth in ensuring that they got their fair shake in America,\u201d Julian Bond, the renowned civil rights leader, says in the documentary.<\/p>\n
Kempner told JTA that her new film on Rosenwald \u201ccelebrates the affinity between African-Americans and Jews\u201d that started long before the civil rights movement and speaks to the powerful Jewish tradition of tikkun olam, or repairing the world.<\/p>\n
Kempner joined Bond and Rabbi David Saperstein, the former head of the Reform movement\u2019s Religious Action Center who now serves as U.S. ambassador at large for International Religious Freedom, for a discussion after the screening at the NAACP conference. It was while attending a public program 12 years ago on Martha\u2019s Vineyard at which Bond and Saperstein discussed black-Jewish relations that Kempner first learned of Rosenwald\u2019s work with African-Americans.<\/p>\n
She calls this film the last of a trilogy documenting the lives of \u201cunder-known Jewish heroes.\u201d The first two were about baseball legend Hank Greenberg and radio and TV personality Gertrude Berg.<\/p>\n
Interspersing archival footage with interviews with prominent African-Americans like Maya Angelou and U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), both of whom attended Rosenwald schools, the documentary tracks the ascent of Rosenwald, the son of German immigrants who rose to become one of the most powerful businessmen and philanthropists in early 20th-century America.<\/p>\n
His father, Sam, who came to America in 1851, began, like so many Jewish immigrants of his time, as a peddler. He eventually settled in Springfield, Illinois, where Julius grew up across the street from Abraham Lincoln\u2019s home.<\/p>\n
In 1878, his parents sent the 16-year-old Julius to New York to apprentice with his uncles in the men\u2019s clothing manufacturing business. He returned to Illinois to start his own manufacturing company, and through some business and family connections ultimately partnered with Richard Sears, one of the founders of Sears, Roebuck and Co. After Rosenwald took over the company in 1908, it became the largest retailer in the country.<\/p>\n
Outside his business life, Rosenwald was heavily influenced by his rabbi, Emil Hirsch, the spiritual leader of the Chicago Sinai Congregation, and he became a major benefactor of Jewish causes.<\/p>\n
The film\u2019s historians document the parallels Rosenwald drew at the time between the pogroms against European Jews and violent attacks on blacks in America. He was particularly moved by the race riots in 1908 in Springfield, which are said to have sparked the founding of the NAACP. Hirsch was one of the original leaders of the NAACP, and Rosenwald sponsored its first meetings at his temple.<\/p>\n
He was also influenced by the writings of Booker T. Washington, a prominent black leader at the time, and became a funder of Washington\u2019s Tuskegee University in Alabama.<\/p>\n
When Rosenwald gave a $25,000 gift to Tuskegee, Washington suggested taking a few thousand dollars to build six schools for young children. Until then, most black children didn\u2019t attend school, but instead spent their time working in the fields alongside their parents. The few schools that did exist were primitive shacks staffed mostly by untrained teachers.<\/p>\n
Rather than donating all the money for the schools, Rosenwald gave one-third of the funds needed and challenged the local black community to raise another third and the local white community to contribute the rest. In the end, some 5,300 schools were built with seed money from the Rosenwald Fund.<\/p>\n
The fund soon switched focus and began supporting promising black artists, helping catapult dozens onto the national stage.<\/p>\n
The Rosenwald Fund \u201cwas the single-most important funding agency for African- American culture in the 20th century,\u201d poet Rita Dove says in the film.<\/p>\n
Kempner calls Rosenwald one of the greatest examplars of American Jewish philanthropy and says she hopes her film \u2013 whose official opening in theaters is scheduled for mid-August \u2014 will motivate others to continue that tradition.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot all of us can be Julius Rosenwald,\u201d she said, noting that he gave away a total of $62 million in his lifetime, but \u201cwe can all do so.”<\/p>\n
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