''Rosenwald: A Remarkable Story of a Jewish Partnership with African American Communities'' is a 2015 documentary film written and directed by Aviva Kempner about the career of American businessman and philanthropist

Julius Rosenwald Julius Rosenwald (August 12, 1862 – January 6, 1932) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for establishing the Rosenwald Fund, which donated millions in ...

. It debuted on February 25, 2015 at the

Washington Jewish Film Festival Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

Plot

The documentary features interviews with a number of people, including Peter Ascoli, grandson and biographer of Rosenwald, civil rights leader

Julian Bond Horace Julian Bond (January 14, 1940 – August 15, 2015) was an American social activist, leader of the civil rights movement, politician, professor, and writer. While he was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, during the e ...

, Stephanie Deutsch, Richard J. Powell, journalist

Eugene Robinson Eugene Keefe Robinson (born May 28, 1963) is a former American football safety who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 16 seasons. He spent the majority of his career with the Seattle Seahawks, who signed him as an undrafted free age ...

and director George C. Wolfe. The film begins with an account of Rosenwald's rise from a job in the clothing business of his father, a German-Jewish immigrant, to the chairmanship of

Sears-Roebuck Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

. He built the company into the world's largest retailer. Shocked by reports of anti-Jewish

pogrom A pogrom () is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russia ...

s in Russia, he realizes that America's treatment of

Negroes In the English language, ''negro'' is a term historically used to denote persons considered to be of Black African heritage. The word ''negro'' means the color black in both Spanish and in Portuguese, where English took it from. The term can be ...

is no better and marshals his fortune to improving their condition. He develops a friendship with

Booker T. Washington Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American c ...

, donates money as a philanthropist to

Tuskegee Institute Tuskegee University (Tuskegee or TU), formerly known as the Tuskegee Institute, is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was founded on Independence Day in 1881 by the state legislature. The campus was de ...

, and helps support a model project for Tuskegee architects to design and the school staff to oversee operate simple schoolhouses intended for the rural South. After Washington's death in 1915, Rosenwald set up his Rosenwald Foundation in 1917 to expand the scale of the school construction project; the foundation primarily funded rural schools for African-American children in the South. It was based on offering matching construction funds to communities, and gaining white school board approval and commitment for operating funds. Local communities conducted fundraising and

sweat equity Sweat equity is a non-monetary benefit that a company's stakeholders give in labor and time, rather than a monetary contribution, that benefit the company. Sweat equity is rewarded in the form of sweat equity shares. These are shares given out by a ...

participation, with some also donating land for these schools. By Rosenwald's death in 1932, some 5,357 of the informally named

Rosenwald school The Rosenwald School project built more than 5,000 schools, shops, and teacher homes in the United States primarily for the education of African-American children in the South during the early 20th century. The project was the product of the part ...

s had been built. They comprised about one-third of all elementary schools available for African Americans prior to the 1954 US Supreme Court ruling in '' Brown vs. Board of Education'' that segregated public schools were unconstitutional. Other Rosenwald-supported projects depicted in the film include establishing 25

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by George Williams (philanthropist), Georg ...

YWCA The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) is a nonprofit organization with a focus on empowerment, leadership, and rights of women, young women, and girls in more than 100 countries. The World office is currently based in Geneva, Swi ...

s for African Americans, founding the Museum of Science and Industry, building the

Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments Rosenwald Court Apartments (also known as Rosenwald Courts or the Rosenwald Apartments; formerly known as Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments) is a large apartment building located in the Bronzeville neighborhood of the South Side of Chicago, Il ...

, a housing project for some of the many blacks moving to Chicago in the Great Migration; and helped pay for the training of the

Tuskegee Airmen The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of primarily African American military pilots (fighter and bomber) and airmen who fought in World War II. They formed the 332d Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group (Medium) of the United States Army ...

. The documentary concludes by chronicling the influence of the

Rosenwald Fund The Rosenwald Fund (also known as the Rosenwald Foundation, the Julius Rosenwald Fund, and the Julius Rosenwald Foundation) was established in 1917 by Julius Rosenwald and his family for "the well-being of mankind." Rosenwald became part-owner of S ...

, which awarded grants to many black artists and writers in the mid-twentieth century, including numerous African Americans who have become well known.

Reception

Box office

The film had grossed $412,511 as of 5 November 2015.

Critical reception

The documentary has received positive reviews from critics. On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film has a rating of 93%, based on 30 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, ''Rosenwald'' has a score of 67 out of a 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Positive reviewers included ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'', ''

The Christian Science Monitor ''The Christian Science Monitor'' (''CSM''), commonly known as ''The Monitor'', is a nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles in electronic format as well as a weekly print edition. It was founded in 1908 as a daily newspaper ...

'', and '' RogerEbert.com''.

Accolades

*Nominated for Grand Jury Prize at the 2015 Nashville Film Festival.

References

External links

* *{{IMDb title, 2514028
''Q&A'' interview with Aviva Kempner on ''Rosenwald'', January 17, 2016
Documentary films about businesspeople American documentary films Documentary films about racism in the United States Documentary films about Jews and Judaism in the United States Rosenwald schools 2015 documentary films Films directed by Aviva Kempner 2010s English-language films 2010s American films English-language documentary films