Like her earlier films on Hank Greenberg and Molly Goldberg, Aviva Kempner's new documentary "Rosenwald" is a biography of a remarkable 20th century Jewish American. Julius Rosenwald was one of the most successful businessmen of the early 20th century. He became very wealthy as the president of Sears Roebuck, pioneering innovations in business that would transform retail and finance. But his extraordinary legacy was as a philanthropist, with much of his focus on pre-Civil Rights era social justice for African-Americans. He worked with communities in the segregated South to build more than 5300 schools for black children. And his foundation provided grants to artists, performers, and scientists, including Marian Anderson, Gordon Parks, Jr., Ralph Ellison, Katherine Dunham, Langston Hughes, Dr. Charles Drew, and Woody Guthrie.
Because Rosenwald directed that all of the foundation money was to be spent, it closed in 1948, so his legacy has been overlooked. Kempner wanted to bring the story to another generation. In an interview, she explained how she first heard about the Rosenwald schools.
Twelve years ago this month I was on Martha's Vineyard and at the Hebrew Center there was a lecture about blacks and Jews. So I was thinking, "Oh I'm going to hear about the Civil Rights era" because the main speaker was Julian Bond. So I went in, I'm sitting there and all of a sudden I hear about Julius Rosenwald and all those schools he built, over 5300. And then I heard about all the incredible arts and letters people he supported. As Julian talks my mouth opens bigger and bigger and bigger. And I went to him after and I said "I'm going to make this film." And lucky for me, he and his wife live very nearby me. He was my main consultant on the film, held my hand all these twelve years, gave suggestions about fundraising, suggestions about who to interview, who not to interview, even up to selecting the artwork for the poster. And Julian himself, his father and uncle had gotten grants. So he knew how important those grants were to him and the scholarship of his family and as he says in the end of the film, the people who got those grants made it possible for the next generation to be the civil rights people and that led to the election of the first black president of the United States.
Kemper emphasized that Rosenwald was a practical man who insisted that the communities be full partners in building and operating the schools. And he knew that building good schools for black children was only an interim step. A title card at the end of the film notes quietly that Rosenwald funded a third of the litigation costs for the Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit that would make "separate but equal" segregated schools obsolete. "If segregation is the law, at least they will have good schools," is how Kempner described his approach.
To research the film, Kempner interviewed historians, family members, and famous graduates of Rosenwald schools. Maya Angelou appears in the film and says she thought her school was "grand." Kempner immersed herself in archival material, uncovering gems like Clint Eastwood speaking Yiddish to a peddler like Rosenwald's father in an episode of "Rawhide." She studied Rabbi Emil Hirsch, who was an enormous influence on Rosenwald. Hirsch urged Rosenwald and other industrialists of the era to commit to tikkun olam, the Jewish imperative to "heal the world." Rosenwald made an explicit connection between the treatment of Jews, who were being subjected to pogroms in Eastern Europe, and the treatment of African-Americans in the South. In one of the film's most touching scenes, he visits the Tuskegee Institute and is deeply moved by the self-determination of the students, who built and operated the school as well as attending classes, and by the school choir, which performed for him, singing spirituals.
Kempner says that Rosenwald was probably the greatest unsung philanthropist in American history. "There is a Rosenwald in all of us. I hope people will come out of the movie and get inspired and want to do and some kind of good. How can we be Rosenwald? How can we make a difference? This whole principle of tikkun olam, repairing the world, that's what I'm hoping that people get involved in."