Unlocking the Doors of Opportunity / The Rosenwald Schools of North Carolina (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Unlocking the Doors of Opportunity / The Rosenwald Schools of North Carolina
Writer: Tom Lassiter
Director: Jere Snyder
Producer: Tom Lassiter
Abstract: The rise of Jim Crow in the late 19th century caused public school spending for African American students in the rural South to all but dry up. Rosenwald Schools, the shorthand name for a program put forward by the educator Booker T. Washington and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, offered a way for communities to build the schools they wanted and needed. Rosenwald Schools took root in 15 states, with the program eventually helping to build nearly 5,000 schoolhouses. The program was especially successful in North Carolina, which constructed nearly 800 schools, the most of any state. One reason for the program's success was dynamic leadership – Black and White, male and female – who shared the goal of creating better schools for Black communities, yet who operated largely within society's conventions of that era. North Carolina's Rosenwald Schools remind us of a time when community people with few resources were united by a vision for a better future. They invested in that future and struggled to achieve it. The story of Rosenwald Schools informs today's younger generations about an era that has been missing from history books. It also has valuable lessons about community building and cooperation, which are sorely needed in these fractious times.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: http://vimeo.com/691199838/ee2bc95ee8
Primary URL Description: "Unlocking the Doors of Opportunity / The Rosenwald Schools of North Carolina" -- a 30-minute documentary for general audiences. Historians and alumni share the story of how North Carolinians came to build more Rosenwald Schools for African Americans than any other state.
Access Model: Documentary has been offered to PBS-NC to air on the statewide network. Program is available online to the public and educators. Plans are to screen the film in community forum settings, pending funding. All access is free to the public.
Format: Digital File
Format: Web

The Bridge That Brought Us Through / The Rosenwald Schools of South Carolina (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: The Bridge That Brought Us Through / The Rosenwald Schools of South Carolina
Writer: Tom Lassiter
Director: Jere Snyder
Producer: Tom Lassiter
Abstract: South Carolina built more than 500 so-called Rosenwald Schools under the program devised by Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald. This unique program was responsible for providing elementary schools for an estimated 40 percent of South Carolina's African American children, according to a researcher at Orangeburg State University. Virtually all of them lived in rural areas. As in other states, the Rosenwald Schools became the centers of strong, supportive communities that nurtured Black youth, helping to prepare them for high school and higher education. Above all, supportive communities and the schools' caring teachers prepared the students for life's challenges in the Jim Crow era. The prospect of integrating the state's public schools in the early 1950s, at the behest of the federal government, led to swift action by the state's elected White officials to build new, "equal" schools for African American students. Though this plan did indeed build scores of schools, it did not prevent eventual integration. In the final analysis, the scheme to build "equalization schools" helped erase many Rosenwald Schools from the landscape. This makes the surviving schools all the more important as physical reminders and interpretive sites for an almost-forgotten chapter of South Carolina history. Rosenwald Schools were a step toward correcting the inequalities in public education created by Jim Crow policies. One of the many ironies in this story is that South Carolina voters, in the Reconstruction Era, passed a remarkably progressive state constitution that guaranteed free education for all citizens, Black and White. The person who advocated most for this right was Robert Smalls. Smalls was a previously enslaved individual who earned notoriety in 1862 for stealing an armed Confederate vessel under cover of darkness in Charleston Harbor and delivering it to Union ships offshore. Smalls remained a proponent for education all his life.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://vimeo.com/786070715
Primary URL Description: "The Bridge That Brought Us Through / The Rosenwald Schools of South Carolina" is a 36-minute documentary examining the role of nearly 500 schoolhouses built for African American students in the early years of the 20th century.
Access Model: Open access
Format: Video

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