Sometimes, it takes an unlikely friendship to change the world.

For American education, one of those alliances started in the early 20th century. That’s when a ludicrously successful retailer-turned-philanthropist, Julius Rosenwald, met the prominent educator Booker T. Washington. The pair decided to work together, hoping to improve education for Black students in the segregated South. Their collaboration created nearly 5,000 “Rosenwald Schools” — across 15 Southern and border states — between 1917 and 1937.

By some accounts, this was a massive success.

These schools caused a “sharp narrowing” of the difference in educational achievement of white and Black students in the South.

But it was a “watershed moment,” according to a recent book published about the schools, “A Better Life for Their Children,” for another reason, too: Those who attended the schools would later actively participate in the Civil Rights Movement, overturning segregation as an official American policy. The list of notable alumni includes longtime U.S. Rep. John Lewis and Medgar Evers, a field secretary for the NAACP who was assassinated in 1963.

Today, most of those schools have dissolved into history, and only around 500 still exist, in varying states of upkeep.

Andrew Feiler, a Georgia-born photographer, visited and photographed 105 of the extant schools and spoke with those connected to the schools and their legacy to publish “A Better Life for Their Children.” His book, released in 2021, is currently the basis of a traveling exhibition.

These days, race and educational opportunity still seem troublingly linked. NAEP data shows a consistent, three-decade-long gap in student performance in categories like 12th grade math and reading for Black students when compared to white ones. These gaps are often blamed on racial and economic segregation.

Perhaps that’s why some observers have connected Feiler’s exhibition about the past to the racial-educational gap of today, particularly noting the contemporary lack of adequate resources for public schools and the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

So EdSurge pulled Feiler aside to ask him what, if any, lesson he thinks the Rosenwald Schools might have for educators today.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

EdSurge: When and why did you decide to take on the project?

Andrew Feiler: I've been a serious photographer most of my life, and about a dozen years ago, I started down this path of taking my work more seriously and, mercifully, being taken more seriously, and I had to figure out what my voice was as a photographer.

I've been very involved in the civic life of my community — I've been very involved in the nonprofit world and the political world — and when I thought about my voice as a photographer, I found myself drawn to topics that were of interest in the course of my civic life.

And so I had done my first photography book, which came out in 2015 — just a portrait of an abandoned college campus. And it uses this emotional disconnect between these familiar education spaces, classrooms and hallways and locker rooms, but they have this veneer of abandonment…

That body of work ended up being about the importance of historically Black colleges and the importance of education as the on-ramp to the American middle class.

And I was thinking about what I was going to do next, and I found myself at lunch with an African American preservationist, and she was the first person to tell me about Rosenwald Schools. And the story shocked me.

I'm a fifth-generation, Jewish Georgian. I've been a civic activist my entire life. The pillars of the Rosenwald Schools’ story — Southern, education, civic, progressive — these are the pillars of my life. How could I have never heard of Rosenwald Schools?

And so I came home and I Googled it, and I found that while there were a number of more academic books on the subject, there was not a comprehensive photographic account of the program, and so I set out to do exactly that. Over the next three and a half years, I drove 25,000 miles across all 15 of the program states. Of the original 4,978 schools, only about 500 survive. Only half of those have been restored, about 105 schools, and the result is this book and this traveling exhibition.

Can I introduce the characters?

Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington, Quilt Celebrating Restoration. Photo by Andrew Feiler.

Sure. Introduce away.

At the heart of the story are two men.

Julius Rosenwald was born to Jewish immigrants who had fled religious persecution in Germany. He grows up in Springfield, Illinois, across the street from Abraham Lincoln's home. And he rises to become president of Sears, Roebuck & Company, and with innovations like “satisfaction guaranteed or your money back,” he turns Sears into the world's largest retailer in its era, and he becomes one of the earliest and greatest philanthropists in American history.

And his cause is what only later becomes known as “civil rights.”

Booker T. Washington was born into slavery in Virginia, attends Hampton College and becomes an educator. He is the founder of the historically Black college Tuskegee Institute, originally in Alabama.

These two men met in 1911.

And you have to remember, 1911 was before the Great Migration [the period between the 1910s and the 1970s when millions of Black people poured out of the South and moved to the North, Midwest and West fleeing racial violence and seeking opportunity].

Ninety percent of African Americans live in the South. And public schools for African Americans are mostly shacks, with a fraction of the funding that was afforded public schools for white children.

And that is the need, that's the environment that they find. And these two men like each other, form partnerships, work together, and in 1912 they create this program that becomes known as “Rosenwald Schools.” And over the next 25 years, from 1912 to 1937, they built 4,978 schools across 15 Southern and border states, and the results are transformative.

Having visited so many of the remaining schools, what impression did they leave on you?

... These places, are the locus of history and memory in a community, [and when] we lose places and spaces like this, we lose a piece of the American soul.

— Andrew Feiler

Well, the structures have an austere beauty. Their architecture is very vernacular and very local to the region in which they arise. Whether they are restored — or even having a veneer of abandonment — I find them beautiful.

But I think there's another important component.

I knew this was an extraordinary story. It was not clear to me from the beginning, how do you tell it visually? And I started out shooting exteriors of these buildings: One-teacher schools, two-teacher schools, three-teacher schools. These small structures. By the end of the program, they're building one-, two- and three-story red brick buildings.

There's an interesting architectural narrative, but when I found out that only 10 percent of the schools survive — only half of those have been restored — I realized that the historic preservation imperative is a huge, important part of the story, because these spaces, these places, are the locus of history and memory in a community, [and when] we lose places and spaces like this, we lose a piece of the American soul.

And once I realized that the preservation narrative was important, then I had to get inside, and suddenly I needed permission. And that's when I meet all of these extraordinary people — former students, former teachers, preservationists, civic leaders — and I bring their connections to this broader Rosenwald School story into this narrative with portraits.

How much of your project’s timing relies on a recently intensified desire to place greater emphasis on preserving Black history? How much of that explains why it’s resonating now?

Let me say a couple things about Rosenwald Schools as a program. First of all, the Rosenwald Schools are one of the most transformative developments in the first half of the 20th century in America. They dramatically reshaped the African American experience, and that dramatically reshapes the American experience.

There are two economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago who have done five studies of Rosenwald Schools, and what their data shows is that prior to Rosenwald Schools, there was a large and persistent Black-white education gap in the South. That gap closes precipitously between World War I and World War II, and the single greatest driver of that achievement is growth from all schools. In addition, many of the leaders and foot soldiers in the Civil Rights Movement come through these schools: Medgar Evers, Maya Angelou, multiple members of the Little Rock Nine who integrate Little Rock Central High, Congressman John Lewis who wrote this extraordinary introduction to my book, all went to Rosenwald Schools, and so the results of this program are transformative.

But to go back to the heart of your question, I think what resonates about this story today is that we live in a divided America, and we often feel that our problems are so intractable, especially those related to race.

Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington, in 1912, in deeply segregated, deeply Jim Crow America, were reaching across divides, of race, of religion, of region, and they fundamentally transformed this country for the better. And I think the heart of this story speaks to everybody today, driving for social change in America. And individual actions still matter, and that individual actions change the world.

Bay Springs School, Forrest County, Mississippi, 1925-1958. Photo by Andrew Feiler.

So if we take the sweep of your recent projects — I’m thinking of this one and the other book you mentioned, “Without Regard to Sex, Race, or Color,” which looked at Morris Brown College — has how you think about education changed in any tangible ways?

I have come out of this work with appreciation for the role that education has played throughout the sweep of American history.

The first taxpayer-funded school was created in America — done in Massachusetts in 1644; that is, 380 years ago. And there's a direct connection between that early commitment to education; the Land Grant College Act, which passed in 1862 and funds colleges all across America; HBCUs, predominantly created in the decades after the Civil War; Rosenwald Schools in the early decades of the 20th century; the educational provisions of the GI Bill, which transform America from relatively poor to relatively prosperous; [and] Brown v. Board of Education, one of the high watermarks of the Civil Rights Movement.

What are we talking about today? College affordability, banning books, circumscribing curriculum.

We have a 380-year tradition in which education has been the backbone of the American Dream, the on-ramp to the American middle class. And then today, that is a tradition at risk, and I think we need to understand and protect the importance of this tradition in our country.

Any parting lessons that educators can learn from this work?

I think what I said earlier is really in the spirit of what you're asking about, which is that the levels of division currently across our country are troubling. And I think it's important for us as Americans to reflect on our history and how we have come together to make America a better place. And the relationship between Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington, this is one of the earliest collaborations between Blacks and Jews and a cause that only later becomes known as “civil rights.” Their collaboration, their work together, their friendship is a model for how we as individuals can make a difference in our culture. They are reaching across divides of race. They are reaching across divides of religion. They are reaching across divides into a greater region, all of which remain divides in our culture today.

They're reaching across those divides, and they're creating a transformative impact on the country. And I think this is a model for all of us to remember, that we are the change that we seek. We have the capacity to make a difference, and we need to follow in the footsteps of this story to reshape this country for all of us.

© Photo by Andrew Feiler