NASHVILLE, Tenn. (FOLLETT) -- The 46th annual Nashville Film Festival screened over 285 films at Regal Green Hills from April 16-25. The documentary Rosenwald, a special presentation by the Nashville Jewish Film Festival, demonstrates how a Chicago philanthropist built over 5,000 schools in the South, including 350 in Tennessee.
Filmmaker Aviva Kempner explores the life and philanthropy of Sears Roebuck executive Julius Roswenald in Rosenwald. Kempner focuses on Rosenwald’s devotion to improve the education of African American schoolchildren in the early 20th Century.
“He got involved with Booker T. Washington and they started building five schools. And before you knew it, in partnership with the black communities and the white school boards, they built over 5300 schools,” Kempner said. “At one point, one out of every third African American child had been schooled at a Rosenwald school.”
Documentarians often struggle to find visual sources, but Kempner creatively used a number of sources. “A lot of photos, a lot of archival footage, and I believe in feature films. The life of his father as a peddler I used scenes from The Fisco Kid. The life of crowded housing in Chicago I used a scene with Sidney Poitier in A Raisin in the Sun,” she explained. “And it’s all about using your imagination to visually depict, and there is a lot of animated photos.”
Middle Tennessee State Professor Mary Hoffschwelle attended the screening and participated in a panel discussion after the film’s conclusion. Hoffschwelle, who wrote The Rosenwald Schools in the American South, highlighted the film’s impact. “Well this documentary by Aviva Kempner is really about Julius Rosenwald himself. So I think what is great is that it provides the broader context for the work that Rosenwald did with his school program,” she remarked. “You see the emergence of his business success, but also his commitment to philanthropy. And his genuine concern for the issues that confronted African Americans in the South.”
African American schools were often underfunded and less aesthetically appealing than white schools. A clip in the film demonstrated that Rosenwald, however, ensured his schools to be a symbol of pride within the African American community. Jacquelyn Serwer, Chief Curator at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, stated “one of the reasons why the schools were so beautiful and so uniformly attractive is because Rosenwald was the head of Sears Roebuck. He was able to provide some of the materials and the paint colors.”
Hoffscwhelle, who was also interviewed throughout the film, stresses the pervasiveness of Rosenwald schools in the Middle Tennessee area. “There were over 350 Rosenwald buildings in the state. So you would find in Davidson County, Sumner County, Rutherford County, Wilson County, Williamson County. They all have Rosenwald schools.”
The Rosenwald schools were more than a setting for educational activities. One school veteran, Lester Mae Hill, remembers the sense of community in the schools. Speaking from inside a former classroom, Hill said “we had teachers that made sure that you got your lesson. They taught you how to respect other people. They taught you how to respect yourself because you had someone that loved you. You had someone that spent time with you. You had someone that went outside and played games with you. It was just like a big family.”
Filmmaker Aviva Kempner hopes Rosenwald’s philanthropy regarding the education of African American students can spark a desire for contemporary social change. “For me it’s a great film about philanthropy, that when you have money or even when you just have a notion to help prepare the world that you can. And that’s what I want to inspire. I mean this man has inspired me, I’ve spent seven long years, I’m still raising money for the film, and I just think in the world today, when we have issues of police brutality, about the haves and have nots, what people can do to make a difference in the world.”
Would you like to learn more about upcoming screenings of Rosenwald? Would you like to review Mary Hoffschwelle’s written account, The Rosenwald Schools of the American South?