Rosenwald Schools | The Citizenship Project

As the CEO of Sears and Roebuck, Julius Rosenwald was an incredibly successful businessman in the early 20th century. He was considering philanthropic uses for his wealth to advance justice in the world when he met Booker T. Washington, the principal of Tuskegee Institute. Washington was working on a project to improve conditions in rural schools in the South. The two men became friends and began a matching grant program to build new schools for African Americans. The program was an enormous success, resulting in the construction of more than 300 schools in Tennessee alone.