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New documentary explores the legacy of the 5,000 Rosenwald schools set up by a Sears magnate and Booker T. Washington

Maya Angelou and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) are among the alumni of the constellation of schools created by the partnership between former slave and Tuskegee Institute founder Booker T. Washington and Sears Roebuck catalogue magnate Julius Rosenwald. The schools are celebrated in the documentary “Rosenwald,” by Washington filmmaker Aviva Kempner, which opened Friday at three area theaters. Mostly shuttered in 1954 upon desegregation, many Rosenwald schools were lost to neglect or ruin, but many, such as [Maryland's] Ridgeley, have been restored as cultural museums and community centers so that their exceptional legacy can be shared.

“Education was seen as dangerous,” says Washington Post columnist and Rosenwald alumnus Eugene Robinson in the film. “White Southerners wanted to keep it out of black people’s hands,” preferring to “keep them working in the fields.”

[Review: ‘Rosenwald’ a singular portrait of a mogul and philanthropist.]

Often consisting of just two or three classrooms, the schools were the heart of their communities, cradles of pride built on land often donated by black farmers. The schools were the children’s world, and all they knew of learning. As writer and poet Angelou, who died last year, says in the film: “I thought my school was grand.”

Read entire article at WaPo