WASHINGTON (7News) — A new exhibition at the National Building Museum spotlights a historic partnership that helped educate generations of Black children in the segregated South.
“A Better Life for Their Children” explores the collaboration between educator and author Booker T. Washington and businessman and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, who together helped build nearly 5,000 schools across 15 Southern states in the early 1900s.
The schools, commonly known as Rosenwald Schools, were constructed decades before the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
The photodocumentary exhibition features contemporary and archival images, replicas of classroom materials, and artifacts that highlight the communities that raised matching funds, donated land, and built the schools themselves…