August 18, 2021 • 45 mins
Holly is joined by photographer Andrew Feiler, author of “A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools that Changed America.” Andrew shares stories of capturing these schools, photographing John Lewis, and the legacy of the Rosenwald schools.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. I am
a very spoiled child. So I recently got the chance
(00:21):
to chat with photographer Andrew Feiler, who has a new
book out titled A Better Life for Their Children Julius
Rosenwald Book or T Washington and the four thousand, nine
hundred seventy eight Schools That Changed America. And I have
actually been wanting to talk about the Rosenwald Schools for
a while, so I was very excited about Andrew's book,
particularly because it is as beautiful as it is moving
(00:43):
and informative. Yeah. I think you started talking about wanting
to do an episode on them way back when we
did the Sears History interview. That was years ago, Yes,
and we had Jerry Hancock on. I wanted to do it,
but I never felt like I had like the right
entry point. And then Andrew's book happened and made it easy. Well,
(01:06):
and this is not Andrew's first book. His previous book
also has a historical theme. It's titled without regard to Sex, race,
or Color, The Past Present, and Future of One historically
Black College. This new book has also become an exhibit
at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta,
and it will tour after it finishes there at the
(01:28):
end of this year. Yeah, we'll talk about that a
bit during the interview. So let's jump right into that,
where Andrew shares how he ended up a photographer, and
specifically a photographer documenting and writing about history. First of all, Andrew,
thank you so much for being with us. Great to
be with you. Thank you for having me. What a
delight for me. I feel so spoiled. Um. The primary
(01:49):
reason you're here today is so we can talk about
your latest book. But this is not your first book,
so to do the runway to it, I w want
to make sure we talk about your first book, which
was without regard to sex, race, or color, the Past, Present,
and Future of One Historically Black College, and that covers
the history of Morris Brown. So before we get into
(02:09):
the newest, Um, I would like for you to tell
us your story how you started pursuing a career in
photography and how you ended up focusing your lens on
the subjects you have, particularly history and particularly black history.
So in two thousand and eight, I started down a
path that was four and a half very difficult years.
(02:31):
I had taken over a family real estate business in
two thousand two and my dad had gotten sick. Two
thousand eight, we went away from my parents fiftieth wedding
anniversary at another business partner in the business. We got
back in the next day. My business partner died. Thirteen
days later, my brother was diagnosed with a truly life
threatening bone cancer. Mercifully he has he is now thirteen
(02:55):
years cancer free, but that was not a given at
the time. Soon after that my father's health complete, they collapsed,
and then the real estate world imploded in the Great Recession,
and I spent three years and four months doing real
estate workouts. And collectively, those are the types of experiences
that caused you to say, what do you want to
do the rest of your life? And so um I
started down the path in the midst of this period
(03:18):
of my time of my life. I've been a serious
photographer most of my life, and I started on this
path of taking my work more seriously and mercifully getting
taken more seriously. And one of the things that you
have to do in in that process is figure out
what is your voice as a photographer, what is your
voice as an artist? Well, I've been a civic activist
(03:39):
my entire life as well. I've founded more than a
dozen civic initiatives. I serve on a number of boards
of not for profits. I have been an active advisor
for many years to a number of elected officials and
political candidates. And what I found is, I really, as
I started to explore this, uh my photography more diligently,
(04:01):
is that my photographic voice was my civic voice. And
I was working on a body of work on abandoned
public school spaces in the South, because an abandoned public
school is a story of demographics, right flight gentrification. When
Mars Brown College filed for bankruptcy, and so I thought,
you know, this is a really important story. It has race,
(04:24):
it's an historically bought college. It has religion. Mars Brown
College was found under the auspices of the Amy Church.
It has class because it was a college that had
become one that was primarily focused on the children of
families of lesser means. And that story, that multilayered story,
(04:44):
becomes my first book. But it was also what my
process is to read and shoot and shooting and read,
and the reading and forms of shooting and the shooting
and forms of reading. And there was tooth moments that
really shaped that project. One was when I came across
the statistic yeah that there were originally about a hundred
and twenty historically black colleges in America. We were down
(05:05):
to about a hundred. Those were hundred colleges are three
percent of colleges in America. They are more than ten
percent of African Americans who go to college, more than
twenty five percent of African Americans who earned degrees. And
that replants this story in the midst of this central
question we have in our culture today, what is how
(05:26):
do we create on ramps to the American middle classes?
And I studied that question, I realized I stumbled on
this much broader American narrative. Education has been the backbone
of the American dream since before there was the United
States of America. The first taxpayer funded school is founded
in Deadham, Massachusetts, in sixteen forty four. The Land Grant
(05:46):
College Act, which creates colleges all across America, has created
in eighteen sixty two. Historically black colleges and the decades
after the Civil War, Rosenwald Schools. In the early decades
of the twentieth century, the education provisions of the g
HI Bill transform America from relatively poor to relatively prosperous.
Brown versus Board of Education is one of the highlights
(06:06):
of the Civil rights movement. What are we talking about today,
crushing levels of student deck, college affordability, college access. It's
more than three hundred and seventy five year narrative arc
uh that drives American history is a tradition at risk.
And that became the message in this first book. And
then how did the Rosenwald Schools get on your radar?
(06:29):
So I had just turned in my first book to
my publisher. Um it was this was early two thousand fifteen.
That book comes out at the end of two thousand fifteen.
And in February of two thousand fifteen, I found myself
at lunch with a woman named Jennie Cyriac. And Jennie
had originated the role of African American Heritage specialist at
the Georgia State Historic Preservation Office. And she's the first
person to tell me about rosen Wald Schools. And I
(06:51):
was shocked. I am a fifth generation Jewish Georgian. I
have been a progressive activist my entire life. The pillars
of this story Southern Jewish progressive activist or the pillars
of my life. How could I've never heard of Rosenwald Schools?
So I come home and I google Rosenwald Schools, and
I find that there's a couple of academic books on
the topic. But there was no comprehensive photographic account of
(07:13):
this story. And I set out to do exactly that.
So for our listeners to lay the groundwork, will you
tell us just about the Rosenwald Schools and what their
purpose was and how they got set up. So Julius
Rosenwald is born to Jewish immigrants who had fled religious
persecution in Germany. He grows up in Springfield, Illinois, across
(07:34):
the street from Abraham Lincoln's home. He rises to become
the president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and with innovations
like Satisfaction Guaranteed or Your Money Back, he turned Sears
into the world's largest retailer of its era. And he
becomes one of the earliest and greatest philanthropists in American history.
And his cause is what later becomes known as civil rights.
(07:57):
Booker T. Washington, born into slavery and Virginia, goes to
Hampton College in Virginia, becomes an educator and is the
founding principle of the historically black college in Alabama now
and then as Tuskegee Institute. And the two men meet
in nineteen eleven. Would you have to remember is at
nineteen eleven is before the Great Migration, which doesn't begin
(08:17):
until later that decade. So of African Americans live in
the South, and public schools for African Americans are mostly shocks,
with a small fraction of the funding provided to the
education of white children. Many jurisdictions do not even have
public schools for African Americans. Booker T. Washington asks Julius
Rosenwald to join the board of Tuskegeeon later in nineteen eleven.
(08:40):
He agrees, but the two men keep talking what can
we do together? And they focus on this idea of
public schools for African Americans and the genius there's genius
in this program. They reach out to the black communities
of the South and they say, we want you to
be a full partner in your progress. So you must
(09:00):
contribute to a school. If you will contribute to a school,
and we will count as your contribution cash, land, materialists,
or labor. And if you will reach out to the
school board, the white school board, because we want to
create deliberate black white dialogue as a foundation for future progress.
And these have to be public schools, so the White
school board, we welcome their contributions. But what they have
to do is agree to own maintenance staff the school,
(09:21):
pay for the teachers. You do those things, Julius Rosenwald
will make a substantial contribution to school construction. And from
nineteen twelve to nineteen thirty seven, this program builds four thousand,
nine hundred and seventy eight schools across fifteen southern and
border states and the result is transformative. One thing that's
(09:42):
interesting in case people do not know the timeline of
Booker T. Washington's life. He died not that long after
the two men met, like less than four years after
they met, but still he was very clearly influential. And
on this whole project, can you talk about how Julius
Rosenwald continued kind of the dialogue after his partner in
(10:02):
this project was no longer there. Yes, So Julius Rose
want a book Or T. Washington shared two important values.
Julius Rosenwald was deeply committed to America because he saw
America as a safe haven from anti Semitism, and he
saw that America weakened by its treatment of African Americans.
(10:26):
Booker T. Washington, of course, was dedicated to the uplift
of African Americans, and they also shared a commitment to
self help. And it was book Or T. Washington who
understood that education was the path forward and that what
was missing in the panoplay of education was small school houses.
Small because everybody they were not busses for these school houses,
(10:49):
and they had to be able to walk to these schools,
and so many of these schools, most of these schools,
particularly the early years of the program, are very small,
and so they create this program together. But it's enormously successful,
and Julius Rosenwald commits to continuing the program even after
the death of Booker T. Washington, his partner in this venture.
(11:09):
It's important to note that the relationship between Julius Rosenwald
and Booker T. Washington is one of the earliest collaborations
between Jews and African Americans, and there is a direct
connection between their collaboration, their friendship and Rabbi Abraham Josh
(11:30):
wad Heschel walking with doctor King, who famously says of
that experience of walking with doctor King that had felt
like his feet were praying. And what happened in Georgia
earlier this year when Raphael Warnact and John ass Off
cris crossed this state together for two months and clearly
(11:51):
built not just a political alliance but a deep personal friendship.
That relationship and which Georgia sends its first African American senator,
its first Jewish senator to the United States Senate. That
relationship between John Assoff and Rafael Warnock stands on the
shoulders of the relationship the friendship between Julius Rosenwald and
(12:13):
Bucker T. Washington. You are, as you said, a photographer,
But this book has a lot of writing. Every photograph
comes with a story. Was that always your intention? It
was not. That was actually new and uh yeah, I
can what happened. So look, I knew this was an
extraordinary story. The question is how do you tell the
(12:35):
story visually? And I started out with exterior images one
to three teacher schools, white small, white collaborate buildings to
the end of the program, there's one two and three
story red brick buildings, but that story was incomplete. Because
of the original four thousand, nine seventy schools, there is
about five hundred left. Only half of those have been restored,
(12:58):
and so many of these schools are at risk of collapse.
There's an inherent component of this story, which is the
plea for preservation. These spaces are the locus of history
and memory, and so I needed to tell the adaptive
reuse story and the preservation narrative. And suddenly I need
I need to get inside, and suddenly I need permission.
And once you need permission, you gotta start talking to people.
(13:20):
And that's when I met these extraordinary people, former students,
former teachers, his preservationist historians that are trying to save
these structures, and I end up telling their narratives through portraits.
But in the course of meeting all these people and
doing as I said earlier, my process is to shoot
(13:40):
and read and read and shoot, and the reading and
forms of shooting and the shooting and forms of reading.
And I came across so many incredible stories that indeed
I felt compelled to write a short story that goes
with every image, or in some cases pairs of images.
I found Rosenwald Schools connected to the Trail of Tears,
to the Great Migration, to the Tuskegee steph a Study,
(14:00):
to the story of the Tuskegee Airman, to the litigation
of Brown v. Board embezzlement, murder, and those stories are
told in the prose compliments. So this is actually a
hybrid body of work. It's both images and stories that
go together. Did you ever anticipate that you were going
to become a writer and historian in addition to this
photography career that you would switched to, Well, it's interesting,
(14:23):
Actually I haven't. I've had interest in history my entire life.
I took My undergraduate degree is actually economics, but I
took a lot of history classes in college. Actually have
to graduate degrees. One's an MBA, but one is actually
a modern history degree, and so the history component of
it came naturally to me. But I'm certainly never expected
(14:44):
to be writing sixteen thousand words of stories, um. But
the stories are so extraordinary and so powerful that it
was a joy to have that as part of this process.
(15:07):
This book is one that right from the opening is
very compelling, and one of the things that's so compelling
is that there's an introduction by John Lewis, who, of
course being in Atlanta hero aside from just his civil
rights work, which is amazing, and of itself being part
of the fabric of Atlanta. I get choked up just
talking about absolutely one of the few people I've ever
(15:27):
met that I just burst into tears the second I
met him. Um, will you talk about how that came
to be that you got to heaven be part of
this and that beautiful portrait that you made of him?
Thank you? Um. So I have to mes set a
little bit of context. This program transforms America. There are
two economists in the Federal Reserve Bank or Chicago who
have done five studies of Rosenwald Schools. With their data
(15:49):
shows is it prior to World War One there was
a large and persistent black white education gap in the
South and that cap closes precipitously between World War One
and World War Two. And the single greatest driver in
that achievement is Rose World Schools. But the other major
impact of this program is that many of the leaders
and foot soldiers of the movement come through these schools.
Maya Angelou Medgar Evers, multiple members of the Little Rock
(16:11):
Nine who integrate Little Rock Central High School, and Congressman
John Lewis all attended Roseenwald Schools. So Congressman Lewis is
clearly the most prominent along of the roseenmald Schools program.
Living at the time I was working on this project.
I grew up in Savannah. I left the South after
high school, and bouncing around the world for fifteen years,
(16:31):
decided it was finally safe to come back to the South.
South had grown up in my absence. I came back.
I had been I was a constituent of Congressman Lewis
Is for twenty five years. I lived in the fifth
Congressional District the entire time I've been in Atlanta, and
so I reached out to Congressman Lewis and I asked
him if he would contribute an introduction to this book.
And he said, you know, I'm not sure I'm comfortable
(16:52):
writing the history of Rosenwald Schools. I just knew I
went to school there, I said, Congressman Lewis. There are
three other essays in this book, won by Genie Syriac
at the State Historic Preservation Office. One by Brent Leggs,
who heads up the African American Cultural Heritage Action funded
the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is focused on
African American preservation. One by me, we've got the history covered.
(17:16):
What I want you to do is what only you
can do. Bring us into that classroom. What was it
like to go to school there? What role did education
play in your life? And he said, oh, I can
do that. And so I met with Congressman Lewis in
his office. This round table at the center of his
office is out there for several hours with him as
(17:38):
we re find the introduction. This was October and I
had gotten into his eyes. Staff had let me into
his office in advance and had set up my lights.
And at the end of this session he put on
his jacket for me to take his portrait, and there's
this cancer awareness ribbon on his lapel and he said,
(18:03):
should I take this off? I said, Congressman Lewis, I
want the authentic you, and that is the authentic you
will leave it on. And it was exactly sixty days
later that he went public with his cancer diagnosis. So
his contribution to the forward to this book is one
of the last public acts the Congressman Lewis contributed, and
(18:23):
he also praises your work in it, So that's got
to feel pretty amazing. You know, he's an extraordinary person,
and it was one of the great sort of side
And I didn't start this project to have the opportunity
to spend an afternoon with Congressman Lewis in his office
sharing our experiences. What an extraordinary gift from my artistic
(18:46):
journey to have shared this experience with Congressman Lewis. Amazing. Um,
that might be the answer, But I'm curious what was
the most unexpected or surprising aspect of working on this project.
You took a lot of journeys and met a lot
of people and saw a lot of things that you
probably didn't anticipate. Yeah, I did. So this project took
(19:08):
me three and a half years. I drove twenty five
thousand miles across all fifteen of the program states. And
I think there were two things that really jumped out
of me. To answer your question, one of them is
I I've been a fan of audiobooks for a long time,
and as I was on I did this twenty five
thousand miles almost entirely by myself, and I listened to
(19:29):
audio books as I was driving across the South, and
I listened to Civil Rights history. I listened to the
entire Tailor Branch trilogy on the Civil Rights Movement. I
listened to an entire book on letter from Birmingham Jail.
I listened to Kareem Abdul Jabbar's book on the Harlem Renaissance.
Two of the people whose portraits I shot in this
(19:50):
book have memoirs. I listened to their they were on audiobook.
I listened to those memories. And what an extraordinary compliment
to this journey to be out in the Mississippi Delta
listening to civil rights history. So that was really a
beautiful compliment to this entire story. The other was that
throughout this journey I continued to meet these extraordinary individuals
(20:13):
who were former students, former teachers, the preservationists that are
trying to save these schools in their community. And they
were so warm and so welcoming and so excited about
being part of this project, so excited that I was
here to help share this history they knew was important
and they were concerned was going to be lost. And
(20:35):
that embrace of this sort of broad Rosenwald school community
was unexpected and an incredible joy. I want to talk
for a second about the structure of the book, because
you break it out in terms of like the timeline,
but that timeline is also connected to kind of expansion
(20:56):
and growth of the program, so that the footprint of
it shifts in three years. Well do you talk about
those three phases that you cover and kind of just
how this program went from its initial phase to becoming
a much bigger, broader project. So the initiative begins uh
(21:16):
In with a pilot of six schools, all built close
to Tuskegee, where Booker T. Washington and his team can
keep an eye on the program. And I'm going to
digress here for a second to tell you one story
that because it's it's really an important component of how
this story unfolds. Booker T. Washington has photographs made of
(21:37):
the students and teachers standing in front of their schools,
carrying the hopes and dreams of their communities, and he
sends them to Julia's Rosenwald, who writes back that he
has so moved that he is committing to expand the program.
Almost all of my work prior to this work has
been in color this body of work is entirely in
(21:58):
black and white and horrors zong in homage to those
images of students and teachers and standing in front of
their schools who become that This becomes part of the
visual history and the visual language of this program. So
the program is run out of Tuskegee starting in nineteen twelve.
Book of Two Washington dies in nineteen fifteen. The program
(22:19):
continues to be run out of Tuskegee, but it's starting
to explode, and it's reaching across more and more Southern states,
and it simply gets to a point where it has
outstripped the ability of the team at Tuskegee to manage this. Meanwhile,
Julius Rosenwald's philanthropy is becoming much more expansive, and so
in the early years of this program he's writing checks.
(22:41):
But in nineteen seventeen he actually creates the Rosenwald Fund,
and so in nineteen twenty they actually open an office
to manage the Rosenwald Schools program in Nashville. So that
first phase, what I call the Tuskegee phase, is from
nineteen twelve to nineteen twenty, when the programs run out
of Tuskegee, starting a nine teen twenty. It's now run
(23:01):
out of Nashville, which by the way, is why the
archives the Rosenwald Fund are at Fisk University. And it's
in those years it's run by a man named Samuel Smith,
that they start moving from building schools to building model schools,
and they create these plans that they would make available
(23:22):
for free to anybody who will use them. And so
to be a Rosenwald school you had to get Rosenwald funding.
But there are thousands of schools built across America with
these plants for both blacks and whites that aren't Rosenwald
schools that are built with Rosenwald plans. And that's what
I call the Nashville phase from nine seven. But in
(23:44):
nineteen Julius Rosenwald session home, I'm getting older. We need
to move this from my philanthropy to institutionalizing it a
little bit more, and so he hires Edwin Embury, who
had been a senior executive the Rockefeller Foundation where Julius
Rosenwald was on the board, and the program is now
(24:04):
run out of Chicago or Julius rohodenes from World as
a resident and the program pivots from focusing on building
schools to focusing on educational outcomes. They create incentives for
libraries and the schools. They create incentives for school buses
for an adding to the school year. The Risen World
(24:25):
Schools Program formally ends in ninety two with the death
of Julius Rosenwald and the Fund moves on to focus
on other things. But in ninety seven President Roosevelt calls
up Edwyn Embury at the Fund. He says, I'd like
a Rosenwald School in Merryweather County, Georgia, near his home
(24:45):
in Warm Springs. And Edwin Abury says back to President
roose Well, well, Mr. President of the program ended in
nineteen thirty two, but for you will build another school.
And the very last school is built in Merryweather County.
And what happens is school board agrees to make its contribution,
the Black community makes its contribution, the w p A
makes a contribution, and the head of the w p
(25:08):
A comes into the Oval Office to report to President Roosevelt,
and he reports to President Roosevelt that there are a
thousand dollars short on the funds they need to build
this school. And Roosevelt in the Oval Office pulls out
his checkbook and writes a thousand dollar check to close
the gap, and later that year, in seven, he presides
over the dedication ceremony of the Eleanor Roosevelt School in
(25:31):
Warm Springs, Georgia, the last Rosenwald school, and that school
still exists today. I love it. You mentioned earlier that
there are not just pictures of the schools, but also
a lot of portraits in this book, And you have
portraits of people that are connected to these various schools.
Some of them are students there. I know there's at
(25:53):
least one teacher that's in there. Um, will you talk
about some of those people and maybe a few of
your favorite portraits to show. I'll describe too. So imagine
you are inside a small, white, clapped one teacher school,
the k Row School in Sumner County, Tennessee. Over the
(26:13):
doorway hangs a portrait of Julius Rosenwald that is hung
in that spot since that school opened in and under
his watchful gaze stand two African American men in their
late seventies, Frank Brinkley and his brother, Charles Brinkley. Both
of them attended the k Row School. Both of them
(26:35):
went to college. Both of them went to graduate school
and both of them become educators. Frank becomes a high
school math and science teacher, Charles becomes a middle school principal.
They have four sisters, all of whom attended the k
Row School, all of whom attended college, and the six
siblings together have ten children. All ten children went to college.
(27:01):
That legacy may not have happened without this schoolhouse. Another
photograph which takes place inside the Hopewell School in Bastrop County, Texas.
The building is in the final stages of restoration. The
modeled walls are primer. You can see the plastic covering
(27:21):
the floors while the it's being painted. The Pop the
original pop belly stove, is also wrapped in plastic, and
Sophia and Elroy Williams, in their eighties, stand in this
space holding up an enormous photograph in this beautiful guilt frame.
The photograph is from the nineteenth century. It's of Sophia
(27:43):
and Martin McDonald. They were born into slavery, and upon emancipation,
Martin McDonald starts raising farm animals and he acquires some land.
He acquires some more land, and eventually he acquires twelve
hundred acres, and when the Rosenwald Schools program comes to
Bastrop County tech US in nine, the family donates two
acres of land for the school. Its first teacher is
(28:07):
Sophia and Martin McDonald's daughter. One of her students is
her daughter, Sophia Williams, who at this moment is standing
on the left holding up this portrait of her grandparents.
Her husband, Elroy Williams, standing on the right holding up
this portrait of her grandparents, attends a different Rose World
School in Bastrop County. Both of them go to college,
(28:28):
both come back to Bastrop County, have an entire career
as educators, and are now in the final stages of
the restoration of this school and turning it into a
community center in museum. And I found this story time
and time again, students becoming teachers, becoming the keepers of
the flame of history and memory in their communities. And
(28:49):
I find that it was an inspiring story to come across.
Is there a listeners now? I so like a fiend.
So of course, when I saw the Pleasant Hill Quilters,
(29:09):
I was obsessed with that picture because we see some
of their work, but also that's another multi generational photo
of just these women who do these amazing projects related
to the history of the schools. Well, we talk about
them a little bit, so the Pleasant Hill Quilters. This
is six African American women sitting and standing together inside
(29:31):
the Pleasant Hill School in Cass County, Texas, and in
front of them is a quilt. It's in the process
of being formulated. These women, which includes several Rosenwald School
former students, several people who have parents who went to
Rosenwald schools, and one Rosenwald School former teacher, quilted sold
(29:56):
quilts to raise the money to restore it was then
the dilapidated Pleasant Hill School. They have turned it into
a community center and they meet on most Mondays to
quilt in the school. And I will tell you that,
beside having spent an absolutely delightful afternoon interviewing them and
(30:17):
doing this portrait, I commissioned them to make a quilt
in it's in our home. I love it, Oh treasure totally.
It's it's magnificent, amazing. You've kind of referenced this already
that some of these schools certainly still exists today summer historic,
but some have been repurposed to be other things like
(30:38):
the Walnut Senior Center. Um, will you talk about those
spaces and how they've evolved, and they still exist in
a historical sense, but they're also living, active spaces. So
of the as I said, they're they're of the original
four thousand v Rosmal schools, about five hundred survived. Only
half of those have been restored. Very few are still
(30:58):
in use if educational purposes. Most of them simply outgrew
that use a long time ago, because the vast majority
of these structures are small, one to three teacher schools.
In fact, of the hundred and five schools that I
went to, only five are still in use for educational purposes.
So in order to preserve these schools, they had to
(31:19):
have been adaptively reused. And that adaptive reuse process is
an important part of the history. Right. We just discussed
the pleasant Hill School that's now a community center. Some
of these schools are church halls, some of them are museums,
some of them are there's one that it's the offices
of a truck rental company. There's one that's apartments. There
(31:42):
are many uses, but that adaptive reuse process is an
important part of how we do historic preservation in America.
The problem, of course, is that many of these schools
are not restored. And in fact, I came across schools
that had collapsed so recently in one case, that were
surrounded uh The school literally, I found out later had
(32:05):
been demolished a week before I got there because it
had been deemed unsafe, and it was surrounded by yellow
caution tape. And there was another that had collapsed right
before I got there, and it was surrounded by emergency
fencing with keepout signs. And that's what happens when we
don't take the time to preserve the ability of these
spaces to help share our history, helped communicate our history,
(32:28):
help bring us in touch with our history. I wonder
as a photographer what your approaches, both just from your
mindset as well as your lens of looking at one
of these places that is still, you know, an active,
live place versus when you come across a pile of rubble.
You're documenting in some ways the same history for both
(32:50):
of them, but they're obviously very different places. How do
you shift from one to the other and what are
you looking to capture that's different in one case versus
the other. I'm looking for moments that have emotional content
that become the vector for bringing people into these experiences.
I mean, eventually, what this body of work is about
(33:13):
is using photography to bring people into this hidden story
in American history. So, for example, there are a number
of schools that I found that were buildings that were
falling apart. But the Hannah School in Newberry County, South Carolina,
which looks quite distressed because it is is surrounded by
(33:37):
a graveyard, and in fact, and in the story I
tell the I add the detail that it stands on
dead Fall Road. You cannot make this stuff up right,
and so that becomes that becomes an important mechanism for
for sharing this. I was in a number of these
schools that have been converted into museums. But when I
was in the war Field School in Tennessee, there's a
(33:58):
picture of Abraham Lincoln on the wall with a light
angling through these big, large, nine over nine paying windows
that are an important part of the Roseenwald School architecture.
So these this pattern of this light from these infamous windows,
complementing the picture of Abraham Lincoln on the wall, that
becomes a moment. I was in the Elmore County Trading
(34:19):
School in where tomk Alabama and they have a black
history display. It's fascinating what choices somebody makes when they
when they are communicating Black history. Right in this case,
it's third Good Marshal Nelson, Mandela, Barack Obama, Harriet Tubman.
(34:41):
Those choices are so interesting that that wasn't That was
a photograph that I took as well, and that's included
in this book. So I think that's what I'm looking for.
Whether it is a deteriorating structure or a vibrantly restored
community center, there are visual moments that you can capture
that helped bring people into the story and connect them
(35:03):
to the emotional threads of the story. As you said,
thousand miles in a lot of years and a lot
of time and a lot of conversations. What was your
biggest personal takeaway from the project? Like, how were you
changed when this was sent off to printer. When you
read the history of Julius Rosenwald and Brooker T. Washington,
(35:24):
you are struck by their pragmatism and it caused me
to think about what is pragmatism? And what I concluded
was that there's two elements that were really important in
the work of these men. They are building schools for
African Americans in nineteen twelve in the Jim Crow South.
(35:48):
That is a deeply optimistic act. And on top of that,
that is a multi generational act. They knew that it
would generations for that work to pay off. They were
playing long ball, and that combination of optimism and long
(36:10):
term thinking, that is their pragmatism. And to me, that's
their gift, the generations of African Americans, their gift to
American history. That was my biggest takeaway, that combination of
be optimistic, think long term, and in the immortal words
(36:32):
of John Lewis, make good trouble. This is a really
cool project because it is not only a book that
people can buy wherever books are sold, but it is
also an exhibit. Will you tell us about the exhibit
at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. So
the work of my first book traveled over four and
(36:53):
a half years to nine different museums, and I knew
that the idea of photograph prints were yet another way
to bring people into this story. And I was about
halfway through shooting this work when I sat down with
the director of the Center for seven Human Rights, the
National Center for Seven Human Rights here in Atlanta, and
(37:14):
I showed this work and the reaction was like immediate.
It was like, we are going to do this exhibition.
I was kind of like, okay, UM, and they have
been an extraordinary partner there are We made the decision
to print these images large. The images are twenty inches
(37:35):
by thirty inches, which photographically is an enormous print. There's
five photographs in the book. Twenty three of them are
in the exhibition. These stories, as we've discussed here, so
integral to this body of work that the story sits
underneath each of the images and the exhibition. The exhibition opened,
UM opened in May or we up through the end
of this year, and then the exhibition travels and we'll
(37:58):
go to first to the Charlotte Museum of History and
the National Civil Rights Museum of Lorraine Motel in Memphis,
the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville, the Museum of the
Southern Jewish Experience in New Orleans, UH and then to
the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. And that gets
you through to the end of twenty four and I'm
(38:18):
just starting to schedule my first exhibitions in it will
continue to travel and by then there will be another
book and you can just start the whole process over that.
That would be the plant. UM. I really was so
struck by just how beautiful these photographs are. The way
you use light to tell a story does some stuff
(38:38):
to my mind and soul. So thank you for that,
and thank you for spending all this time with me today,
and it's it's been a joy. I appreciate your look.
I I think, look at where we are today as
a culture. We are at this extraordinary moment where we
understand the imperative. I'm telling a diverse American narrative, a
(39:03):
complete American narrative, an accurate American narrative. And I see
my book and this project part of this effort to
diversify how we tell or inclusive American story, and your
podcast is also part of this important effort to tell
(39:25):
an inclusive American story. Uh. This was a particularly thrilling interview,
not only because I love the subject matter, but also
because this was the first time I returned to our
office in our studios since the pandemic began, So it
was such great fun to have this wonderful conversation with
Andrew Feiler, and I am so thankful for his time.
(39:46):
The book once Again is a Better Life for Their Children.
Julius Rosenwald book or t Washington and the four thousand,
nine seventy eight Schools That Changed America. You can find
it anywhere books are sold, And if you'd like to
learn more about the exhibit at the National Center for
Civil and Human Rights, you can visit Civil and Human
Rights dot org. You can also find out more about
(40:07):
that and about Andrew at Andrew Feiler dot com. And
his last name is spelled f e I l e
er uh. We hope you check it out because he's
a fascinating person and truly, like I am not blow
and smoke when I say he's a very gifted photographer. Um.
He does some really really beautiful stuff. And the photos
in this book are spectacularly beautiful. That portrait of John
(40:30):
Lewis he talked about that I got choked up what
we were talking is absolutely gorgeous. Um, and I love
that there's that perspective included in the book about what
it was like to attend one of these schools, and
you really see like how that impacted the role of
education in America, the world of American black students, and
(40:52):
just like it really did change everything. So it's I
love it. I love that book. UM. I hope you
check it out because you too will love it. It's
a lot of good stuff. UM. I have fun foodie email,
which I feel like what I always talked about at
this point, but I'm really enjoying everybody's stories of their
cooking disasters and triumphs. This one is from our listener Anna.
(41:15):
I don't know if it's Anna Anna, so my apologies
if I get it wrong, but uh Anna writes, I
hope you're both doing well. You've had a string of
really great episodes recently, all on topics that are personally
fascinating to me. I finished your episode on Debrek Cocaadia
last week, and I loved it so much. I shared
it with a fellow foodie friend who was my neighbor
when I lived in Rome. She reminded me about the
(41:38):
first time I ever had my recently become husband's family
over to dinner at our house. Obviously, for an Italian family,
food and cooking is super important, and I knew I
had to get it right. I spent over a month
studying recipes for the perfect lasagna, and I got it
down to a fine art. My friend asked me what
I was planning on cooking them, and I told her.
(41:59):
She was as aolutely horrified. She begged me to choose
something else, explaining that every region in Italy does lasagna
in a slightly different way and if I got it
even slightly wrong, I would risk spending the evening having
all my hard work compared to the family recipe from
their nona, and it would feel like a disaster, even
if it was really good. This was especially important for
(42:21):
my husband's family, as they actually come from the region
that invented lasagna in the first place. Unfortunately, that conversation
was about two hours before they arrived. I flew into
a complete panic and went into the dinner absolutely petrified.
But it turned out that my hard work paid off.
My mother in law still talks about my lasagna recipe,
and I think that dinner is what persuaded her to
(42:42):
allow her son to marry me. It turns out English
people can cook after all. My friend and I laughed
all over again at this story after she listened to
your episode, so I thought i'd share keep up all
the good work getting as sauce through these long pandemic months, years, decades.
I've lost track. I hope you're both doing well, all
the best. I love this, I love a I love
a cooking triumph story. That's for sure. I feel like, um,
(43:05):
I would be the cooking fail. I would mess it up.
But I also wanted to mention in relation to that,
we got uh an email from our listener Darline, and
a couple of other people have reached out to me
to ask about the meat loaf recipe. The meat loaf
recipe is online. It's on our social media. If you
check out our Instagram or our Twitter. There it is UH.
(43:27):
And that is the one that we mentioned in another
listener mail and got permission to share the famous secret
but not really that secret lipped and soup ingredient recipe
for meat loaf. And I will tell you I may
have sent my husband out to purchase all of the
ingredients this morning, so by the time this episode airs,
I will have either succeeded or failed in recreating it.
(43:49):
Either way, I'll eat the evidence. Yeah, We've heard from
several listeners and the comments, particularly on Instagram and Facebook,
that the recipe is very similar to their own family recipe. Yeah,
it is. It's a little um different from some that
(44:10):
I've done. There's a I had never done it. Um.
The one that my mother passed down did not include
that whole like cooking the bread and milk before you
incorporated into the meat, which is an interesting part of
it for me. But hopefully by the end of today
I will be very full and happy with a contented
(44:30):
smile on my face and full of meat loaf. So also, Anna,
if you want to send that lasagn your recipient over,
I'm ready to receive and I will broadcast if you
say it's okay. We could just become like a sideline
business of historical recipes. Um. I love, as I've said before,
people sharing those and making it so other people can
(44:51):
join their own histories with theirs and make something new
and delicious and nurture all of us together. I thank
you so much to everyone who's written us about their
they're cooking efforts. I love that so much. You can
write to us too. We are at History Podcast at
iHeart radio dot com. You can also find us everywhere
on social media as Missed in History, including that yummy
(45:11):
recipe and if you would like to subscribe to the
show and you haven't gotten around to it yet. It's
super easy and we'll take you no time. You can
do that on the I heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts,
or anywhere else you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff
you Missed in History Class is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
(45:34):
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. I am
a very spoiled child. So I recently got the chance
(00:21):
to chat with photographer Andrew Feiler, who has a new
book out titled A Better Life for Their Children Julius
Rosenwald Book or T Washington and the four thousand, nine
hundred seventy eight Schools That Changed America. And I have
actually been wanting to talk about the Rosenwald Schools for
a while, so I was very excited about Andrew's book,
particularly because it is as beautiful as it is moving
(00:43):
and informative. Yeah. I think you started talking about wanting
to do an episode on them way back when we
did the Sears History interview. That was years ago, Yes,
and we had Jerry Hancock on. I wanted to do it,
but I never felt like I had like the right
entry point. And then Andrew's book happened and made it easy. Well,
(01:06):
and this is not Andrew's first book. His previous book
also has a historical theme. It's titled without regard to Sex, race,
or Color, The Past Present, and Future of One historically
Black College. This new book has also become an exhibit
at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta,
and it will tour after it finishes there at the
(01:28):
end of this year. Yeah, we'll talk about that a
bit during the interview. So let's jump right into that,
where Andrew shares how he ended up a photographer, and
specifically a photographer documenting and writing about history. First of all, Andrew,
thank you so much for being with us. Great to
be with you. Thank you for having me. What a
delight for me. I feel so spoiled. Um. The primary
(01:49):
reason you're here today is so we can talk about
your latest book. But this is not your first book,
so to do the runway to it, I w want
to make sure we talk about your first book, which
was without regard to sex, race, or color, the Past, Present,
and Future of One Historically Black College, and that covers
the history of Morris Brown. So before we get into
(02:09):
the newest, Um, I would like for you to tell
us your story how you started pursuing a career in
photography and how you ended up focusing your lens on
the subjects you have, particularly history and particularly black history.
So in two thousand and eight, I started down a
path that was four and a half very difficult years.
(02:31):
I had taken over a family real estate business in
two thousand two and my dad had gotten sick. Two
thousand eight, we went away from my parents fiftieth wedding
anniversary at another business partner in the business. We got
back in the next day. My business partner died. Thirteen
days later, my brother was diagnosed with a truly life
threatening bone cancer. Mercifully he has he is now thirteen
(02:55):
years cancer free, but that was not a given at
the time. Soon after that my father's health complete, they collapsed,
and then the real estate world imploded in the Great Recession,
and I spent three years and four months doing real
estate workouts. And collectively, those are the types of experiences
that caused you to say, what do you want to
do the rest of your life? And so um I
started down the path in the midst of this period
(03:18):
of my time of my life. I've been a serious
photographer most of my life, and I started on this
path of taking my work more seriously and mercifully getting
taken more seriously. And one of the things that you
have to do in in that process is figure out
what is your voice as a photographer, what is your
voice as an artist? Well, I've been a civic activist
(03:39):
my entire life as well. I've founded more than a
dozen civic initiatives. I serve on a number of boards
of not for profits. I have been an active advisor
for many years to a number of elected officials and
political candidates. And what I found is, I really, as
I started to explore this, uh my photography more diligently,
(04:01):
is that my photographic voice was my civic voice. And
I was working on a body of work on abandoned
public school spaces in the South, because an abandoned public
school is a story of demographics, right flight gentrification. When
Mars Brown College filed for bankruptcy, and so I thought,
you know, this is a really important story. It has race,
(04:24):
it's an historically bought college. It has religion. Mars Brown
College was found under the auspices of the Amy Church.
It has class because it was a college that had
become one that was primarily focused on the children of
families of lesser means. And that story, that multilayered story,
(04:44):
becomes my first book. But it was also what my
process is to read and shoot and shooting and read,
and the reading and forms of shooting and the shooting
and forms of reading. And there was tooth moments that
really shaped that project. One was when I came across
the statistic yeah that there were originally about a hundred
and twenty historically black colleges in America. We were down
(05:05):
to about a hundred. Those were hundred colleges are three
percent of colleges in America. They are more than ten
percent of African Americans who go to college, more than
twenty five percent of African Americans who earned degrees. And
that replants this story in the midst of this central
question we have in our culture today, what is how
(05:26):
do we create on ramps to the American middle classes?
And I studied that question, I realized I stumbled on
this much broader American narrative. Education has been the backbone
of the American dream since before there was the United
States of America. The first taxpayer funded school is founded
in Deadham, Massachusetts, in sixteen forty four. The Land Grant
(05:46):
College Act, which creates colleges all across America, has created
in eighteen sixty two. Historically black colleges and the decades
after the Civil War, Rosenwald Schools. In the early decades
of the twentieth century, the education provisions of the g
HI Bill transform America from relatively poor to relatively prosperous.
Brown versus Board of Education is one of the highlights
(06:06):
of the Civil rights movement. What are we talking about today,
crushing levels of student deck, college affordability, college access. It's
more than three hundred and seventy five year narrative arc
uh that drives American history is a tradition at risk.
And that became the message in this first book. And
then how did the Rosenwald Schools get on your radar?
(06:29):
So I had just turned in my first book to
my publisher. Um it was this was early two thousand fifteen.
That book comes out at the end of two thousand fifteen.
And in February of two thousand fifteen, I found myself
at lunch with a woman named Jennie Cyriac. And Jennie
had originated the role of African American Heritage specialist at
the Georgia State Historic Preservation Office. And she's the first
person to tell me about rosen Wald Schools. And I
(06:51):
was shocked. I am a fifth generation Jewish Georgian. I
have been a progressive activist my entire life. The pillars
of this story Southern Jewish progressive activist or the pillars
of my life. How could I've never heard of Rosenwald Schools?
So I come home and I google Rosenwald Schools, and
I find that there's a couple of academic books on
the topic. But there was no comprehensive photographic account of
(07:13):
this story. And I set out to do exactly that.
So for our listeners to lay the groundwork, will you
tell us just about the Rosenwald Schools and what their
purpose was and how they got set up. So Julius
Rosenwald is born to Jewish immigrants who had fled religious
persecution in Germany. He grows up in Springfield, Illinois, across
(07:34):
the street from Abraham Lincoln's home. He rises to become
the president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and with innovations
like Satisfaction Guaranteed or Your Money Back, he turned Sears
into the world's largest retailer of its era. And he
becomes one of the earliest and greatest philanthropists in American history.
And his cause is what later becomes known as civil rights.
(07:57):
Booker T. Washington, born into slavery and Virginia, goes to
Hampton College in Virginia, becomes an educator and is the
founding principle of the historically black college in Alabama now
and then as Tuskegee Institute. And the two men meet
in nineteen eleven. Would you have to remember is at
nineteen eleven is before the Great Migration, which doesn't begin
(08:17):
until later that decade. So of African Americans live in
the South, and public schools for African Americans are mostly shocks,
with a small fraction of the funding provided to the
education of white children. Many jurisdictions do not even have
public schools for African Americans. Booker T. Washington asks Julius
Rosenwald to join the board of Tuskegeeon later in nineteen eleven.
(08:40):
He agrees, but the two men keep talking what can
we do together? And they focus on this idea of
public schools for African Americans and the genius there's genius
in this program. They reach out to the black communities
of the South and they say, we want you to
be a full partner in your progress. So you must
(09:00):
contribute to a school. If you will contribute to a school,
and we will count as your contribution cash, land, materialists,
or labor. And if you will reach out to the
school board, the white school board, because we want to
create deliberate black white dialogue as a foundation for future progress.
And these have to be public schools, so the White
school board, we welcome their contributions. But what they have
to do is agree to own maintenance staff the school,
(09:21):
pay for the teachers. You do those things, Julius Rosenwald
will make a substantial contribution to school construction. And from
nineteen twelve to nineteen thirty seven, this program builds four thousand,
nine hundred and seventy eight schools across fifteen southern and
border states and the result is transformative. One thing that's
(09:42):
interesting in case people do not know the timeline of
Booker T. Washington's life. He died not that long after
the two men met, like less than four years after
they met, but still he was very clearly influential. And
on this whole project, can you talk about how Julius
Rosenwald continued kind of the dialogue after his partner in
(10:02):
this project was no longer there. Yes, So Julius Rose
want a book Or T. Washington shared two important values.
Julius Rosenwald was deeply committed to America because he saw
America as a safe haven from anti Semitism, and he
saw that America weakened by its treatment of African Americans.
(10:26):
Booker T. Washington, of course, was dedicated to the uplift
of African Americans, and they also shared a commitment to
self help. And it was book Or T. Washington who
understood that education was the path forward and that what
was missing in the panoplay of education was small school houses.
Small because everybody they were not busses for these school houses,
(10:49):
and they had to be able to walk to these schools,
and so many of these schools, most of these schools,
particularly the early years of the program, are very small,
and so they create this program together. But it's enormously successful,
and Julius Rosenwald commits to continuing the program even after
the death of Booker T. Washington, his partner in this venture.
(11:09):
It's important to note that the relationship between Julius Rosenwald
and Booker T. Washington is one of the earliest collaborations
between Jews and African Americans, and there is a direct
connection between their collaboration, their friendship and Rabbi Abraham Josh
(11:30):
wad Heschel walking with doctor King, who famously says of
that experience of walking with doctor King that had felt
like his feet were praying. And what happened in Georgia
earlier this year when Raphael Warnact and John ass Off
cris crossed this state together for two months and clearly
(11:51):
built not just a political alliance but a deep personal friendship.
That relationship and which Georgia sends its first African American senator,
its first Jewish senator to the United States Senate. That
relationship between John Assoff and Rafael Warnock stands on the
shoulders of the relationship the friendship between Julius Rosenwald and
(12:13):
Bucker T. Washington. You are, as you said, a photographer,
But this book has a lot of writing. Every photograph
comes with a story. Was that always your intention? It
was not. That was actually new and uh yeah, I
can what happened. So look, I knew this was an
extraordinary story. The question is how do you tell the
(12:35):
story visually? And I started out with exterior images one
to three teacher schools, white small, white collaborate buildings to
the end of the program, there's one two and three
story red brick buildings, but that story was incomplete. Because
of the original four thousand, nine seventy schools, there is
about five hundred left. Only half of those have been restored,
(12:58):
and so many of these schools are at risk of collapse.
There's an inherent component of this story, which is the
plea for preservation. These spaces are the locus of history
and memory, and so I needed to tell the adaptive
reuse story and the preservation narrative. And suddenly I need
I need to get inside, and suddenly I need permission.
And once you need permission, you gotta start talking to people.
(13:20):
And that's when I met these extraordinary people, former students,
former teachers, his preservationist historians that are trying to save
these structures, and I end up telling their narratives through portraits.
But in the course of meeting all these people and
doing as I said earlier, my process is to shoot
(13:40):
and read and read and shoot, and the reading and
forms of shooting and the shooting and forms of reading.
And I came across so many incredible stories that indeed
I felt compelled to write a short story that goes
with every image, or in some cases pairs of images.
I found Rosenwald Schools connected to the Trail of Tears,
to the Great Migration, to the Tuskegee steph a Study,
(14:00):
to the story of the Tuskegee Airman, to the litigation
of Brown v. Board embezzlement, murder, and those stories are
told in the prose compliments. So this is actually a
hybrid body of work. It's both images and stories that
go together. Did you ever anticipate that you were going
to become a writer and historian in addition to this
photography career that you would switched to, Well, it's interesting,
(14:23):
Actually I haven't. I've had interest in history my entire life.
I took My undergraduate degree is actually economics, but I
took a lot of history classes in college. Actually have
to graduate degrees. One's an MBA, but one is actually
a modern history degree, and so the history component of
it came naturally to me. But I'm certainly never expected
(14:44):
to be writing sixteen thousand words of stories, um. But
the stories are so extraordinary and so powerful that it
was a joy to have that as part of this process.
(15:07):
This book is one that right from the opening is
very compelling, and one of the things that's so compelling
is that there's an introduction by John Lewis, who, of
course being in Atlanta hero aside from just his civil
rights work, which is amazing, and of itself being part
of the fabric of Atlanta. I get choked up just
talking about absolutely one of the few people I've ever
(15:27):
met that I just burst into tears the second I
met him. Um, will you talk about how that came
to be that you got to heaven be part of
this and that beautiful portrait that you made of him?
Thank you? Um. So I have to mes set a
little bit of context. This program transforms America. There are
two economists in the Federal Reserve Bank or Chicago who
have done five studies of Rosenwald Schools. With their data
(15:49):
shows is it prior to World War One there was
a large and persistent black white education gap in the
South and that cap closes precipitously between World War One
and World War Two. And the single greatest driver in
that achievement is Rose World Schools. But the other major
impact of this program is that many of the leaders
and foot soldiers of the movement come through these schools.
Maya Angelou Medgar Evers, multiple members of the Little Rock
(16:11):
Nine who integrate Little Rock Central High School, and Congressman
John Lewis all attended Roseenwald Schools. So Congressman Lewis is
clearly the most prominent along of the roseenmald Schools program.
Living at the time I was working on this project.
I grew up in Savannah. I left the South after
high school, and bouncing around the world for fifteen years,
(16:31):
decided it was finally safe to come back to the South.
South had grown up in my absence. I came back.
I had been I was a constituent of Congressman Lewis
Is for twenty five years. I lived in the fifth
Congressional District the entire time I've been in Atlanta, and
so I reached out to Congressman Lewis and I asked
him if he would contribute an introduction to this book.
And he said, you know, I'm not sure I'm comfortable
(16:52):
writing the history of Rosenwald Schools. I just knew I
went to school there, I said, Congressman Lewis. There are
three other essays in this book, won by Genie Syriac
at the State Historic Preservation Office. One by Brent Leggs,
who heads up the African American Cultural Heritage Action funded
the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is focused on
African American preservation. One by me, we've got the history covered.
(17:16):
What I want you to do is what only you
can do. Bring us into that classroom. What was it
like to go to school there? What role did education
play in your life? And he said, oh, I can
do that. And so I met with Congressman Lewis in
his office. This round table at the center of his
office is out there for several hours with him as
(17:38):
we re find the introduction. This was October and I
had gotten into his eyes. Staff had let me into
his office in advance and had set up my lights.
And at the end of this session he put on
his jacket for me to take his portrait, and there's
this cancer awareness ribbon on his lapel and he said,
(18:03):
should I take this off? I said, Congressman Lewis, I
want the authentic you, and that is the authentic you
will leave it on. And it was exactly sixty days
later that he went public with his cancer diagnosis. So
his contribution to the forward to this book is one
of the last public acts the Congressman Lewis contributed, and
(18:23):
he also praises your work in it, So that's got
to feel pretty amazing. You know, he's an extraordinary person,
and it was one of the great sort of side
And I didn't start this project to have the opportunity
to spend an afternoon with Congressman Lewis in his office
sharing our experiences. What an extraordinary gift from my artistic
(18:46):
journey to have shared this experience with Congressman Lewis. Amazing. Um,
that might be the answer, But I'm curious what was
the most unexpected or surprising aspect of working on this project.
You took a lot of journeys and met a lot
of people and saw a lot of things that you
probably didn't anticipate. Yeah, I did. So this project took
(19:08):
me three and a half years. I drove twenty five
thousand miles across all fifteen of the program states. And
I think there were two things that really jumped out
of me. To answer your question, one of them is
I I've been a fan of audiobooks for a long time,
and as I was on I did this twenty five
thousand miles almost entirely by myself, and I listened to
(19:29):
audio books as I was driving across the South, and
I listened to Civil Rights history. I listened to the
entire Tailor Branch trilogy on the Civil Rights Movement. I
listened to an entire book on letter from Birmingham Jail.
I listened to Kareem Abdul Jabbar's book on the Harlem Renaissance.
Two of the people whose portraits I shot in this
(19:50):
book have memoirs. I listened to their they were on audiobook.
I listened to those memories. And what an extraordinary compliment
to this journey to be out in the Mississippi Delta
listening to civil rights history. So that was really a
beautiful compliment to this entire story. The other was that
throughout this journey I continued to meet these extraordinary individuals
(20:13):
who were former students, former teachers, the preservationists that are
trying to save these schools in their community. And they
were so warm and so welcoming and so excited about
being part of this project, so excited that I was
here to help share this history they knew was important
and they were concerned was going to be lost. And
(20:35):
that embrace of this sort of broad Rosenwald school community
was unexpected and an incredible joy. I want to talk
for a second about the structure of the book, because
you break it out in terms of like the timeline,
but that timeline is also connected to kind of expansion
(20:56):
and growth of the program, so that the footprint of
it shifts in three years. Well do you talk about
those three phases that you cover and kind of just
how this program went from its initial phase to becoming
a much bigger, broader project. So the initiative begins uh
(21:16):
In with a pilot of six schools, all built close
to Tuskegee, where Booker T. Washington and his team can
keep an eye on the program. And I'm going to
digress here for a second to tell you one story
that because it's it's really an important component of how
this story unfolds. Booker T. Washington has photographs made of
(21:37):
the students and teachers standing in front of their schools,
carrying the hopes and dreams of their communities, and he
sends them to Julia's Rosenwald, who writes back that he
has so moved that he is committing to expand the program.
Almost all of my work prior to this work has
been in color this body of work is entirely in
(21:58):
black and white and horrors zong in homage to those
images of students and teachers and standing in front of
their schools who become that This becomes part of the
visual history and the visual language of this program. So
the program is run out of Tuskegee starting in nineteen twelve.
Book of Two Washington dies in nineteen fifteen. The program
(22:19):
continues to be run out of Tuskegee, but it's starting
to explode, and it's reaching across more and more Southern states,
and it simply gets to a point where it has
outstripped the ability of the team at Tuskegee to manage this. Meanwhile,
Julius Rosenwald's philanthropy is becoming much more expansive, and so
in the early years of this program he's writing checks.
(22:41):
But in nineteen seventeen he actually creates the Rosenwald Fund,
and so in nineteen twenty they actually open an office
to manage the Rosenwald Schools program in Nashville. So that
first phase, what I call the Tuskegee phase, is from
nineteen twelve to nineteen twenty, when the programs run out
of Tuskegee, starting a nine teen twenty. It's now run
(23:01):
out of Nashville, which by the way, is why the
archives the Rosenwald Fund are at Fisk University. And it's
in those years it's run by a man named Samuel Smith,
that they start moving from building schools to building model schools,
and they create these plans that they would make available
(23:22):
for free to anybody who will use them. And so
to be a Rosenwald school you had to get Rosenwald funding.
But there are thousands of schools built across America with
these plants for both blacks and whites that aren't Rosenwald
schools that are built with Rosenwald plans. And that's what
I call the Nashville phase from nine seven. But in
(23:44):
nineteen Julius Rosenwald session home, I'm getting older. We need
to move this from my philanthropy to institutionalizing it a
little bit more, and so he hires Edwin Embury, who
had been a senior executive the Rockefeller Foundation where Julius
Rosenwald was on the board, and the program is now
(24:04):
run out of Chicago or Julius rohodenes from World as
a resident and the program pivots from focusing on building
schools to focusing on educational outcomes. They create incentives for
libraries and the schools. They create incentives for school buses
for an adding to the school year. The Risen World
(24:25):
Schools Program formally ends in ninety two with the death
of Julius Rosenwald and the Fund moves on to focus
on other things. But in ninety seven President Roosevelt calls
up Edwyn Embury at the Fund. He says, I'd like
a Rosenwald School in Merryweather County, Georgia, near his home
(24:45):
in Warm Springs. And Edwin Abury says back to President
roose Well, well, Mr. President of the program ended in
nineteen thirty two, but for you will build another school.
And the very last school is built in Merryweather County.
And what happens is school board agrees to make its contribution,
the Black community makes its contribution, the w p A
makes a contribution, and the head of the w p
(25:08):
A comes into the Oval Office to report to President Roosevelt,
and he reports to President Roosevelt that there are a
thousand dollars short on the funds they need to build
this school. And Roosevelt in the Oval Office pulls out
his checkbook and writes a thousand dollar check to close
the gap, and later that year, in seven, he presides
over the dedication ceremony of the Eleanor Roosevelt School in
(25:31):
Warm Springs, Georgia, the last Rosenwald school, and that school
still exists today. I love it. You mentioned earlier that
there are not just pictures of the schools, but also
a lot of portraits in this book, And you have
portraits of people that are connected to these various schools.
Some of them are students there. I know there's at
(25:53):
least one teacher that's in there. Um, will you talk
about some of those people and maybe a few of
your favorite portraits to show. I'll describe too. So imagine
you are inside a small, white, clapped one teacher school,
the k Row School in Sumner County, Tennessee. Over the
(26:13):
doorway hangs a portrait of Julius Rosenwald that is hung
in that spot since that school opened in and under
his watchful gaze stand two African American men in their
late seventies, Frank Brinkley and his brother, Charles Brinkley. Both
of them attended the k Row School. Both of them
(26:35):
went to college. Both of them went to graduate school
and both of them become educators. Frank becomes a high
school math and science teacher, Charles becomes a middle school principal.
They have four sisters, all of whom attended the k
Row School, all of whom attended college, and the six
siblings together have ten children. All ten children went to college.
(27:01):
That legacy may not have happened without this schoolhouse. Another
photograph which takes place inside the Hopewell School in Bastrop County, Texas.
The building is in the final stages of restoration. The
modeled walls are primer. You can see the plastic covering
(27:21):
the floors while the it's being painted. The Pop the
original pop belly stove, is also wrapped in plastic, and
Sophia and Elroy Williams, in their eighties, stand in this
space holding up an enormous photograph in this beautiful guilt frame.
The photograph is from the nineteenth century. It's of Sophia
(27:43):
and Martin McDonald. They were born into slavery, and upon emancipation,
Martin McDonald starts raising farm animals and he acquires some land.
He acquires some more land, and eventually he acquires twelve
hundred acres, and when the Rosenwald Schools program comes to
Bastrop County tech US in nine, the family donates two
acres of land for the school. Its first teacher is
(28:07):
Sophia and Martin McDonald's daughter. One of her students is
her daughter, Sophia Williams, who at this moment is standing
on the left holding up this portrait of her grandparents.
Her husband, Elroy Williams, standing on the right holding up
this portrait of her grandparents, attends a different Rose World
School in Bastrop County. Both of them go to college,
(28:28):
both come back to Bastrop County, have an entire career
as educators, and are now in the final stages of
the restoration of this school and turning it into a
community center in museum. And I found this story time
and time again, students becoming teachers, becoming the keepers of
the flame of history and memory in their communities. And
(28:49):
I find that it was an inspiring story to come across.
Is there a listeners now? I so like a fiend.
So of course, when I saw the Pleasant Hill Quilters,
(29:09):
I was obsessed with that picture because we see some
of their work, but also that's another multi generational photo
of just these women who do these amazing projects related
to the history of the schools. Well, we talk about
them a little bit, so the Pleasant Hill Quilters. This
is six African American women sitting and standing together inside
(29:31):
the Pleasant Hill School in Cass County, Texas, and in
front of them is a quilt. It's in the process
of being formulated. These women, which includes several Rosenwald School
former students, several people who have parents who went to
Rosenwald schools, and one Rosenwald School former teacher, quilted sold
(29:56):
quilts to raise the money to restore it was then
the dilapidated Pleasant Hill School. They have turned it into
a community center and they meet on most Mondays to
quilt in the school. And I will tell you that,
beside having spent an absolutely delightful afternoon interviewing them and
(30:17):
doing this portrait, I commissioned them to make a quilt
in it's in our home. I love it, Oh treasure totally.
It's it's magnificent, amazing. You've kind of referenced this already
that some of these schools certainly still exists today summer historic,
but some have been repurposed to be other things like
(30:38):
the Walnut Senior Center. Um, will you talk about those
spaces and how they've evolved, and they still exist in
a historical sense, but they're also living, active spaces. So
of the as I said, they're they're of the original
four thousand v Rosmal schools, about five hundred survived. Only
half of those have been restored. Very few are still
(30:58):
in use if educational purposes. Most of them simply outgrew
that use a long time ago, because the vast majority
of these structures are small, one to three teacher schools.
In fact, of the hundred and five schools that I
went to, only five are still in use for educational purposes.
So in order to preserve these schools, they had to
(31:19):
have been adaptively reused. And that adaptive reuse process is
an important part of the history. Right. We just discussed
the pleasant Hill School that's now a community center. Some
of these schools are church halls, some of them are museums,
some of them are there's one that it's the offices
of a truck rental company. There's one that's apartments. There
(31:42):
are many uses, but that adaptive reuse process is an
important part of how we do historic preservation in America.
The problem, of course, is that many of these schools
are not restored. And in fact, I came across schools
that had collapsed so recently in one case, that were
surrounded uh The school literally, I found out later had
(32:05):
been demolished a week before I got there because it
had been deemed unsafe, and it was surrounded by yellow
caution tape. And there was another that had collapsed right
before I got there, and it was surrounded by emergency
fencing with keepout signs. And that's what happens when we
don't take the time to preserve the ability of these
spaces to help share our history, helped communicate our history,
(32:28):
help bring us in touch with our history. I wonder
as a photographer what your approaches, both just from your
mindset as well as your lens of looking at one
of these places that is still, you know, an active,
live place versus when you come across a pile of rubble.
You're documenting in some ways the same history for both
(32:50):
of them, but they're obviously very different places. How do
you shift from one to the other and what are
you looking to capture that's different in one case versus
the other. I'm looking for moments that have emotional content
that become the vector for bringing people into these experiences.
I mean, eventually, what this body of work is about
(33:13):
is using photography to bring people into this hidden story
in American history. So, for example, there are a number
of schools that I found that were buildings that were
falling apart. But the Hannah School in Newberry County, South Carolina,
which looks quite distressed because it is is surrounded by
(33:37):
a graveyard, and in fact, and in the story I
tell the I add the detail that it stands on
dead Fall Road. You cannot make this stuff up right,
and so that becomes that becomes an important mechanism for
for sharing this. I was in a number of these
schools that have been converted into museums. But when I
was in the war Field School in Tennessee, there's a
(33:58):
picture of Abraham Lincoln on the wall with a light
angling through these big, large, nine over nine paying windows
that are an important part of the Roseenwald School architecture.
So these this pattern of this light from these infamous windows,
complementing the picture of Abraham Lincoln on the wall, that
becomes a moment. I was in the Elmore County Trading
(34:19):
School in where tomk Alabama and they have a black
history display. It's fascinating what choices somebody makes when they
when they are communicating Black history. Right in this case,
it's third Good Marshal Nelson, Mandela, Barack Obama, Harriet Tubman.
(34:41):
Those choices are so interesting that that wasn't That was
a photograph that I took as well, and that's included
in this book. So I think that's what I'm looking for.
Whether it is a deteriorating structure or a vibrantly restored
community center, there are visual moments that you can capture
that helped bring people into the story and connect them
(35:03):
to the emotional threads of the story. As you said,
thousand miles in a lot of years and a lot
of time and a lot of conversations. What was your
biggest personal takeaway from the project? Like, how were you
changed when this was sent off to printer. When you
read the history of Julius Rosenwald and Brooker T. Washington,
(35:24):
you are struck by their pragmatism and it caused me
to think about what is pragmatism? And what I concluded
was that there's two elements that were really important in
the work of these men. They are building schools for
African Americans in nineteen twelve in the Jim Crow South.
(35:48):
That is a deeply optimistic act. And on top of that,
that is a multi generational act. They knew that it
would generations for that work to pay off. They were
playing long ball, and that combination of optimism and long
(36:10):
term thinking, that is their pragmatism. And to me, that's
their gift, the generations of African Americans, their gift to
American history. That was my biggest takeaway, that combination of
be optimistic, think long term, and in the immortal words
(36:32):
of John Lewis, make good trouble. This is a really
cool project because it is not only a book that
people can buy wherever books are sold, but it is
also an exhibit. Will you tell us about the exhibit
at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. So
the work of my first book traveled over four and
(36:53):
a half years to nine different museums, and I knew
that the idea of photograph prints were yet another way
to bring people into this story. And I was about
halfway through shooting this work when I sat down with
the director of the Center for seven Human Rights, the
National Center for Seven Human Rights here in Atlanta, and
(37:14):
I showed this work and the reaction was like immediate.
It was like, we are going to do this exhibition.
I was kind of like, okay, UM, and they have
been an extraordinary partner there are We made the decision
to print these images large. The images are twenty inches
(37:35):
by thirty inches, which photographically is an enormous print. There's
five photographs in the book. Twenty three of them are
in the exhibition. These stories, as we've discussed here, so
integral to this body of work that the story sits
underneath each of the images and the exhibition. The exhibition opened,
UM opened in May or we up through the end
of this year, and then the exhibition travels and we'll
(37:58):
go to first to the Charlotte Museum of History and
the National Civil Rights Museum of Lorraine Motel in Memphis,
the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville, the Museum of the
Southern Jewish Experience in New Orleans, UH and then to
the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. And that gets
you through to the end of twenty four and I'm
(38:18):
just starting to schedule my first exhibitions in it will
continue to travel and by then there will be another
book and you can just start the whole process over that.
That would be the plant. UM. I really was so
struck by just how beautiful these photographs are. The way
you use light to tell a story does some stuff
(38:38):
to my mind and soul. So thank you for that,
and thank you for spending all this time with me today,
and it's it's been a joy. I appreciate your look.
I I think, look at where we are today as
a culture. We are at this extraordinary moment where we
understand the imperative. I'm telling a diverse American narrative, a
(39:03):
complete American narrative, an accurate American narrative. And I see
my book and this project part of this effort to
diversify how we tell or inclusive American story, and your
podcast is also part of this important effort to tell
(39:25):
an inclusive American story. Uh. This was a particularly thrilling interview,
not only because I love the subject matter, but also
because this was the first time I returned to our
office in our studios since the pandemic began, So it
was such great fun to have this wonderful conversation with
Andrew Feiler, and I am so thankful for his time.
(39:46):
The book once Again is a Better Life for Their Children.
Julius Rosenwald book or t Washington and the four thousand,
nine seventy eight Schools That Changed America. You can find
it anywhere books are sold, And if you'd like to
learn more about the exhibit at the National Center for
Civil and Human Rights, you can visit Civil and Human
Rights dot org. You can also find out more about
(40:07):
that and about Andrew at Andrew Feiler dot com. And
his last name is spelled f e I l e
er uh. We hope you check it out because he's
a fascinating person and truly, like I am not blow
and smoke when I say he's a very gifted photographer. Um.
He does some really really beautiful stuff. And the photos
in this book are spectacularly beautiful. That portrait of John
(40:30):
Lewis he talked about that I got choked up what
we were talking is absolutely gorgeous. Um, and I love
that there's that perspective included in the book about what
it was like to attend one of these schools, and
you really see like how that impacted the role of
education in America, the world of American black students, and
(40:52):
just like it really did change everything. So it's I
love it. I love that book. UM. I hope you
check it out because you too will love it. It's
a lot of good stuff. UM. I have fun foodie email,
which I feel like what I always talked about at
this point, but I'm really enjoying everybody's stories of their
cooking disasters and triumphs. This one is from our listener Anna.
(41:15):
I don't know if it's Anna Anna, so my apologies
if I get it wrong, but uh Anna writes, I
hope you're both doing well. You've had a string of
really great episodes recently, all on topics that are personally
fascinating to me. I finished your episode on Debrek Cocaadia
last week, and I loved it so much. I shared
it with a fellow foodie friend who was my neighbor
when I lived in Rome. She reminded me about the
(41:38):
first time I ever had my recently become husband's family
over to dinner at our house. Obviously, for an Italian family,
food and cooking is super important, and I knew I
had to get it right. I spent over a month
studying recipes for the perfect lasagna, and I got it
down to a fine art. My friend asked me what
I was planning on cooking them, and I told her.
(41:59):
She was as aolutely horrified. She begged me to choose
something else, explaining that every region in Italy does lasagna
in a slightly different way and if I got it
even slightly wrong, I would risk spending the evening having
all my hard work compared to the family recipe from
their nona, and it would feel like a disaster, even
if it was really good. This was especially important for
(42:21):
my husband's family, as they actually come from the region
that invented lasagna in the first place. Unfortunately, that conversation
was about two hours before they arrived. I flew into
a complete panic and went into the dinner absolutely petrified.
But it turned out that my hard work paid off.
My mother in law still talks about my lasagna recipe,
and I think that dinner is what persuaded her to
(42:42):
allow her son to marry me. It turns out English
people can cook after all. My friend and I laughed
all over again at this story after she listened to
your episode, so I thought i'd share keep up all
the good work getting as sauce through these long pandemic months, years, decades.
I've lost track. I hope you're both doing well, all
the best. I love this, I love a I love
a cooking triumph story. That's for sure. I feel like, um,
(43:05):
I would be the cooking fail. I would mess it up.
But I also wanted to mention in relation to that,
we got uh an email from our listener Darline, and
a couple of other people have reached out to me
to ask about the meat loaf recipe. The meat loaf
recipe is online. It's on our social media. If you
check out our Instagram or our Twitter. There it is UH.
(43:27):
And that is the one that we mentioned in another
listener mail and got permission to share the famous secret
but not really that secret lipped and soup ingredient recipe
for meat loaf. And I will tell you I may
have sent my husband out to purchase all of the
ingredients this morning, so by the time this episode airs,
I will have either succeeded or failed in recreating it.
(43:49):
Either way, I'll eat the evidence. Yeah, We've heard from
several listeners and the comments, particularly on Instagram and Facebook,
that the recipe is very similar to their own family recipe. Yeah,
it is. It's a little um different from some that
(44:10):
I've done. There's a I had never done it. Um.
The one that my mother passed down did not include
that whole like cooking the bread and milk before you
incorporated into the meat, which is an interesting part of
it for me. But hopefully by the end of today
I will be very full and happy with a contented
(44:30):
smile on my face and full of meat loaf. So also, Anna,
if you want to send that lasagn your recipient over,
I'm ready to receive and I will broadcast if you
say it's okay. We could just become like a sideline
business of historical recipes. Um. I love, as I've said before,
people sharing those and making it so other people can
(44:51):
join their own histories with theirs and make something new
and delicious and nurture all of us together. I thank
you so much to everyone who's written us about their
they're cooking efforts. I love that so much. You can
write to us too. We are at History Podcast at
iHeart radio dot com. You can also find us everywhere
on social media as Missed in History, including that yummy
(45:11):
recipe and if you would like to subscribe to the
show and you haven't gotten around to it yet. It's
super easy and we'll take you no time. You can
do that on the I heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts,
or anywhere else you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff
you Missed in History Class is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
(45:34):
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
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Holly Frey
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