On a hillside in Cassville, Ga., about an hour northwest of Atlanta, sits a simple, white frame building. The two-room schoolhouse is hidden from drivers cruising by on Highway 41, and its story is tucked away as well.
But the Noble Hill-Wheeler Memorial Center stands as a reminder of the remarkable work of Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald in the first half of the 20th century. And now, when relations between blacks and Jews in the Atlanta area are feeling frayed, this 79-year-old building serves as a symbol of a special partnership between a prominent American Jew and African-Americans in the rural South.
It is also the emblem of a family legacy now carried forward by some of Rosenwald's descendants, such as Atlanta entrepreneur Jeff Levy.
The school building in Cassville is one of more than 5,000 schools across the South built for African-American students with the help of Rosenwald, president and chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Co. and one of America's most important charitable donors in the early 1900s. At one time, one-third of the black children in 15 Southern states were educated in Rosenwald schools.
"These schools are really important to the heritage of African-Americans. They were the major means for rural education at that time," said Jeanne Cyriaque, an official with the Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
Cyriaque, the agency's African-American programs coordinator, is leading an effort to find and save Rosenwald schools that still exist, and she has identified about 30 of the 242 schools built in Georgia.
The Noble Hill School in Cassville is one of the lucky ones - it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. The building was closed in 1955 but it got new life in the 1980s when the community, which included many alumni of the school, raised $200,000 to restore it. Today it is filled with Depression-era artifacts and photos, and it is open to the public as a museum of African-American life in rural Bartow County.
Many of the other schools have fallen into ruin, however, and in June the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the Rosenwald schools to its list of the 11 most endangered historic places in America. And as the schools disappear from the Southern landscape, so too fades the story of Rosenwald's role in improving the lives of African-Americans during the Jim Crow era.

Inspired by rabbi

Rosenwald, the son of German-Jewish immigrants, was born in 1862 in Springfield, Ill., a block from the home of Abraham Lincoln. It has been said that Rosenwald's admiration for Lincoln helped inspire his giving, but he also was moved by Jewish concepts of charity, particularly the belief in self-help, as well as personal involvement by the donor. One important guide was Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, the leader of Chicago's Sinai Congregation at the turn of the century and an outspoken social progressive.
As a teen-ager, Rosenwald took a job in a family run clothing business and he later opened his own clothing company. In 1895, he bought an interest in Sears for $37,500 and he soon built the mail-order business into a merchandising giant, becoming president of Sears in 1909 and later chairman.
Like many wealthy businessmen of his time who turned to philanthropy, Rosenwald was concerned about the dismal state of education for blacks in the South. He was joined by other prominent Jews such as Lillian Wald, Jacob Billikopf, Herbert Lehman, Arthur and Joel Spingarn and Jacob Schiff, who all played key roles in the early years of the NAACP.
Jewish funders also supported the National Urban League, and Schiff and fellow financiers Felix and Paul Warburg gave major gifts to black educational institutions.
The Rosenwald schools grew out of a friendship between Rosenwald and the noted black educator Booker T. Washington. In 1912, as part of $687,000 he gave to charities on the occasion of his 50th birthday - the equivalent of about $11 million today - Rosenwald donated $25,000 to offshoots of Washington's Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
At Washington's suggestion, a small portion of the gift was used to build six schools for blacks in rural Alabama. With the success of those schools, Rosenwald launched a challenge-grant program that eventually led to the construction of 4,977 schools, 217 teachers' homes and 163 shop buildings in 15 states, from Maryland to Texas. The program ended in 1932, the year Rosenwald died.
Although the schools were simple structures, they were a huge improvement over the ramshackle huts that typically housed classes for black pupils in rural areas.
"Many of the places in the South where the schools are now taught are as bad as stables," Booker T. Washington wrote to Rosenwald in 1912.
Rosenwald demanded that the new schools meet strict architectural guidelines. Windows had to face east and west to get the most natural light and each site was to be at least two acres, with space for playgrounds and a plot for agricultural demonstrations.
"We were just thrilled to see this new building completed," said Susie Wheeler, one of the first pupils at the Noble Hill School when it opened in 1923 and one of the leaders of the restoration effort. Before that, classes were held down the hill in the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, where children had to make do without desks and with a makeshift blackboard.
Rosenwald did not believe in attaching his name to his charitable works, but the schoolhouses quickly became known as Rosenwald schools, even though the wealthy Chicagoan provided just a portion of the costs.
Rosenwald also required donations from the local African-American community, as well as public funding. The Noble Hill School, for example, cost $2,036 to build, but only $700 came from the Rosenwald Fund, the foundation Rosenwald created in 1917. The remainder came from the local African-American community and from the Bartow County school board.
In the 20-year school-building program, more than $28 million was spent on the schools, but Rosenwald's contribution was just $4.4 million, or 15 percent. Blacks gave another $4.7 million in the form of cash, labor, land and materials.
The largest portion, $18 million, came from tax money, which suited Rosenwald's goal of stimulating public responsibility for schools for black children in the harshly unequal South. Though Rosenwald did not challenge segregation, he hoped the schools would promote cooperation between blacks and whites and a greater public commitment to equality.
The required donation from African-American communities amounted to double taxation; nonetheless, their leaders seized on Rosenwald's offer, holding covered-dish suppers, baseball games and other events to raise money for the new schools.
And in one place, struggling sharecroppers set aside an area planted with cotton as the "Rosenwald Patch" and donated the profits from its sale to the school.
Local leaders frequently noticed that the grass-roots fund-raising efforts led to other improvements in the community, such as better housing and spruced-up churches.
Other Rosenwald schools not far from Atlanta include the Hiram Colored School in Paulding County and the Eleanor Roosevelt School in Warm Springs.
The Hiram building, located on the west side of Georgia State Route 92, is also on the National Register of Historic Places. It is owned today by the Sweet Home Baptist Church, which uses it as a community center and a site for family reunions and church events.
The Warm Springs School, which was built in 1937 at the request of Franklin D. Roosevelt, has not been restored, but local tourism officials are seeking a historic designation for the building.
Overall, Cyriaque says, more than 35,000 students were taught in Georgia's Rosenwald schools and 103 of the state's counties had at least one Rosenwald school.

YMCAs and fellowships

Rosenwald's involvement in African-American life did not stop at the schoolhouse door. Even before his partnership with Booker T. Washington, Rosenwald had pledged $25,000 for a YMCA building for blacks in any city where an additional $75,000 was raised by the community. His offer triggered a nationwide movement and led to the construction of 24 Ys.
Later, Rosenwald's foundation took on other projects: teacher education, extending the school year for black children in the South, a library service in rural areas and support for hospitals. He also donated widely to higher education for blacks, giving to black universities in Atlanta and elsewhere. After his death the Rosenwald Fund helped establish the United Negro College Fund.
Rosenwald also awarded fellowships in the 1930s and 1940s that have had a lasting impact on America's intellectual and cultural life. Rosenwald Fellowships provided money for advanced study to such well-known figures as W.E.B. DuBois, Ralph Bunche, Ralph Ellison, Jacob Lawrence, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Huston, and Marian Anderson - a "Who's Who" of 20th century African-American cultural giants.
One reason Rosenwald's work has faded from memory - even though he gave away the equivalent of $700 million in today's dollars - is that his foundation went out of business in 1948, 16 years after his death.
Unlike other philanthropists of his time - such as John D. Rockefeller or Andrew Carnegie, whose names live on in the charities they created - Rosenwald opposed perpetual foundations. He believed they created bureaucracies that were preoccupied with conserving capital, and he thought that each generation must decide for itself what causes deserve funding.
Even so, Rosenwald is still honored in African-American communities that are trying to preserve the schools he helped build, and alumni of those schools credit him with creating new opportunities.
"Julius Rosenwald was the man who gave us public education," said Mildred Ridgley Gray, who attended a school in Maryland.

Continuing the work

Rosenwald's legacy also lives on among his heirs, who include Atlantan Jeff Levy, founder and CEO of Open Point Networks, which installs and manages wireless networks for computers. Levy is working with the city of Atlanta to create wireless networks in public places such as City Hall and Hartsfield International Airport.
"Philanthropy was a very central part of my upbringing," said Levy, a great-great grandson of Rosenwald. "I have always felt an obligation to give to whatever causes you find compelling. It's a very important part of civil society."
Levy has followed in Rosenwald's footsteps by focusing his charitable work on education, race relations and religion. He serves on boards at Emory University, Georgia Tech, the
SciTrek Museum and the Atlanta International School and is treasurer of The Temple.
Levy, 39, grew up understanding the importance of blacks and Jews getting along well.
"Julius Rosenwald worked really hard to forge those ties with Booker Washington," he said. "That was a very important part of our family's heritage."
Today, Levy is doing his part to cement good relations between blacks and Jews by helping start the Jewish-Black Business Coalition in Atlanta. The group of about 30 African-American and Jewish CEOs meets monthly to discuss ways to work together and do business in each other's communities. The coalition hopes to send members to speak at churches, synagogues and schools about ways to build connections and gain trust between the two groups.
Says Levy, "We are a living example of how we can help each other."

Getting There

The Noble Hill-Wheeler Memorial Center is open Tuesday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call (770) 382-3392 for more information.
From Atlanta, take I-75 North to the Cartersville Main Street Exit 288. Turn left and travel one mile to Highway 41 (Joe Frank Harris Parkway). Turn right and travel seven miles north to Fire Tower Road. Take the next left turn after the red light at Fire Tower, which will be the Bole Hill Center's driveway.

Diane Granat, a senior editor of Washingtonian magazine, is a 2002 Alicia Patterson Fellow doing research on Julius Rosenwald and his philanthropic legacy.