Under the Kudzu

The Rosenwald Fund archive at Fisk University contains pictures of many of the Rosenwald schools, shops and teachers' homes.  These images are of the buildings when they were just completed.  You can search the database by county.  Just click the link below:

http://rosenwald.fisk.edu/

Clinton Fisk (1828-1890)

Abolitionist and assistant commissioner for the Freedmen's Bureau for Kentucky and Tennessee.

He worked to establish free public schools for both African Americans and whites.  He also made abandoned barracks in Nashville, TN available for the founding of what became Fisk University, and gave generously to the school.

Julius Rosenwald relocated his school-building program efforts from Tuskegee Institute to a Nasville office of the Rosenwald Fund in 1920.  Rosenwald had lost faith in the leadership of Tuskegee after the death of Booker T. Washington in 1915.

The archive also contains information about the funding for each school, specifically, how much the African American community donated, the amount of the Rosenwald grant, and how much the local school board supplied.

 Keep in mind that land for the schools was also often donated by white or African American community members.

Note: You may also occasionally see images of older buildings when you pull up the information on a given Rosenwald school.  These are images of the buildings that were replaced by that Rosenwald school.