Some weeks ago, my wife and I visited the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry to see the moving commemoration of Anne Frank. On our way out of the exhibit, we passed a plaque commemorating the museum’s founder, Julius Rosenwald. Wednesday marked what would have been his 164th birthday. This is a fitting season to mark the achievements of arguably the greatest Chicagoan in our city’s history.
As outlined in the magisterial biography produced by his grandson, Peter Ascoli, and a remarkable documentary
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by Aviva Kempner, Rosenwald’s accomplishments were breathtaking. He was the founding entrepreneur of Sears, Roebuck & Co., the Amazon of its day, whose mail order catalogue brought desperately needed goods to every corner of America.Because of these achievements, Rosenwald became the progressive era’s equivalent of a modern-day billionaire, though his wealth (today’s equivalent of less than $4 billion) was modest by the standards of Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller or today’s tech bros. That comparison makes all the more astonishing what Rosenwald was able to accomplish with his paltry few billion.
In the summer of 1910, a friend sent Rosenwald “Up from Slavery,” Booker T. Washington’s autobiography, alongside a biography of William H. Baldwin, a philanthropist who sought to improve educational opportunities for African Americans. Moved by the parallels between the Black and Jewish experiences of oppression, Rosenwald connected with Washington and others to build an estimated 5,000 schools that served roughly one-third of all Black students in the South. By 1932, an estimated 650,000 Black students attended Rosenwald schools. Moreover, because the Sears catalog did not racially discriminate, economic historians credit the catalog as a major tool for Black consumers to side-step the indignities and discrimination of Jim Crow commerce.
Rosenwald supported the construction of YMCAs in segregated cities across America, so that Black migrants had places to stay when they visited cities such as Chicago seeking work. Rosenwald family resources helped provide the facilities that made possible the accomplishments of the Tuskegee airmen, and supported NAACP legal efforts that ultimately overturned school segregation. Rosenwald fellowships supported W.E.B. Du Bois, Marian Anderson, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Dr. Charles Drew, John Hope Franklin and so many others.
Here in Chicago, Rosenwald built apartment complexes for low-income Chicagoans. He provided substantial support for what is now University of Chicago Medicine. He pursued fair labor practices through collective bargaining. He was a founding benefactor for the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration, now the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, which I am proud to call my professional home.
Rosenwald’s myriad achievements provide a chastening contrast to today’s billionaires such as Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. These men must be honored for producing innovative products that improve millions of people’s lives. America is blessed to have billionaire entrepreneurs who accomplish such things. Yet Rosenwald understood that people who command such great resources also have a responsibility to use these resources to help others. Adjusted for inflation, each of these men commands vastly greater resources than Rosenwald ever did. Yet Rosenwald accomplished far more to help others, in far more difficult times. Like Bill Gates and MacKenzie Scott today, Rosenwald realized that people who command great wealth have corresponding responsibilities to help others. As a liberal Democrat, I don’t share the political views of the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry’s current benefactor, Ken Griffin. From across the ideological divide, I must respect that he deploys considerable resources for valuable philanthropy.
Musk has behaved in precisely the opposite manner, working to defund essential global health programs he could have easily funded out of his own pocket, costing hundreds of thousands of human lives. It’s pitiful to see such a talented and blessed person make such destruction a defining legacy of his time on this earth.
The discipline and economy of Rosenwald’s philanthropy also provide a chastening contrast to our current hidebound efforts to help people. On a shoestring budget, he and his community partners built 5,000 schools. The city of Chicago recently pursued a worthy effort to build affordable apartments on the West Side. A $30 million effort produced only 44 apartments. Had the city spent that same $30 million to simply buy market-rate apartments, it could have helped five times as many people. Adding a dose of Rosenwald’s no-nonsense business acumen to our current efforts to execute good works would really help.
So happy belated 164th birthday, Julius Rosenwald. We must all learn from your good example.
Harold Pollack is the Helen Ross distinguished service professor at the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago.
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