By Jerry Klinger
OKAHUMPKA, Florida — The newest of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation (JASHP) sponsored Julius Rosenwald School markers was dedicated in Okahumpka, Florida. The marker is reflective of the historic partnership of Jewish American Julius Rosenwald and the Black Okahumpka community.
JASHP partnered with the Okahumpka Community Club, an active organization of Black and White citizenry, whose logo is two hands, one black and one white clasped in commonality and friendship.
The Okahumpka Rosenwald School is the finest example of the Rosenwald two-room schoolhouse design still standing in Florida.
The text of the marker:
Okahumpka Rosenwald School
Julius Rosenwald was the chairman of Sears Roebuck and Co. in 1908. As a Jewish American, he believed the most serious problem of the United States was the plight of Black Americans. Rosenwald was a close friend of Booker T. Washington. Washington had been a slave but rose to become the nationally respected President of Tuskegee Institute (University), an author, orator, and advisor to American Presidents. 1912 Rosenwald became a Trustee of Tuskegee.
Under Washington’s guidance, Rosenwald funded a successful pilot program making education accessible to Black Children in Alabama by building schoolhouses.
In 1915, Washington died. Rosenwald, continuing Dr. Washington’s vision, established the Rosenwald Fund in 1917 “for the well-being of Mankind. ”When the Rosenwald Fund was terminated in 1948, it had been the catalyst for building over 5,300 schools in 15 States of the South. The Fund provided educational opportunity to 1/3 of all Black American children.
The Rosenwald Fund was based upon a system of matching grants requiring White School Boards and Black-American communities to cooperate together for school construction. Black-American communities contributed $4.8 million to the building of 127 schools in Florida. In Lake County, ten schools, three shops and one teacher’s home were built.
The Okahumpka Rosenwald School was approved by the Lake County Board of Public Instruction in 1929. One-half acre of this school property was donated on May 17, 1930, by Virgil and Josephine Hawkins, the parents of Florida Civil Rights leader, Attorney Virgil D. Hawkins, whose 1949-1958 court battles desegregated the University of Florida. Hawkins attended school on this site through the 10th grade in an old ramshackle school that was torn down to accommodate the building of this modern Okahumpka Rosenwald school.
Sponsorship – The Okahumpka Community Club, the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation.
Chip D’Amico, Okahumpka Community Club’s At-Large Board member & fundraising Chairman, approached JASHP about helping in January.
Chip wrote: “The Community Club would like to fully restore this historic Julius Rosenwald School, as well as honor the late Julius Rosenwald and Virgil Hawkins.
We hope to get our story out about this historic building & location…I figured that
an email to you couldn’t hurt.”
Chip was not rebuffed. He had been by so many other efforts at outreach.
He was told JASHP does not restore buildings. JASHP does provide interpretive markers, supportive funding, marketing, help with web presence, and consultative services.
The help Chip asked for came from the Holocaust.
The reason for helping the Club’s effort was a common purpose of doing the right thing.
My father was liberated from the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in 1945. When he arrived in the States, he was shocked by the racial discrimination he saw. The same type of blind hate, bigotry, and discrimination that had placed him in the Nazi concentration camps for being a Jew was being done to another human being.
He knew it was wrong. He taught his family it was wrong.
“Sitting silently while the “other” is persecuted was not an option to live by,” he said.
When Chip wrote asking for help, there was no question he would get it.
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Jerry Klinger is President of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation. www.JASHP.org