Conservation as Reparations

Abstract

The Julius Rosenwald Schools, built across the segregated American South, had generational impact. This narrative explores this educational initiative’s investment in rural Black communities, the design of Black schools by Black architects for Black communities, and a current conservation project as an act of generational repair and reparation. The Rosenwald Schools embody the resilience and self-determination of African American communities across the southern United States, in direct response to the institutional inequities of Jim Crow, as a way to empower future generations of students and leaders.

Notes

1 James Horton, “On-Site Learning: The Power of Historic Places,” Cultural Resources Management 23:8 (2000): 5.

2 Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin, 3rd ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2012), 71.

3 Brent Leggs, “A Conversation about Landscapes and Preservation as Justice” (presentation, Pastforward 2021, online, November 22, 2021) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJTI0sf2SMY.

4 Lester C. Lamon, “Black Public Education in the South, 1861–1920: By Whom, For Whom and Under Whose Control?” Journal of Thought 18:3 (1983): 76–90, www.jstor.org/stable/23801725, accessed March 3, 2021.

5 Mary S. Hoffschwelle, The Rosenwald Schools of the American South, New Perspectives on the History of the South (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006), 30.

6 “The Rosenwald Schools: Progressive Era Philanthropy in the Segregated South,” National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, July 8, 2021, https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-rosenwald-schools-progressive-era-philanthropy-in-the-segregated-south-teachingwith-historic-places.htm.

7 James Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860–1935, 1st ed. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 156.

8 Edwin R. Embree and Julia Waxman, Investment in People: The Story of The Julius Rosenwald Fund (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949), 37–106; Hanchett, 387–89.

9 Hoffschwelle, The Rosenwald Schools, 273.

10 “America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places—Past Listings,” National Trust for Historic Preservation, March 2021, https://savingplaces.org/places/resenwald-schools.

11 Rayshad Dorsey and Natalia Escobar Castrillón, “Introduction: A Call to Anti-Racist Action,” OBL/QUE 4 (Fall 2022): 4.

12 Daniel Aaronson and Bhashkar Mazumder, “The Impact of Rosenwald Schools on Black Achievement,” SSRN Electronic Journal, October 2009.

13 John Lewis, foreword to A Better Life for Their Children, by Andrew Feiler (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2021), xii–xiii.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gorham Bird

Gorham Bird is an assistant professor of architecture at Auburn University’s School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape Architecture, where his scholarship and practice explore architecture as a cultural artifact, its sociopolitical and historical pasts, and questions related to historic preservation, conservation, and adaptive reuse. In 2022, Bird and his research team were awarded a National Park Service African American Civil Rights Preservation grant to rehabilitate a dilapidated Rosenwald School. He is a graduate of Auburn University where he studied both architecture and interior architecture and holds an MSArch in Conservation from Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan.