The Rosenwald School students knew they were Americans, and that they had the power to become anything. They built a better generation through self-determination. The government didn’t do that. The state didn’t do that. If we want to see change in America, it’s not going to come from Congress or the President. It’s going to come from communities.
That’s the legacy the Rosenwald Schools left us: a private citizen working with communities to effect change. If we were to accentuate the story of the Rosenwald Schools, we’d have a better sense of why America is so great.
While working for my own education at Auburn University, I spent a year living in Loachapoka, Alabama, just a few miles from the Tuskegee Institute. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the very first Rosenwald School had been built just across town almost 70 years earlier.
I didn’t understand the significance of my temporary home until many years later, when a group of former members of Congress decided to host a webinar on the Rosenwald Schools. My friend Harry Boyte introduced me to the history of these schools, and Former Maryland Representative Donna Edwards and I researched the schools and their phenomenal lasting national impact in preparation for the event.
The significance of the schools’ history is both personal and pervasive for me, entwined with my time in Loachapoka and the very identity of our country—with what it means to be an American citizen. The Rosenwald Schools could make it in America because there was a constitution that said, ‘You have value. You have purpose.’
The education African American students received at those schools—empowered by their families and neighbors—began every day with the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem, reminders that they were American citizens first. I think that civic education contributed significantly to the success and relative peace of the Civil Rights Movement.
The story of these Rosenwald Schools is a history that must be revived and taught, not only in
a National Historical Park, but in school curriculums. Communities throughout the South were denied education but dug deep and, with the help of Julius Rosenwald and vision of Booker T. Washington built schools and attained it anyway. Imagine if we could do that again —if we could build communities where people focus on developing educational systems that recognize the need for good citizens and teach them at an early age that they have purpose and promise. The result would be better citizens.
On a visit to my alma mater in November 2025, I made the trip back to Loachapoka to find the site of that first Rosenwald School. While there, I was able to reconnect with an old friend who had once been resistant to visiting me when I returned home to Florida because of the way he might have been treated as an African American traveling in the South. Today, he works as an Alabama County Commissioner and hosts a radio talk show.
After talking with him, I was struck again by the way that these Rosenwald Schools impacted communities in the long-term. While my friend was not an alumnus himself, the spirit of the school lives on in Loachapoka, empowering people to lean into civic leadership even generations later. The Rosenwald Schools that still exist represent the character of communities who committed to giving future generations the best chance for success they could, giving their own time, energy, and resources to make it happen.
These are the kinds of stories people love—stories of endurance and success. Not divisiveness, but what we have in common. For the Rosenwald students, that was what being an American was all about.
In our country’s 250th year, this is the kind of story we need to be telling. It’s one of the best things that’s happened in America.
By Dennis Ross
About Dennis Ross: Dennis Ross served Florida’s 15th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2011-2019. He announced his retirement from Congress in 2018 and now teaches political science at Southeastern University, where he also launched the American Center for Political Leadership. Since that inspiring webinar in 2023, Ross and Donna Edwards have become active advocates for the Campaign.
