My book You Need a Schoolhouse, Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald and the Building of Schools for the Segregated South, has just been published by Northwestern University Press. It is available in bookstores nationwide and on Amazon.com.
I was initially attracted to this subject for family reasons; my husband is a great-grandson of Julius Rosenwald. When studying Rosenwald led me to the story of his partnership with Booker T. Washington I began to realize how little I knew about the times in which both men lived and, in particular, about conditions surrounding the creation of the Rosenwald schools. As the daughter of a Foreign Service officer I had spent part of my childhood in New Zealand and had gone to high school at a French lycée. In college I had studied Russian and Soviet Studies. But the issues that Rosenwald and Washington grappled with one hundred years ago have more resonance for me now than Voltaire or Lenin. This is a story that is still unfolding and every time I visit Rosenwald schools and meet with men and women who attended them and who care about preserving their history I realize that I am part of it.
I enjoy sharing what I’ve learned from this research, especially with middle school students and with Rosenwald alumni groups.
I was born in Washington, D.C. and have lived on Capitol Hill for thirty-five years. I raised three children here and have participated in the community in many ways, the most important being as chairman of the grants committee of the Capitol Hill Community Foundation, which annually gives away over $200,000 in small grants. My husband, David Deutsch, a retired television director, has joined me on many rambles related to my research on Rosenwald and Washington and has been a wonderful photographer, IT guy, driver and companion. He took this picture of me last summer at Castalia Rosenwald School in North Carolina. (Our name is pronounced DOITCH).