Film examines good deeds of Sears chief
Documentary fails to deliver a clear picture of who Rosenwald was.
‘ROSENWALD’ Grade: B Rating: Unrated Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes Theater: Arbor
The $70 million that longtime Sears Roebuck chief Julius Rosenwald donated in the early 20th century for the building of schools in African-American neighborhoods made him a hero in that community. To the rest of the citizenry, and particularly among American Jews, Rosenwald’s deeds and generosity have an additional heroic element, as demonstrated in the documentary “Rosenwald”: They were evidence of a special understanding between the two communities, and illustrated the particular sensitivity of Jewish-Americans to the plight of African-Americans.
The Rosenwald Foundation’s impact was huge, the movie points out, and lingered long after his death in 1932. The stunning list of African-American beneficiaries — “a who’s-who of black America,” says Julian Bond in the film — of the philanthropist’s largesse includes Booker T. Washington, John L. Louis, James Weldon Johnson, James Baldwin, Ralph Bunche, Zora Neale Hurston and Marian Anderson.
In addition to those schools, Rosenwald was a major donor to the Tuskegee Institute, and founder and supporter of a YMCA that became central to the community of blacks who had moved to Chicago from the South.
His financial formula, says the movie, was he would give a third of what was needed, another third would come from the black community, and the final third would be raised in the white community — often boards of education in school districts.
So it’s a feel-good movie, especially about the relationship between haves and have-nots. And it’s a feel-good movie particularly about the relationship of one Jewish man, who began life as a peddler’s son and became a millionaire, and black people whom he enabled to build their own lives, as he had built his.
Filmmaker Aviva Kempner has dedicated the film to the late Julian Bond, who inspired her to make the movie when she heard him refer to Rosenwald in a speech 12 years ago.
Bond told the filmmaker the Rosenwald grantees “are the predecessor generation to the civil rights generation that I’m part of.”
Records of projects and people — museums, charities, institutions, artists, scholars and writers — seeded and nurtured with Rosenwald’s money abound, as do historical accounts of tributes to him.
But inspiring as the story of Rosenwald is, there’s little in the film that illuminates what kind of man this heroic philanthropist was. As to motivation for his deeds, the film says early on it had occurred to Rosenwald that attacks on rural blacks were like pogroms being suffered by Jews in Europe, and he was moved by that.
But once the filmmaker gets into describing the projects he funded, there’s little more about his character, his habits, how he moved about in the financial community.
If we’re asked to judge a man on his deeds, as the old saw goes, the deeds are good. But a clear picture of Rosenwald — Was he close to his children? Did he laugh at jokes? Did he maintain lifelong friendships? Did he flaunt his money? — never quite emerges.
He was deserving, of course, of every accolade he received. Too bad we never get to know whether they made him happy.