A new exhibit at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum explores how Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald built nearly 5,000 schools to give Black children access to education. NBC 5’s Noelle Walker reports.
The Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum has a special exhibit called "A Better Life for Their Children."
Through photos, scale models, books, and a mock classroom, "A Better Life for Their Children" shows visitors how African American students gained access to education during segregation.
Watch NBC 5 free wherever you are
WATCH HERE“So this was a time of Jim Crow laws in the South,” Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum President and CEO Mary Pat Higgins said. “Separate but equal was the rule of the law, and almost always, that was not equal.”
The exhibit tells the story of how African American students in the South and Southwest gained access to education at Rosenwald Schools.
Get top local stories in DFW delivered to you every morning with NBC DFW's News Headlines newsletter.
SIGN UP “It’s a story of Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington coming together to solve a problem,” Higgins said.
Washington was a freed slave and an educator. Rosenwald was a businessman and philanthropist.
“He wanted to lift up Americans who needed help really realizing the American dream,” Higgins said. “And the African Americans who were suffering through Jim Crow really needed his help.”
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
Between 1913 and 1937, they built nearly 5,000 Rosenwald Schools. Rosenwald provided financing, but not all of it. The Black and white communities where schools were built were required to contribute to funding.
“To get local communities engaged so they wouldn't destroy what they had helped pay for,” Higgins explained.
The education was priceless.
“Just imagine what our country might be like today if those students hadn’t been educated,” Higgins said. “Some of the students that attended those schools were people like Maya Angelou and civil rights leaders Medgar Evers and John Lewis.”
Higgins said she hopes students who walk through the exhibit today can learn from the past.
“I hope that helps us think about the power [and] our responsibility to make sure that schools are equally funded today,” Higgins said. “We also hope our students that visit will understand really how negative prejudice and hatred can be, and that they will be inspired to stand up to that.”
"A Better Life for Their Children" runs through Aug. 17 at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum.
