On Sunday, October 2, 2022, the Rosenwald Collaborative and Mars Hill University will present a panel from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. at Broyhill Chapel on the university campus.
Kenneth Morris; Stephanie Deutsch; Peter Ascoli.
Kenneth Morris, Peter Ascoli, and Stephanie Deutsch will share memories and knowledge of their ancestors.
Each of the speakers has a connection to either Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee Institute, or Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears, Roebuck, and Company. Rosenwald and Washington partnered in the early 1900s to build more than 5,000 elementary schools in the South for children of color. One of these schools, the Mars Hill Anderson Rosenwald School located in the Long Ridge community, was built in 1929-30.
Morris is the great-great-grandson of Washington and also a descendant of Frederick Douglass. He is also cofounder and president of the Rochester, NY-based nonprofit Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives (FDFI), which works “to build strong children and to end systems of exploitation and oppression.”
Deutsch is a descendent of Rosenwald via marriage and the author of You Need a Schoolhouse: Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald, and the Building of Schools for the Segregated South. Ascoli is the grandson of Rosenwald and author of Julius Rosenwald: The Man Who Built Sears, Roebuck and Advanced the Cause of Black Education in the American South.
For details about this event and to RSVP, please visit Malaprops.com/rosenwald-school-events. Broyhill Chapel is located on the campus of Mars Hill University at 388 Cascade Street, Mars Hill, NC, 28754.