SKOKIE, Ill. — Of the 423 park sites within the U.S. National Park System, which includes national parks, monuments, historical sites and other features, few are named after a Jewish person. But if Dorothy Canter of Bethesda, Md., has it her way, one will celebrate the legacy of Julius Rosenwald, the early 20th-century Jewish American philanthropist and president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, whose generosity and progressive vision influenced the Jewish and Black communities in the Chicago area and Black communities across the American South.

It was this mission that brought Canter to Skokie, Ill., last night, where she addressed an audience of approximately 160 people filling nearly every seat in the Petty Auditorium at the Skokie Public Library. 

As founder and president of the Julius Rosenwald & Rosenwald Schools National Historical Park Campaign, Canter leads a team advocating for the creation of a multi-site park: a visitor center in Chicago to focus on Rosenwald’s overall legacy, and a number of restored schoolhouses in several states, remnants from among the over 5,000 “Rosenwald schools” founded in the Jim Crow era to improve educational opportunities for Black children. Prior to the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said segregated public schools were unconstitutional, these Rosenwald schools comprised about one-third of all the elementary schools in the country accessible for African Americans.

A Chicago story

The event in Skokie was hosted by two local organizations: the Jewish Neighborhood Development Council and the Chicago Jewish Historical Society. A photo exhibit produced by JNDC and CJHS chronicling the Jewish history of West Rogers Park, Chicago’s oldest Jewish community, was on display in the library’s adjacent gallery.

Before introducing Canter, JNDC’s president, Beverly Siegel, a Chicago native, shared her personal connection with Rosenwald: Not only did she produce a documentary-style episode about him for the local TV series “Chicago Stories,” which originally aired in 2001, but when she was a little girl her mother would work part-time at the original Sears store as a gift-wrapper during the Christmas season.

“I thought, what a wonderful job, wrapping presents, and I knew that a rich Jewish man had something to do with it,” Siegel said, the audience responding with laughter. 

A screening of Siegel’s “From Sears to Eternity: The Julius Rosenwald Story” commenced, covering Rosenwald’s origins, his professional rise, his family life and his philanthropic philosophy and achievements. 

At a time when the Chicago Jewish community was split between established German-Jewish elites and Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland, Rosenwald sought to overcome these divisions and pool communal resources, establishing what became the predecessor of Chicago’s Jewish federation. His philanthropic efforts on behalf of Black Americans were his response to the parallel he observed between the suffering and persecution Jews and Blacks, from Eastern Europe to the Jim Crow South.

“From Sears to Eternity” also highlighted the ways Rosenwald was an innovator in how he supported causes. In 1910, for instance, he responded to a request to support a YMCA for Black people with the first-known challenge grant: he committed to giving $25,000 to any city that would raise $75,000 for the establishment of such a YMCA in their community. Over the years, 24 cities rose to the challenge, and YMCAs were established accordingly. 

When Rosenwald chose to celebrate his 50th birthday by donating a total of hundreds of thousands of dollars to various causes, he gave $25,000 to the Tuskegee Institute. It was the institute’s founder, Booker T. Washington, who proposed that Rosenwald set aside a portion of that money to build schools; and when Washington died in 1915, before their project was complete, Rosenwald established the Rosenwald Fund to keep their work going. 

Why a national park?

Canter first learned of Rosenwald’s story after watching Aviva Kemper’s documentary film “Rosenwald” with her husband in 2015. Her immediate reaction — that there specifically needs to be a national park to honor the legacy of Julius Rosenwald and the Rosenwald schools — derives from her personal relationship with national parks.

Canter was not a fan of the history education she received in school as a kid — “every year we’d start out with the colonies and we’d just get mired down and I hated history,” she said — but she enjoyed learning about history through visits to national parks. Rosenwald’s collaboration with Washington is a story that’s not yet told in our national park system, she said, “and our national park system has up until now, told the good, the bad and the ugly about our country forthrightly.”

In 2001, the National Trust for Historic Preservation listed the schools among the most endangered historic sites, leading to new interest and efforts to restore and preserve them. Then in 2015, “Rosenwald” — the movie that inspired Canter — highlighted Rosenwald’s collaboration with Washington on the schools. In 2016, Canter marshalled supporters — including Robert Stanton, who served in the National Park Service for almost four decades and was the first Black person to be appointed NPS director — and began her campaign.

After the screening of “From Sears to Eternity,” Canter spoke about the lengthy process for attempting to secure national park status. The Julius Rosenwald and Rosenwald Schools Act of 2020 called for a study of sites associated with Rosenwald and the schools, and that study was subsequently published in June 2024 — actually a quick turnaround for this type of thing, she noted wryly.

Over 200 organizations — national parks and preservation organizations, educational groups and museums, historical societies, churches and synagogues, Black organizations and Jewish organizations — have submitted letters of support for the creation of the park. It’s been almost 10 years since Canter started on this journey, but she remains committed. And in the meantime, the campaign is working to create an informal network of still-extant Rosenwald schools to focus on exhibitions and restoration as well as advocacy for the establishment of the national park.

Additional means of remembrance

Some of the philanthropist’s descendants and relatives were also in the audience. One relative, David Sperling, said he is a longtime supporter of Canter’s effort. He also thinks that the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago should be encouraged to create an exhibit dedicated to Rosenwald, both because of his role in the founding of the museum — the first of its kind in North America at the time — and because Rosenwald’s story is one Chicagoans should know. The Smithsonian Museum of African American History, he pointed out, features a replica of a Rosenwald schoolroom.

The event drew some Rosenwald superfans. Rabbi Steven Lowenstein of Am Shalom, a Reform congregation in Glencoe, Ill., called Rosenwald “the greatest Jewish role model no one ever heard of.”

“We’re talking about the same kind of wealth as Rockefeller and Carnegie at that time, and he chose a very different approach,” said Lowenstein. “He chose to sunset his foundation — he chose to spend all his money within 20 years after he died. So we’ll never hear of Rosenwald, but he’s every bit as important as Rockefeller and Carnegie, not just in the Jewish world but in America.”

The relevance of Rosenwald’s legacy today and the importance of sharing his story seemed to be the connecting thread drawing everyone together that night.

“This is a story for our time,” said Canter.

Ed. note: An earlier version of this article claimed that no National Park Service sites are named for Jews; at least one, in Ohio, is named for David Mark Berger, U.S.-born Jewish Israeli weightlifter who was one of the 11 Israeli athletes killed by Palestinian terrorists in 1972 Munich Summer Olympics.