JTA — Aviva Kempner makes films about what she calls “underknown Jewish heroes.”

More than a decade ago, she attended a talk on Martha’s Vineyard by civil rights activist Julian Bond, who spoke about Julius Rosenwald, the Jewish businessman and head of retailing giant Sears, Roebuck. Bond described how Rosenwald worked with Booker T. Washington to help fund nearly 5,000 schools for Black children across the Jim Crow South between 1917 and 1932.

“I’ve got to go make that film,” recalled Kempner.

Kempner went on to write and produce the 2015 documentary “Rosenwald,” about the Illinois native she calls perhaps the greatest unsung philanthropist in American history.

A decade later, Rosenwald is unsung no more. A mix of federal legislation — initiated in part by Kempner’s film — museum exhibitions, digital archives, and grassroots preservation efforts is pushing Rosenwald’s legacy back into public view — and testing whether efforts to confront America’s unsavory history of racial discrimination can survive the administration efforts to erase Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts at federal museums and monuments. In February, Sen. Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat, introduced legislation to create a Rosenwald National Historic Park, backed by seven Democratic co-sponsors. The proposal would formally recognize Rosenwald and the sprawling network of schools that reshaped Black education in the segregated South.

The bill calls for a Chicago site that once included the Sears merchandising complex, as well as sites of schools in rural Maryland, South Carolina and Virginia.

Its staunchest advocate has been Dorothy Canter, a National Parks Conservation Association volunteer who has pushed for a park since seeing Kempner’s film. “I didn’t know what to expect in September 2015 when my husband and I went to see a documentary about a man I had never heard of — Julius Rosenwald,” Canter recalled in an essay. “When it was over, I turned to my husband and said, ‘There needs to be a national park to honor him.’”

Canter is now president of the Julius Rosenwald & Rosenwald Schools National Historical Park Campaign.

But the bill’s future remains uncertain in a sharply divided Congress, where Republican support will be necessary to move it out of committee and ultimately to the president’s desk.

In his first term, US President Donald Trump signed legislation to assess the feasibility of establishing the park. But Durbin’s bill is landing as the administration has moved to take down slavery exhibits at the President’s House in Philadelphia; ordered the Smithsonian Institution to remove what it deems........

© The Times of Israel