Learning from the Rosenwald Schools Booker T. Washington formed an incredibly productive partnership with Sears magnate Julius Rosenwald dating to 1911. It started with Rosenwald’s donations of shoes and hats for industrial school students in the South. In 1913 Washington recruited Rosenwald to join the board of the Tuskegee Institute. As Robert Norrell writes in Up From History: The Life of Booker T. Washington (2011), “By that time, Rosenwald and his wife were enamored of Tuskegee and persuaded that black education in the South should be a particular concern of theirs.” Washington sought Rosenwald’s support for the building of primary schools throughout the South. Rosenwald initially offered prefab buildings then being sold by Sears, but Washington had a better plan. Black residents of the benefited communities had to be involved in the construction process. Norrell recounts that Rosenwald agreed to underwrite six schools at a cost of $2,800.