Julius Rosenwald, chairman of Sears Roebuck and Co. in 1908, believed the most serious problem of the United Stats was the plight of Black Americans. A close friend of Booker T. Washington, who had been a slave and rose to become the nationally respected president of Tuskegee Institute, an author, orator, and advisor to American presidents, Rosenwald became a trustee of Tuskegee in 1912. Under Washington's guidance, Rosenwald funded a successful pilot program in Alabama that made education accessible to Black children by building school houses. After Washington died in 1915, Rosenwald continued his vision by establishing the Rosenwald Fund in 1917 for the well-being of mankind. By the time the fund was terminated in 1948, it had helped catalyze the construction of more than 5,300 schools in 15 Southern states and provided educational opportunity to one-third of all Black American children. The fund operated through matching grants that required white school boards and Black-American communities to cooperate in school construction. Black-American communities contributed $4.8 million to build 127 schools in Florida. In Lake County, ten schools, three shops, and one teacher's home were built. The Okahumpka Rosenwald School was approved by the Lake County Board of Public Instruction in 1929, and one-half acre of the property was donated on May 17, 1930, by Virgil and Josephine Hawkins, parents of Florida civil rights leader Attorney Virgil and Josephine Hawkins, whose 1949-1958 court battles desegregated the University of Florida. Hawkins attended school on this site through the 190th grade in an old ramshackle school that was torn down to make way for the modern Okahumpka Rosenwald School.