Julius Rosenwald, a Jewish American philanthropist, believed the most serious problem of the United States was the plight of Black Americans. Dr. Booker T. Washington, who had been a slave, became the nationally respected president of Tuskegee Institute, as well as an author, orator, and advisor to American presidents, and he and Rosenwald became close friends. In 1912, Washington invited Rosenwald to serve on the Tuskegee board, and under Washington’s guidance Rosenwald funded a successful pilot program in Alabama that made education accessible to black children by building schoolhouses. After Washington died in 1915, Rosenwald continued his vision by establishing the Rosenwald Fund in 1917 for the well being of mankind. Because black, rural, and segregated southern schools suffered severely from inadequate facilities and books, the fund encouraged and helped organize local collaboration between blacks and whites for school construction. Between 1917 and 1932, Rosenwald funded 5,357 community schools, teachers’ homes, and industrial shops in the 15 states of the former South, many of them one- to four-room Tuskegee Institute designs taught by black teachers under local boards of education. By the 1930s, one-third of all black children, representing 663,615 students and 14,747 teachers, attended a Rosenwald School. The black community contributed $4,725,891 and the Rosenwald Fund contributed $4,364,869, with total funding of $24,408,520. The fund operated through matching grants requiring white school boards and black communities to cooperate. In Texas, the black community contributed $392,851 and Rosenwald provided $419,376, helping build 466 school buildings, 37 homes, and 33 shops for 57,330 students and 1,272 teachers in 82 counties. Henderson County had seven school locations consisting of 10 buildings and 22 teachers. The Antioch School was built in 1929-30 for two teachers at a cost of $3250, with $500 from the black community, $2500 from the public, and $500 from Rosenwald. Washington and Rosenwald both recognized education as the key to transforming the future.