Race, Culture, & Philanthropy

Thursday, May 7 at 6 pm Aaron Douglas, Harriet Tubman, 1931, oil on canvas. Bennett College Art Gallery, Greensboro, NC Spertus Museum’s exhibition A Force for Change: African American Art and the Julius Rosenwald Fund explores the connections between the Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, a civic leader of Chicago in the early 20th century, and the enormous range of African American expression his foundation helped to underwrite and promote.

The Rosenwald Fellowships (1928-1948) aimed to foster a black cultural leadership through the support of art, literature, and thought. This was part of the foundation’s larger initiative to further the cause of equal opportunity for blacks in America.

A Force for Change affords a new opportunity to examine the relationship between Jewish giving and black cultural production. Using the exhibition as a springboard and bringing these and related issues to the contemporary period, the distinguished speakers in this program will look at the complex history of African American-Jewish engagement, how race and religion impact cultural production and its support, Rosenwald’s unconventional philanthropy and its legacy, and the very notion of culturally-specific giving.

Moderator James Grossman, will be joined by panelists Adam Green, Cheryl Greenberg, Paul Mendes-Flohr, and Arthur M. Sussman.

Cheryl Greenberg is author of the award-winning Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century and the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of History at Trinity College.
Adam Green is author of Selling the Race: Culture and Community in Black Chicago, 1940-1955 and Associate Professor of American History at the University of Chicago.

Arthur M. Sussman is Vice President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Paul Mendes-Flohr is Professor of Modern Jewish Thought in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago.

James Grossman is author of Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration and Vice President for Research and Education at the Newberry Library.

Tickets are $12 | $8 for Spertus members | $5 for students
Call 312.322.1773.