PHOTO | ANDREW FEILER

Pleasant Plains School in Hertford County, N.C., is one of the Rosenwald Schools included in Andrew Feiler's "A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington and the 4,978 Schools that Changed America" exhibit at Charlotte Museum of History.

The last Charlotte showing a photo exhibit focused on the Rosenwald Schools’ impact on Black southerners closes Saturday.

Andrew Feiler’s “A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools that Changed America” closes on June 18 at the Charlotte Museum of History. The exhibit is open Thursday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., and last entry is 4 p.m.

After leaving Charlotte, the exhibit will go on a cross-country tour, including at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis and the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in New Orleans. Select photographs from the exhibit will become part of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C. and will appear online later this month.

“A Better Life for Their Children,” which debuted on Jan. 13, showcases the partnership between Washington, president of historically Black Tuskegee Institute (now University) and Julius Rosenwald, a Jewish businessman whose philanthropy launched schools for Black children across the Jim Crow-era South.

The exhibit premiered at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta last year. Charlotte is the second stop.

“‘A Better Life for Their Children’ offers us the opportunity to explore the history of education in Charlotte and across the South,” Charlotte Museum of History trustee Fannie Flono said in February. Flono is chair of the museum’s Save Siloam School Project, a restoration of a Rosenwald-type schoolhouse in Charlotte’s Mallard Creek area. “This history has never been more relevant, as our city and county work to improve equality and opportunity. The Rosenwald Schools story can help us understand how we got here and how we move forward.”

From 1912 to 1937, the Rosenwald Foundation built 4,978 schools in 15 states, driving dramatic improvement in Black educational achievement. Feiler’s photographs and interviews became “A Better Life for Their Children,” a book of photographs, essays published in earlier this year, along with the exhibit.

The history museum is displaying the exhibit as part of its effort to restore Siloam School, which was built in the 1920s. The school’s design was built using a Rosenwald plan, but there are no records indicating the school received funds from the foundation. Historians believe it’s likely the local Black farming community raised money for the school and donated time and labor to build it.

The exhibit highlights the initiative and the collaboration between Washington and Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck & Company. More than 4,900 Rosenwald schools were built in the early 20th century, but only about 500 survive – most of them in poor repair. North Carolina communities built 813 Rosenwald schools – more than any other state – including more than 20 in Mecklenburg County. Only seven of those buildings still stand.

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