by Wikipedia
Accessed: 2/17/20
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Edwin Rogers Embree (1883–1950) was one of the former vice presidents of the Rockefeller Foundation, president of the Julius Rosenwald Foundation (also known as the Rosenwald Fund), a writer, and president of the Liberian Foundation.
The Rosenwald Fund (also known as the Rosenwald Foundation, the Julius Rosenwald Fund, and the Julius Rosenwald Foundation) was established in 1917 by Julius Rosenwald and his family for "the well-being of mankind." Rosenwald became part-owner of Sears, Roebuck and Company in 1895, serving as its president from 1908 to 1922, and chairman of its board of directors until his death in 1932. He became interested in social issues, especially education for African Americans in the rural South, which was segregated and chronically underfunded.
Before establishing the foundation, Rosenwald provided funding directly through Dr. Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now known as Tuskegee University), a historically black college (HBCU), to help support a model project to design and operate schools for black children in the rural South.
Unlike other endowed foundations, which were designed to fund themselves in perpetuity, the Rosenwald Fund was designed to expend all of its funds for philanthropic purposes before a predetermined "sunset date." It donated over $70 million to public schools, colleges and universities, museums, Jewish charities, and black institutions before funds were completely depleted in 1948.
The rural school building program for African-American children was one of the largest programs administered by the Rosenwald Fund. Over $4.4 million in matching funds stimulated construction of more than 5,000 one-room schools (and larger ones), as well as shops and teachers' homes, mostly in the South, where public schools were segregated and black schools had been chronically underfunded. This was particularly so after disenfranchisement of most blacks from the political system in southern states at the turn of the 20th century. The Fund required white school boards to agree to operate such schools and to arrange for matching funds, in addition to requiring black communities to raise funds or donate property and labor to construct the schools. These schools, constructed to models designed by architects of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now known as Tuskegee University), became known as "Rosenwald Schools." In some communities, surviving structures have been preserved and recognized as landmarks for their historical character and social significance. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has classified them as National Treasures.
The Rosenwald Fund also made fellowship grants directly to African-American artists, writers, researchers and intellectuals between 1928 and 1948. Civil rights leader Julian Bond, whose father received a Rosenwald fellowship, has called the list of grantees a "Who's Who of black America in the 1930s and 1940s."[1] Hundreds of grants were disbursed to artists, writers and other cultural figures, many of whom became prominent or already were, including photographer Gordon Parks Jr., Elizabeth Catlett, poets Claude McKay, Dr. Charles Drew, Augusta Savage, anthropologist and dancer Katherine Dunham, singer Marian Anderson, writers Ralph Ellison, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark, dermatologist Theodore K. Lawless,[2] and poets Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou and Rita Dove.[3][4] Fellowships of around $1,000 to $2,000 were given out yearly to applicants and were usually designed to be open-ended; the Foundation requested but did not require grantees to report back on what they accomplished with the support.
In 1929, the Rosenwald Fund funded a syphilis treatment pilot program in five Southern states. The Rosenwald project emphasized locating people with syphilis and treating them, during a time when syphilis was widespread in poor African-American communities.[5] The Fund ended its involvement in 1932, due to lack of matching state funds (the Fund required jurisdictions to contribute to efforts to increase collaboration on solving problems). After the Fund ceased its involvement, the federal government decided to take over the funding and changed its mission to being a non-therapeutic study. The infamous Tuskegee syphilis study began later that year, tracking the progress of untreated disease, and took advantage of poor participants by not informing them fully of its constraints. Even after penicillin became recognized as approved treatment for this disease, researchers did not treat the study participants.[5]
-- Rosenwald Fund, by Wikipedia
Early life
Embree was born in Nebraska in 1883, the youngest of four children of Laura and William Norris Embree. His grandfather and grandmother were John Gregg Fee and Matilda Fee, Abolitionist leaders from Kentucky. Embree had a very close relationship with his grandfather, the founder and president of Berea College. His father was discharged from the Union Army, after he took a job as a telegrapher with the Union Pacific Railroad. His father died in 1891, so his mother took her four children and moved with her parents to Berea. Embree's grandfather John Fee formed Embree's values and character at an early age, so he followed his grandfather examples. Edwin went to school at Berea and Yale, became a lecturer, and had many other outstanding accomplishments throughout his life. He died in 1950.
Education
Embree attended Berea Academy when he was growing up. He later attended and graduated from Berea College, then enrolled in Yale where he graduated with an advance degree in philosophy. He later worked at Yale for 10 years in alumni affairs.
Accomplishments
In 1917, Embree joined the Rockefeller staff in New York as secretary (1917–1924), then as director of the Division of Studies (1925–1927), and later as one of three vice presidents (1927). He also traveled to Japan several times while working with Rockefeller. He became president of the Julius Rosenwald Foundation also known as the Rosenwald Fund for 20 years (1927–1948). When the foundation closed, he became president of the Liberian Foundation. Embree also wrote a handful of books. Brown America "The Story of a New Race" 1931. "Indians of the Americas" 1939. American Negroes "A Handbook" 1942. "13 Against the Odds" 1944.
References
• Alfred Perkins, "Living The Fee Legacy: Edwin Embree and the Rosenwald Foundation", Berea College Magazine, Winter 2006, pages 34–36, available at [1].
• [2]
• History of Science June 99.p65 at the Wayback Machine (archived September 25, 2006)
• Rosenwald School Initiative
• The Rockefeller Archive Center – Papers of Individuals – Rockefeller Foundation
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Edwin Rogers Embree
by The Rockefeller Foundation
Accessed: 2/17/20
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Edwin Rogers Embree was an early voice championing the Rockefeller Foundation's (RF) expansion into the humanities and social sciences.
Born in Osceola, Nebraska in 1883, Embree moved with his family to the racially integrated town of Berea, Kentucky in 1891. His formative childhood years in Berea and his family's abolitionist history shaped his lifelong commitment to racial equality.
Embree received his B.A. from Yale University in 1906. He spent a year in New York City as a reporter for the New York Sun before returning to New Haven in 1907. He spent the following decade working at Yale first as assistant editor of the Yale Alumni Weekly and then in several university administrative positions, while also earning an M.A. degree from the university in 1914. Embree's administrative work at Yale brought him to the attention of the Rockefeller Foundation, and in 1917 he was appointed secretary of the RF under president George E. Vincent.
When Embree joined the RF, the Foundation’s efforts were focused primarily on medicine and public health projects. Embree advocated for expanding their work into the humanities and social sciences. In a rousing 1924 address to RF Trustees and the General Education Board, he asked, “Of what good is it to keep people alive and healthy if their lives are not to be touched increasingly with something of beauty?” His speech received a lukewarm response from the Trustees, however. Embree instead channeled his efforts into directing the newly formed Division of Studies (DS), which was created in 1924 to administer all Foundation work in areas outside of medicine and public health. When the DS was eliminated in 1927, Embree went on to serve briefly as the RF's vice president. His vision for a robust humanities and social sciences program would not be fully realized until after his departure from the RF in 1928. That same year, the Foundation reorganized and established a Division of Humanities and a Division of Social Sciences.
Embree left the RF in 1928 to become president of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, which supported educational, public health, and welfare programs for African Americans. When the Fund closed after expending all of its funds in 1948, Embree went on to serve as president of the Liberian and Africa Foundations, collectively focused on improving health, education, and welfare in Africa.
In addition to his long philanthropic career, Embree was a prolific author. He wrote numerous articles, essays, and several books including Brown America: The Story of a New Race (1931), Brown Americans: The Story of a Tenth of the Nation (1943), and Thirteen Against the Odds (1944).
Edwin Rogers Embree died in New York City on February 21, 1950, at the age of 66. His officer's diaries are digitized and can be accessed through the Rockefeller Archive Center's (RAC) online collections. A collection of his papers, including correspondence, a family journal, and some of Embree’s articles and speeches can be accessed at the RAC.
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Edwin Embree As Exemplar: How One Philanthropic Leader Confronted Racial Prejudice During The Second World War
by Alfred Perkins
Histphil.org
April 20, 2016
Editors’ Note: Alfred Perkins highlights the leadership of Edwin Embree, who served for two decades as president of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, in advocating for the rights of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War.
The current presidential campaign has brought again to the surface the hostility to cultural differences long an element in the American emotional landscape. While that hostility now targets primarily Muslims and undocumented immigrants of Hispanic origin, it calls to mind the wartime situation, three quarters of a century ago, when it was directed against Japanese-Americans. Such nativist sentiments undergirded the forcible relocation of persons of Japanese ancestry from the west coast to internment camps in the interior. One of the most outspoken opponents of that policy was Edwin Rogers Embree (1883-1950), an early official of the Rockefeller Foundation and, from 1928, President of the Julius Rosenwald Fund.
Though neither Embree nor the Chicago-based foundation he headed are widely known today, he was for more than two decades an influential figure in philanthropy and race relations. His unstinting defense of America’s Japanese minority represents a merging of personal conviction and institutional purpose. In addition, it reflects his principled beliefs about the qualities and behaviors appropriate to a foundation executive, a model of leadership well worth considering today.
Embree happened to be in northern California in March, 1942, when the relocations got underway. He saw whole families being removed from their homes to assembly points, in circumstances not altogether unlike the rounding up of Jews in Nazi Germany. He was left with searing, unforgettable memories, the most poignant, perhaps, the sight of a two-year-old anxiously clutching fresh flowers, as grim-faced soldiers led him away. Like many Americans then and since, Embree found this treatment of some 110,000 persons, most of whom were U.S. citizens, profoundly troubling. In time he came to regard the evacuations as “one of the most terrible crimes America has ever committed against her own citizens and against democracy.”
Committed to fighting racial intolerance in all its expressions, Embree in 1943 joined with over sixty academics, ministers, journalists, union leaders, and corporation executives to sponsor the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). The League, devoted to protecting civil rights and ending discriminatory practices, protested ceaselessly against the internment policy, while emphasizing the fundamental patriotism of citizens of Japanese ancestry. In the League’s Chicago chapter, its largest and most active, Embree played a prominent role during the war and thereafter, planning strategy, chairing fund-raising dinners, introducing speakers and, with his keen sense of public relations, undoubtedly helping to frame official statements.
The League provided Embree with critical information about the plight of the internees, and other instances of discrimination against Japanese-Americans. A more comprehensive news source was The Monthly Summary of Events and Trends in Race Relations, a publication developed in response to a request from President Franklin Roosevelt, fully financed by the Rosenwald Fund, and serving over 15,000 subscribers at its peak. But Embree learned also from personal contacts, including members of his own family. His anthropologist son John had published in 1941 a doctoral dissertation describing his year-long observations in a Japanese village, a book containing the most current information in English on Japanese beliefs and customs. Called to governmental service a few days after Pearl Harbor, John was assigned to the federal agency responsible for the evacuees, enabling him to inform his father of unclassified but unpublicized developments, and to give him a tour of one of the internment centers.
Anecdotal reports came as well from Edwin Embree’s brother Howard, a social worker at a camp in Wyoming, and from Edwin’s daughter Catherine, a volunteer teacher at a camp in Arizona. Catherine’s extensive letters home initially gave detailed descriptions of her unfinished camp’s harsh living conditions, but later, when some young internees were permitted to enroll in midwestern and eastern colleges, she also alerted her parents to any student passing through Chicago. Either Embree or his wife, and frequently both, met the train, helped with transfers and schedule changes, offered advice and encouragement, and often provided meals and overnight lodging in their home. At least one young woman was allowed to rummage through Catherine’s closet for the warm clothes she lacked. Conversations with these students, and close attention to his other sources, undoubtedly made Embree, of all private citizens, among the best-informed about the internment policy.
Embree gathered information, and he conveyed it—lots of it. His principal educational vehicle was the American Council on Race Relations (ACRR), an organization he envisioned earlier, but co-founded only in 1944.
American Council on Race Relations, 1945-1948
Part of Collection — Box: 2, Folder: 11
Call Number: RG 73, Series I
Geographical location: Chicago, IL
Subjects: Race relations; Civil rights
Comments: The Council is "a kind of over-all coordinating agency -- closely associated with the University of Chicago," that "works primarily with national organizations, such as the NAACP. Compiles data, serves as a clearing house, runs pilot projects, education & training." --L.P. Contains six issues of "ACRR News Letter" (1945-48) incl. re. war relocation; "Hemmed in: ABC's of race restrictive housing covenants," by Robert C. Weaver (1945); chart "Programs under way" [1946].
-- American Council on Race Relations, 1945-1948, by Archives at Yale
Guide to the University of Chicago Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations Records 1944-1962
© 2009 University of Chicago Library
Title: University of Chicago. Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations.
Dates: 1944-1962
Abstract: The University of Chicago Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations Records cover the period 1944 to 1962 and also include the records of two cooperative organizations: American Council on Race Relations; and National Organization of Intergroup Relations Officials. The collection contains correspondence, financial and personnel records, published materials, research project and proposal data, reports and studies, seminar files and committee papers, student recommendations, minutes, charters and by-laws, photographs, and newsletters. It also includes files relating to the Parent Teacher Association, the Sigmund Livingston Fellowship, the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, and the Chicago Community Inventory.
Historical Note: On August 16, 1947 University of Chicago President Robert M. Hutchins announced the formation of the Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations. Funded by equal grants of $75,000 from the Carnegie Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Committee was constituted to be a five-year program under the direction of Louis Wirth, professor of sociology. At its inception the Committee enumerated 5 practical objectives:
1. to design research that would test theories of race relations in order to provide a scientific basis for public policy and programs, as well as for further field research;
2. to introduce the social scientific knowledge acquired through this research into both general and adult education curricula, and to instruct teachers how to apply and transmit this knowledge;
3. to train professionals, educators, and community leaders in the science of race relations and minority problems;
4. to foster national institutional cooperation in research and training in the field of race relations;
5. to implement pilot programs to test the findings of race relations research, and to design methods of evaluating existing programs. The Committee worked in cooperation with the American Council on Race Relations at the national level, and with the Industrial Relations Center, the Committee on Communications, and the Committee on Human Development within the academic community at the University of Chicago.
Unlike other committees at the University of Chicago such as the Committee on Human Development and the Committee on Social Thought, the Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations did not confer degrees. Rather, graduate students in the Division of Social Sciences at both the master’s and Ph.D. level could construct a concentration of course work, or elect to write a thesis with a focus on race relations. Working simultaneously with faculty in their own departments and members of the Committee, such students formed bridges between the social sciences and the Committee.
A major component of the ongoing work of the Committee was preparation and publication of the Inventory of Research in Racial and Cultural Relations. Published with the aid of the American Council on Race Relations, the Inventory was a quarterly bulletin containing abstracts of articles, books, and reports on unpublished research dealing with racial and cultural issues. After a debut issue of June 30, 1948, the Inventory continued production through volume 5, number 3 in 1953.
The original members of the Committee under the direction of Louis Wirth were anthropologists Robert Redfield, Fred Eggan, and Sol Tax, sociologist Everett C. Hughes, education professors Allison Davis and Ralph W. Tyler, and the executive officer of the Industrial Relations Center, Frederick Harbison. Membership fluctuated slightly between 1947 and 1956 and included at various times Kermit Eby, professor of social sciences, Donald T. Campbell, professor of psychology, William C. Bradbury, professor of sociology, and Clyde W. Hart, professor of sociology.
After the death of Louis Wirth in 1952, the Committee extended its work beyond the five year period of its original design under the leadership of Sol Tax. Although the Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations disbanded in 1956, its educational and research interests continued in the research and mentoring of individual social scientists at the University of Chicago.
Scope Note: The records of the University of Chicago Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations consists of 18 linear feet and cover the period 1944 to 1962. In addition to the records of the CETRRR, the collection includes the records of two cooperative organizations. Because the information was distinct to these two groups the collection was divided into three separate series. They are:
SERIES I: Committee on Education, Training and Research in Race Relations
SERIES II: American Council on Race Relations
SERIES III: National Organization of Intergroup Relations Officials.
The collection contains correspondence, financial and personnel records, published materials, research project and proposal data, reports and studies, seminar files and committee papers, student recommendations, minutes, charters and by-laws, photographs, and newsletters. It also includes files relating to the Parent Teacher Association, the Sigmund Livingston Fellowship, the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, and the Chicago Community Inventory.
INVENTORY
Series I: Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations
Series I: Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations contains the administrative files of the committee and covers the period 1944 to 1962.
Series I has been divided into sixteen subseries.
Subseries 1, Correspondence, covers the period 1947 to 1962 and has been arranged alphabetically by the name of the correspondent. Additional subdivisions have been created for the letters of Louis Wirth (director of CETRRR) and William Bradbury (secretary).
Subseries 2 contains the minutes of the CETRRR meetings and covers the period 1947 to 1953. The minutes have been arranged chronologically.
Subseries 3 contains financial records of the CETRRR. Financial statements of the committee cover the period 1946 to 1952 and have been arranged chronologically. Subseries 3 includes financial statements regarding funds from the Carnegie-Rockefeller Race Relations Fund. These statements date from 1948 to 1953. This subseries also contains information on contributions, budgets, and expenses.
Subseries 4 contains personnel records of the CETRRR. It includes information on office staff, research assistants, and temporary employees. It also includes personnel associated with the Chicago Housing Authority Ogden Courts Project (1951-1953).
Subseries 5 contains student recommendations from 1946 to 1953.
Subseries 6 contains information on research projects and proposals submitted to the CETRRR. The files have been arranged alphabetically and date from 1947-1953. A significant portion of this subseries is devoted to Chicago elementary and high schools and redistricting.
Subseries 7 contains reports and studies produced by the CETRRR. Many of the research projects from Subseries 7 were supported and expanded by the CETRRR. This subseries includes unpublished abstracts, studies and reports from 1947 to 1953. The files have been arranged chronologically.
Subseries 8 contains published articles, pamphlets, and guides on research and programs of the CETRRR. The publications in this subseries have been arranged chronologically. One of the first publications produced by the CETRRR was the of Research in Racial and Cultural Relations. This subseries has been arranged into general publications and files relating to the . This subdivision includes correspondence, questionnaires, research, and a subscription card file.
Subseries 9 contains information on seminars organized by the CETRRR. The files in this subseries have been arranged chronologically according to seminar title.
Subseries 10 contains the minutes and correspondence of the Technical Committee on Intergroup Relations.
Subseries 11 contains pamphlets and yearbooks for the Parent Teachers Association.
Subseries 12 contains applicant files, correspondence and reports for the Sigmund Livingston Fellowships from 1948 to 1950. The Sigmund Livingston Fellowship was awarded by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. Named after the League's founder, the fellowship was intended "to advance knowledge of the basic social and psychological processes underlying intergroup relations and prejudice". In 1947-1948 the fellowships were awarded to graduate and post-graduate students of the social sciences at three participating institutions: Harvard University, New York University, and the University of Chicago. At the University of Chicago applications were handled by the CETRRR and fellows worked in the Division of Social Sciences.
Subseries 13 contains correspondence and reports for the Chicago Commission on Human Relations in 1953. This group was a commission of the City of Chicago which is still in existence today. The commission is a neutral body that "handles complaints of discrimination." William Bradbury, of the University of Chicago Sociology Department faculty was appointed to the group in January 1953. Subseries 14 contains information on the Chicago Community. This group was associated with processing census and population data.
Subseries 15 contains minutes, memos and reports of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. The SPSSI was formed in 1936 at the convention of the American Psychological Association. The SPSSI was "a group of several hundred social psychologists and allied social scientists with a particular interest in research on the psychological aspects of key social issues." The focus was on applied social action, and on making social scientific research accessible to non-specialists without a loss of disciplined thinking. The material in this subseries constitutes informational copies of communications sent to Louis Wirth as chairman of the American Council on Race Relations.[/b]
Finally, Subseries 16, Writings of Others, contains reprints of journal articles, journals, booklets, conference papers, and newspapers articles. These files have been arranged chronologically and cover the period 1940 to 1954.
-- Guide to the University of Chicago Committee on Education, Training, and Research in Race Relations Records 1944-1962, © 2009 University of Chicago Library
Financially supported by the Rosenwald Fund, even housed in the Fund’s headquarters, the ACRR had as its purpose “to bring about full democracy in race relations.” Seeking to increase public knowledge about minority groups, it underwrote research, developed materials for use in schools, published and distributed tens of thousands of pamphlets, fact sheets, and reprints. Two of its publications focused on citizens of Japanese ancestry. “Facts about Japanese Americans,” for example, pointed out the invaluable assistance of these minority civilians during the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Nisei’s (second generation’s) continuing contribution to the war effort through intelligence-gathering and propaganda activities.Above all, it called attention to the thousands of Japanese-Americans in military uniform, and particularly to the heroism of the all-Nisei 100th Infantry Battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team during the Italian campaign. Through correspondence and personal interviews, the Council lobbied energetically for resettlement of the internees, and for prompt federal action on indemnity claims. In cooperation with the JACL, it worked to energize civil rights groups on the West Coast, and to lay the groundwork for restored racial harmony.
Embree’s empathy for the plight of Japanese-Americans was evident even in his hiring practices, as he combatted the discriminatory attitudes he knew minority persons faced whenever they sought employment. During the war years, for example, his secretary was a woman of Japanese background, as were two other members of the Rosenwald clerical staff. At the ACRR, perhaps one-fifth of the office staff were of Japanese extraction. Similarly, when Embree became the founding chairman of the Chicago Mayor’s Commission on Human Relations, he established policies that provided jobs for no fewer than five women who were members of the city’s Japanese community. When he needed outside help with a research project, he gave the assignment to two Japanese-American graduate students.
Embree’s commitment to racial equality long predated the war years. At an early age he had embraced cultural diversity, beginning with the Blackfoot Indian children in Wyoming who were his first playmates, and with the scores of African-Americans who were his schoolmates in the thoroughly integrated Kentucky town where he was reared. His specific fondness for the Japanese, however, stemmed from three visits he made in the 1920s to East Asia on behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation. Though the trips centered on China, he made it a point to spend substantial time in Japan. From the outset he was taken by the Japanese people. He admired their love of nature, appreciation of beautiful things, unfailing courtesy, devotion to family, and deep attachment to their homeland. Returning to the U.S., he was appalled by talk of a future war with the island nation, believing such a conflict would be a disaster for both countries.
When that war came more than a decade later, Embree looked beyond the combat to long-term consequences at home and abroad. In a 1944 address in Nashville, Tennessee, on July 4—provocative both for its timing and its substance—he proclaimed the coming of a new order in race relations and international affairs. The war, he predicted, would shift the center of world politics from Europe and the Atlantic to Asia and the Pacific. China and Japan would be major powers, demanding equal status with the U.S., Great Britain, and the Soviet Union and, he asserted, they would expect fair treatment for their distant relatives in North America. More than a year before Japan’s surrender, with the battle for Saipan raging as he spoke, he cautioned against an occupation of the conquered country based on vengeance, rather than one that would allow the Japanese people to divest themselves of their military rulers and become a force for world peace. And even with anti-Japanese feeling at fever pitch across the country, he called again for the speedy return of the interned thousands to their homes, and an end to hostile behavior by their neighbors.
In 1948 the Julius Rosenwald Fund, having expended all its capital as specified by its founder, closed its doors. Two years later Embree, having returned to New York, was stuck down by a heart attack on a Manhattan street. At a memorial service held in the Bond Chapel on the University of Chicago campus, a telegram from the Japanese American Citizens League, paying tribute to “a great American,” was read:
“[D]uring the war years, when our group of people were suspect, [Embree] was one of the first to express confidence in us and faith in America by becoming one of the national sponsors of our organization. We mourn his passing but the memory of him will sustain our faith that all people can live and work together.”
The philanthropic community can take pride in the fact that one of their own, in a time of great national trial, was worthy of such commendation.
By moving boldly beyond the customary boundaries of organized philanthropy, Embree was able to challenge deeply-held prejudices, demand justice for a vulnerable minority, and extend the impact of the monies he disbursed. This pioneer of his profession would not have voiced the idea, but implicit in his words and actions is the notion that foundation executives might on occasion serve as the nation’s conscience. In these less stringent times, his example might provide useful lessons for his contemporary successors—to the benefit of the philanthropic enterprise, and the nation as a whole.
Alfred Perkins is the author of Edwin Rogers Embree: The Julius Rosenwald Fund, Foundation Philanthropy, and American Race Relations (Indiana University Press, 2011). In addition to philanthropy, he has published on French imperial history, higher education in Appalachia, and desegregation in the U.S. Now retired, he taught European history and served as academic dean and vice president of Upsala, Maryville, and Berea Colleges.