"Rosenwald” details the efforts of Chicago philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, the son of an immigrant peddler who rose to head Sears, and Booker T. Washington to build 5,400 Southern schools in African-American communities in the early 1900s during the Jim Crow era. He also built YMCAs and housing for African Americans to address the pressing needs of the Great Migration. The Rosenwald Fund supported artists like Woody Guthrie, Langston Hughes, Gordon Parks and Jacob Lawrence.
 
Among those interviewed are civil rights leaders Julian Bond, Ben Jealous and Congressman John Lewis, columnists Eugene Robinson and Clarence Page, Cokie Roberts, Rabbi David Saperstein, Rosenwald school alumni writer Maya Angelou and director George C. Wolfe and Rosenwald relatives. Running time for the film: 100 minutes.