Ideas Festival Emory

A Better Life for Their Children: A Rosenwald Schools Journey
Born to Jewish immigrants, Julius Rosenwald rose to lead Sears, Roebuck & Company and turn it into the world’s largest retailer. Born into slavery, Booker T. Washington became the founding principal of Tuskegee Institute. In 1912 the two men launched an ambitious program to partner with black communities across the segregated South to build public schools for African American children. This watershed moment in the history of philanthropy—one of the earliest collaborations between Jews and African Americans—drove dramatic improvement in African American educational attainment and fostered the generation who became the leaders and foot soldiers of the civil rights movement.
Of the original 4,978 Rosenwald schools built between 1912 and 1937 across fifteen southern and border states, only about 500 survive. While some have been repurposed and a handful remain active schools, many remain unrestored and at risk of collapse. To tell this story visually, Andrew Feiler drove more than twenty-five thousand miles, photographed 105 schools, and interviewed dozens of former students, teachers, preservationists, and community leaders in all fifteen of the program states.
The book of this work is, A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools that Changed America.  Author and photographer Andrew Feiler will share images and stories from his extraordinary journey into the history of Rosenwald schools.  

I'm Chair of Stuckey's, the roadside chain of stores founded by my grandfather in Eastman, GA in 1937. We're best known for our Southern hospitality, pecan snacks & candies (including our world-famous pecan log rolls), and kitschy souvenirs. My grandfather sold our company, and Stuckey's was out of our family hands for decades. I had the unexpected opportunity to buy the company four years ago and have been working to revive this nostalgic brand. Today, we have about 40 licensed stores and a pecan snack and candy company in Wrens, GA. We sell Stuckey's pecan snacks and candies to retailers nationwide. Prior to acquiring Stuckey's, I practiced law, served in the Georgia General Assembly (representing the Emory area), and was Director of Sustainability for the City of Atlanta. I enjoy talking about entrepreneurship, brand revitalization, female owned businesses, manufacturing, agriculture (pecans), and economic development / tourism / road trips.

Justin Burton obtained his B.S. degree in Physics from the University of Cincinnati in 2001 and his Ph.D. degree in Physics from the University of California, Irvine in 2006. After postdoctoral positions at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Chicago, he joined the Department of Physics at Emory University in 2013, where he is now an Associate Professor of Physics. His interdisciplinary research program is primarily experimental and covers a wide variety of topics focused on complex and nonequilibrium systems. Current projects include interfacial and nanoscale fluid dynamics, machine learning of many-body dynamics in dusty plasmas, and "soft earth geophysics." He is currently a Gordon and Betty Moore Experimental Physics Investigator and is a past recipient of the National Science Foundation's CAREER Award. He also leads a number of K-12 STEM outreach and education activities in the Atlanta area.

Dr. Yana Bromberg is a professor in the Departments of Biology and Computer Science at Emory University. She joined Emory in January of last year, transferring from Rutgers University. Yana got her BSc/BEng in Biology and Computer Science from State University of NY at Stony Brook and her PhD in Biomedical Informatics from Burkhard Rost’s lab at Columbia University. She is a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study at the Technical University of Munich, Germany and a Director of the International Society for Computational Biology. 
The primary focus of Yana’s research is the concept of "function" in biology. Specifically, she is interested in understanding the origins and mechanisms of the molecular machinery that underpins life. She believes that machine learning (ML) holds great promise in deciphering these functional details. Accordingly, her long-term goal is to use the advances in ML and other computational techniques to gain a deeper understanding of how biological functionality is encoded in genomic data, whether on the level of individual genes, whole genomes, or metagenomes.

What's funnier than a pi in the face? Lew Lefton is the Asst. Dean and Assoc. VP of Research in  IT and research computing at Georgia Tech when it doesn't interfere with his work as a stand-up comedian.

Michael Wilson was born in 1959 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Discovering a love of photography in college he began work as a freelance photographer in 1987. His work in the music industry is the most recognizable face of hisfreelance work. Among the artists Michael has photographed are: Lyle Lovett, David Byrne, B.B.King, Emmylou Harris, Bill Frisell, Joshua Redman, Philip Glass, Robert Plant, Doctor John and Doc Watson.His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions including the The Annenberg Space for Photography (Los Angeles, California), Cincinnati Art Museum, the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati, Ohio), Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art (Cleveland, Ohio) and the J.B. Speed Museum (Louisville, Kentucky).He is Resident Instructor of photography at Manifest Drawing Center in Cincinnati. Interviewed by Randy Sue

Collin Kelley is an award-winning poet, novelist, and journalist from Atlanta, GA. His latest book is "Wonder & Wreckage: New & Selected Poems, 1993-2023" (Poetry Atlanta Press). His next project is co-editing an anthology of Stevie Nicks-inspired poetry coming from Madville Publishing in 2026.

Doug was elected the President of the Atlanta City Council in December 2021 and assumed office January 2022.   Doug has led an array of organizations including the Woodruff Arts Center, BrightHouse Consulting and as Founding CEO of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.Doug has served in a number of civic roles including President of the Emory Alumni Board (2014), Trustee for the Carter Center, Harvard Alumni Association Board Member and numerous other volunteer leadership roles. He has lectured at various institutions including the CDC, Duke University, Bard College and TEDx anytime online.He is an avid runner, girl dad, scuba diver, bridge player and sci-fi junkie.

Andra Gillespie is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University. She earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University. Her research focuses on the political leadership of African American politicians who attempt to transcend race and how Black voters respond to them. She is the author of The New Black Politician: Cory Booker, Newark and Post-Racial America (2012) and Race and the Obama Administration: Symbols, Substance and Hope (2019). She is also the editor of Whose Black Politics? Cases in Post-Racial Black Leadership (2010).

Situated in the early decades of the magnificent Mughal Empire, this first ever biography of Princess Gulbadan offers an enthralling portrait of a charismatic adventurer and unique pictures of the multicultural society in which she lived. Following a migratory childhood that spanned Kabul and north India, Gulbadan spent her middle years in a walled harem established by her nephew Akbar to showcase his authority as the Great Emperor. Gulbadan longed for the exuberant itinerant lifestyle she’d known. With Akbar’s blessing, she led an unprecedented sailing and overland voyage and guided harem women on an extended pilgrimage in Arabia. Amid increasing political tensions, the women’s “un-Islamic” behavior forced their return, lengthened by a dramatic shipwreck in the Red Sea.
 
Gulbadan wrote a book upon her return, the only extant work of prose by a woman of the age. A portion of it is missing, either lost to history or redacted by officials who did not want the princess to have her say.
 
Vagabond Princess contemplates the story of the missing pages and breathes new life into a daring historical figure. It offers a portal to a richly complex world, rife with movement and migration, where women’s conviviality, adventure, and autonomies shine through.