Throughout the decade of the 1920s into the 1930s, the Rosenwald fund, started by Julius Rosenwald in 1917, donated enough money to found 527 schools for Black children in fifteen states in the American South. About 466 of those schools were in Texas. Black children in the American South were in dire need of educational opportunities, as Jim Crow laws segregated schools, leaving Black children without the means to gain an education. Many of these Rosenwald schools continued in use into the 1960s and, though small, were a first step towards ensuring everyone had access to education.