Robert Taylor: Building on the Legacy of MIT's First Black Graduate

Good afternoon, and welcome. I want to thank you for joining us as we celebrate the legacy of Robert Robinson Taylor, MIT class of 1892. We have a full program, so I'll be brief. But I hope you'll forgive me if I tell you a quick story about a chance encounter years ago that laid the groundwork for today's event.

Nearly a decade ago, I had the good fortune of visiting the West Wing during President Obama's tenure. As I was walking from one meeting to the next, I was surprised and thrilled to see his senior advisor Valerie Jarrett. I've had a framed photo of Robert Robinson Taylor in my office, that one, that photo for at least 20 years at that time.

At some point after Valerie joined the Obama administration, I learned that Robert was her great grandfather. So when I saw her that day in the White House, I could not let the opportunity pass. I stopped to introduce myself, and I told her that a framed photo of her great grandfather sits on my office bookshelf.

She looked at me a bit puzzled. I invited her to campus, so I could show her hoping she would accept. To my immense delight-- to my immense delight, she did accept and visited MIT in 2014. She even delivered a Compton lecture and thus our most prestigious invited lectureship while she was here.

Last winter, it was Valerie who surprised me. She sent me an email to say that her family had discovered Robert's MIT diploma and asked if we would be willing to produce a copy for her or interested in displaying it. I nearly jumped out of my seat. Valerie and her family had put their hands on a piece of MIT history. It presented an opportunity to highlight Robert's remarkable life and impact, again, an opportunity we could not let pass.

Debbie Douglas of the MIT Museum traveled to New York to pick up the diploma from Janice Roberts, Valerie's cousin who is with us this afternoon with other members of the family. The museum restored the diploma and has displayed it as part of its grand opening today. That is what brought Valerie, Janice, and the family to campus today. We are ecstatic. We are ecstatic to share this moment with them.

Over the next hour, our distinguished speakers will explore the legacy of Robert Robinson Taylor. We will start with a brief video from professor and former chancellor, MIT Chancellor Phil Clay. MIT Professor Mark Jarzombek will then speak about Robert's impact as an architect. He will be followed by Professor Kwesi Daniels, who we are delighted to welcome from Tuskegee University. Professor Daniels is the head of Tuskegee's Department of Architecture, and he will describe a burgeoning collaboration between our institutions.

And then Dr. Holly Hariel, an alumna of both institutions and a lecturer in our Department of Urban Studies and Planning, she will interview our guest of honor, former senior advisor to President Obama and current CEO of the Obama Foundation, the honorable Valerie Jarrett. Dr. Hariel will invite questions for Ms. Jarrett and the audience, and then MIT Professor Nicholas de Monchaux, head of MIT's department of architecture, will be the one closing. Thank you all for joining us on this very special day.

[APPLAUSE]

Good afternoon, and I very much regret that I'm not able to be present this afternoon. I join my colleagues in welcoming Valerie Jarrett, who has been generous in sharing the diploma of her great grandfather, Robert Taylor, who graduated from MIT in 1892. Museums through their exhibits are expected to make links. In this case, it's a link, from my perspective, between two points in history, the graduation of Robert Taylor and my graduation some eight decades later in 1964.

This is an important line because it marks for a single institution MIT two points at looking at the status of Black education. Robert Taylor and I graduated from the same high school. I graduated eight decades after he did. The Williston school from which we graduated was originally a private academy named for Samuel Williston, a Massachusetts manufacturer and philanthropist.

The school was established just a few months after the Civil War ended, and it was established by the parents of former slaves and missionaries who came to North Carolina-- to Wilmington, North Carolina because they thought it was extremely important to provide education to the children of enslaved that was comparable to the education that they provided in the North. The missionaries, in particular, felt that these children should get the same education, and the parents appreciated that even though they were mainly illiterate and only appreciated the value of education but not the substance or the pedagogy involved.

The South was desolate at the time. There was no public education for anyone. Williston became a public school only in the 1930s. Taylor got a first class education at the school and was able to come to MIT and be successful. He went on to lead a successful life as a architect, as an educator, and as a civic leader.

The school continued in its original mission and conception of itself until I graduated in 1964. Members of my class and a few classes before mine went on to leading universities around the country. The school, however, was closed in 1968, the consequence of a desegregation plan that did away with Black schools.

The point to make here is that parents recognize the importance of quality education and insisted on it for a very long period of time. The Williston school was one of only about a dozen schools in the state of North Carolina where there are hundreds counties that had this level of devotion and continued devotion to quality education over a very long time. Segregation was a problem, yes, but for a few schools, there was every attempt made to pour the resources into the school that made it possible for a fraction of the students to get the best education possible and for our talents to be fully realized. For that, I am grateful, and I'm thankful every day for it and realize that Robert Taylor and I and thousands of others over the years received the golden ticket.

The larger question and the question that persists even to this day is what should be taught to the descendants of the former slaves. The founders of Williston had an idea. And they implemented that idea, and we benefited from it.

But Southerners other than Blacks with this vision accepted that the descendants should be taught only to do the jobs that were available to them. That created a terrible legacy from which we have not recovered. The question of this nature of education and how to make sure the ladder of opportunity that education offers is available to all is a question that we face today.

I'm grateful. And I'm grateful for Robert Taylor and all of those like him who benefited, but I'm sad that so much talent was left on the table for 150 years. Thank you. Have a pleasant afternoon. I regret not being there with you.

[APPLAUSE]

It's a pleasure-- oh. It's a pleasure to be here today and speak to you and meet Valerie and to support the renewed relationship of these two great institutions. By his own admission, Robert R. Taylor took what he learned here at MIT and used it to design the campus at Tuskegee and do something that few architects have the privilege of doing, give an institution the flesh and blood of reality.

William Wallace Bosworth did it here at this campus at MIT. Ralph Adams Cram did it at Rice University. Henry Cobb did it at the University of Chicago.

It is a select group of architects who can claim to have shaped an institution literally from the ground up. But unlike those other institutions, which became bastions of whiteness, Tuskegee became something very different. As one of the mid-century defenders explained, it was the very symbol of the faith in American democracy.

Ellen Weiss's book does a fantastic job contextualizing Robert R. Taylor's architectural work, so I recommend, certainly, reading that. So I thought I would highlight another issue, a father, son relationship. Now I'm not talking about the personal relationship about which I assume we know very little apart from what Valerie might have some insight but about this relationship within the culture of the building arts.

Throughout the 19th century, African-Americans had a big part into building trades in the South. This might sound quite shocking since we often see African-Americans portrayed as dutiful slaves in cotton fields or doing menial labor. But African-Americans were active in bricklayers, carpenters, masons, [? stuccotures, ?] and so forth, even though much of that work was done under the auspices and institutions of slavery.

Documentation is scarce, but it paints a clear picture. The main carpenter for the Bellamy Mansion, which was built during the Civil War, was a man named Elvin Artis, who was a free man of color, who was part of a large family of Carpenter artisans both enslaved and freed. In fact, nearly all the work on the house was done by African-Americans, once again, some enslaved and some freed.

One of these, as historians have uncovered, was a carpenter called Henry Taylor, who was the father of our own Robert R. Taylor. Though a slave, he was given a certain latitude to engage in business as carpenter and shipbuilder. But the point I want to make is that after the war, the people in the building trades moved into the local communities becoming businessmen and carpenters. Houses, warehouses, docks, schools were all being built, and there can be no doubt that African-American builders played a big role.

It was in that context where we have to place the rise of Henry Taylor, who developed a prosperous post-Civil War career. For Henry to hope to see his son at MIT was a remarkable ambition but fully in line with the upwardly mobile nature of the contracting business. In this case quite probably to make the family business less reliant on the arriving architects, white architects who were arriving from the North, it was an excellent business model, sort of, Taylor and sons, like that.

Now the reason Booker T. Washington wanted Robert R. Taylor, I think, to come to Tuskegee was not just because of Taylor's personality and knowledge and not just because of his prestigious degree from MIT but because Robert R. Represented the father, son generational continuity and cross-generational aspirations and everything that that implied. There's a twist to this story.

The first building that Robert Taylor designed was completed in 1893. In that year, the US economy experienced its first major economic crisis. Though the crash of 1928 was more famous, the one in 1893 was its serious prequel. Not a single building was completed in the United States from 1893 into 1894.

By the time the economy had rebounded a few years later, things had begun to improve for the general economy but not for the African-American community. And especially hurt in this transition was the building arts. And here I refer to an insightful article by Charles S. Johnson written in 1933. It was entitled "Negro Workers and Skilled Crafts and Construction." It was published in a journal called Opportunity, a journal of Negro life that Johnson himself founded.

Johnson was a brilliant American sociologist who later in 1946 became the first Black president of Fisk University. Opportunity, I should say, is totally an incredible journal to read. Extremely moving and powerful with deep insight and prescient insights into the fraught race relations that governed every aspect of the creative, intellectual, and business worlds of African-Americans.

Now in this article, Johnson points out that in earlier decades there were African-American bricklayers, plasterers, white washers, painters, glaziers, caulkers, blacksmiths, and on and on. And he goes on to state that this was the result of both the custom and special training under the institutions of slavery.

But, he says, things changed. And in the subsequent early decades of the 20th century, he listed problems. Foreign immigration into the North tightened the labor market. African-Americans sought out industrial work in the cities rather than work in local building trades.

He pointed out that in Southern cities there were deliberate efforts to replace African-Americans with white workers and contractors. In Jackson, Mississippi, he writes, negro carpenters and plasterers have been kept out of much of the work they virtually controlled, to which he adds in many localities there are licensed requirements for plumbers and electricians and carpenters. Often Negroes are not permitted to qualify for such work and are so automatically eliminated from employment. Since these regulations are in accordance with municipal laws and administration, there's nothing the Public Works Administration can do to change them.

What Johnson is describing back in 1933 in very clear terms is the institutionalization of racism within the labor economy of the building trades, the creation of what we today would call white privilege. No one denies that licensing is a good thing, but we have to see how it was deployed in the South and also elsewhere as a venue for Black disenfranchisement. We also have to remember that when bricklayers and carpenters became unionized at the turn of the century, that added another layer of exclusion that haunts the building trades to this day.

The reason I'm using my time to focus on this issue is because of the important upward mobility in the building trades. Carpenters had sons who became contractors. Contractors had sons who became architects. And one has to remember that in those days being an architect, the endgame of all of this ambition was the equivalent to being what at that time was even called a gentleman.

So these aspirations require cross-generational connectivity in some variation. That was typical in the 18th and 19th centuries, and it is true even today. In an informal poll of my class last week, I asked how many of them have a family member or close friend in the family who are tied to architecture and construction, and about 50% raise their hand.

But by 1910 or 1920 or so, it is fair to say that this culture of continuity was broken apart in the South in the African-American community, which is one of the reasons among others there are so few African-American architects in the 20th century, speaking a little bit, perhaps, to what Phil just pointed out. One would think that a Black carpenter or upward mobile carpenter architect of today would have a better chance to succeed than one back in the 1880s, but the truth is that the answer is not an unambiguous yes and that after an astonishing 150 years.

One can also, perhaps, read a book called The Black Carpenter's Guide by Desmond Collins, which is the first book ever written by an African-American carpenter. And it tells a painful and difficult story. Now at issue here for someone like me, namely an architectural historian, is not just how to write a cultural biography of labor off the building site but how to write about the multiple absences and exclusions within architecture disciplinary formation.

Of course, we obviously need a more vigorous history of success stories, and the book on Taylor and other important figures in the African-American architectural world are elements of that labor. But clearly, we also need a vigorous history of what is absent and why. And I hope that our field, that of architectural practice and its associated building arts will turn itself around sooner than later.

[APPLAUSE]

To the MIT family, to the Taylor family, I bring you greetings on behalf of ninth president of Tuskegee University Dr. Charlotte Morris and our Dean of the Robert R. Taylor School of Architecture and Construction Science, Dr. Carla Jay Bell. It's an honor. 111 years since Mr. Taylor came to Tuskegee-- excuse me, since Mr. Taylor came back to MIT to speak about the contribution that MIT had in the development of Tuskegee.

Mr. Taylor noted that the methods and plans of MIT have been transplanted to the Tuskegee Institute and have flourished and grown there. He noted that if not the plans in full but certainly the love of doing things the proper way, putting logic into the thinking, into the humblest of tasks-- and we're going to talk about those humble tasks-- of studying surrounding conditions of soil and climate of materials and using them to the best advantage, in contributing to the build up of the immediate community in which the persons live and in a way increasing the power and the grandeur of the nation. That is what Robert R. Taylor did when he came to Tuskegee.

So Mr. Taylor came in 1893 as a strapping young man. This is what his class would have looked like from an age of 14 years old to the young gentleman in the middle looks like he's about 50. But see when he arrived, as Professor Mark just noted, he arrived on the backs of the knowledge that his father had given him. He was a carpenter, had been trained in the carpentry arts.

But he came to a campus that Booker T. Washington was giving him the promise that you can join us in this learning to do by doing philosophy. And he already had something that in MIT had given him, this education of the hand and the head. But he brought-- he came to Tuskegee, and Washington had combined the heart and so understanding how to use the building arts to build community around him.

And so his first building went up, Thrasher Hall-- at the time, it was Science Hall-- two years after he arrived at Tuskegee. Five years later, his masterpiece, the chapel was built. He considered this his masterpiece because it also embodied the Tuskegee educational philosophy of educating the head, the hand, and the heart because the students did everything.

They built the bricks. They made the building. They built the furniture. This was actually the first building or one of the first-- there's some controversy around that-- buildings to be electrified in Macon County and I would say probably the state of Alabama. I'll have to find some facts about that.

But you can see his drawings. And another wonderful fact about this is for all my architects in the room you can appreciate this, he passed away in his building when he came back to visit Tuskegee. What a great honor to pass in your own work.

In 1901, he was responsible for the construction of Carnegie Hall. Andrew Carnegie considered this one of the best of-- one of the top five buildings to bear his name. Now you have to think about the significance of that because we're talking about bricks that were made by students, an entire building put together by students, and these are African-American students in a period where the idea Black people educating Black people to do this quality of work was not even fathomable. So for Andrew Carnegie to make that level of acknowledgment speaks to the quality of education that was happening.

But as Mr. Taylor noted, MIT taught him how to take that knowledge and improve the community surrounding him. And so you see the Tuskegee Rural School Model, that started in 1900 in order to bring rural education-- bring education to the rural communities, and one of its most famous outgrowths was the Tuskegee Rosenwald Community School Program that built over 5,000 schools and teacher homes between 1913 and 1936. This is what Robert R Taylor did. His designs made it possible for countless communities in rural places around this country.

If you've not ever been into a rural environment, I promise you, you need to visit. To understand that level of commitment, this particular home-- this particular design, number 11, was actually designed with the people in mind, that social consciousness. Because they said most of these schools were most likely to only be able to afford one teacher. And that means that they cannot afford to have too much in it. And this became the most popular design.

So Taylor's arrival at Tuskegee allowed it to go from this experience in 1881 where we had actually four dilapidated structures on 100 acres that Booker T. Washington purchased to 1908, this level. Washington created a community. He created a nation at Tuskegee, and you're looking at his curriculum that Taylor designed and oversaw the construction of. In his career, he produced upwards of 48 buildings, and this does not include all of the schoolhouses in rural areas that bear his designs.

And now I'm going to talk to you about how we are continuing that legacy at Tuskegee now. We're helping to restore the Armstrong school, which is a 1906 building that is probably one of the oldest remaining examples of the Tuskegee rural school building model.

We received funding, and we just completed a stewardship plan for Taylor's first building on our campus, Thrasher Hall. And his chapel, which unfortunately was burned-- they say it caught fire, struck by lightning. I guess history will tell us that truth-- but we reconstructed that virtually. These are the tools available to us now. And so you can go to our website, and you can tour our campus. And you can tour Taylor's original-- some of his original designs, including his masterpiece.

And then there's the partnership that we have with MIT that goes back to 2016. Over the course of from 2016 to prior to the pandemic, six students had come to MIT to learn. One of our students recently graduated-- Mr. Miles Sampson recently graduated the master's degree program.

[APPLAUSE]

Unfortunately, as COVID did to many things, it put a pause. But the pause we're going to have today is a pause to reflect on what we're looking at here. We're reflecting on what MIT poured into Mr. Taylor, the forward vision to allow an African-American student to train at this institution and when they left to come back and tell how that education allowed him to be impactful and to create the institution that I'm an alumna of and now one of the administrators leading our future architects. So I thank you, MIT, for making it possible for Taylor to create Tuskegee. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

Am I here?

I think that was our instruction.

Hello, everybody.

It's good to see you all. Good afternoon. Holly Harrell here. I have a few questions that I will ask you, and then we'll go into some Q&A.

Can I start just by saying how on behalf of my entire family, how deeply moved we are by this event and just the way MIT has embraced the vision and spirit of my great grandfather. I'm here with my Cousins Carolyn Niles, Tony Bush, and Janice Roberts. Their grandmother and my grandfather were the sons and daughters of Robert Robinson Taylor.

And in fact, it was Carolyn's father who found the diploma up in the attic of their home when they were cleaning up, as you tend to do when your parents get a little older. And he had the-- her father had the foresight to put it in the safety deposit box. And then we all discussed what to do with it.

And rather than mailing it to you because that didn't seem like a smart idea, Caroline gave it to Janice, who drove it up or flew up from New York, and then handed it off to you. And we had the opportunity-- and it's the first time I've ever seen it. And it's [INAUDIBLE] period, let alone in its restored form when we visited the museum before coming over here. And it was just extraordinary.

And the job that the folks did who restored it, they told us in detail how hard it is to do. And I'm glad we didn't try to do it ourselves. Let's just put it that way. So we appreciate the care.

And to your president, I feel I just cannot tell you how incredible your personal support has been and your stewardship of my great grandfather's legacy. So thank you. And to the icing on the cake, which is like a whole cake in and of itself, is a partnership with Tuskegee. So thank you all for solidifying his legacy through that partnership of two institutions that we know he cared so deeply about. So thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

So I know earlier today you and your family were over at the MIT Museum for the unveiling of the diploma. And so I was wondering if you could talk about that experience and what you were feeling in those moments.

Yeah. So first of all, it's much bigger certainly than my diploma was. I think I got cheated from Stanford. Mine is like that big, and it's huge. And we learned all about the parchment paper, the sheepskin or goat-- what is it? Sheep, sheepskin. Thank you, Janice-- that it is made on. And just I was a little nervous right before we saw it.

And just to see it in its place in the context of this beautiful museum, which tells the history of this institution, and to see the role that he played in it. And there's just something about the physical embodiment. I've seen photos, including the one in Raphael's office, but the diploma showed that he graduated from this extraordinary institution. And so it is-- when you get that diploma, hold on to it because your great grandchildren will be very appreciative that you did one day. And so it was very moving for us all.

Absolutely. And again, I echo my colleagues and say that we will be dutiful stewards of his diploma. And I say that also being a graduate of both institutions.

Yes.

I will hold MIT's feet to the fire.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Although I think they're very willing. You're pushing on an open door.

Absolutely. Both Mark and Kwesi made some very moving remarks a moment ago. And so I'd like to just hear your reactions to some of what they talked about and addressed us with.

Yeah, well, so unlike my Cousins who spent every summer at Tuskegee, I really haven't spent much time on campus. But we are a family of oral history and so our grandparents and our parents talk a lot about his legacy there. And of course, we had heard about Booker T. Washington recruiting him to go there. We talked earlier today at lunch about his extraordinary work ethic and his priority of education. And that was something that he instilled in his children and children, in turn, instilled in their children and we've tried to instill in our children.

And to see just see the actual buildings that he created, which were beautiful. And one of the things my grandmother always told me-- I'm sure you guys heard the same if not from her, from others was that the kids actually made the bricks. And when kids complain on campus today about anything they have to do, well, did you have to make the bricks? Because if you didn't have to make the bricks, you should probably not be complaining too much. And so to see that be woven into the stories was incredible to.

And just to see what the campus was before it was and then to see what it looked like when it was finished and to know that his creative genius was a part of that. And I'm glad you added his work he did on the Rosenwald Schools because that was a very important part of his legacy. And these are children who would not have had a place to be educated without Rosenwald's philanthropy and my great grandfather's design capabilities.

We have heard today and for our historians in the room we know that your great grandfather was a trailblazer.

Yes.

And here at MIT, we train students for careers that don't exist yet. We push them to that particular goal. And so for the students that are in the room, I'm wondering if you have any advice for them.

Yes. Oh, plenty. How much time do you have? Were you finished with the question because I jumped right into the--

That's fine. That's fine.

Sorry about that, though. That was, kind of, rude.

That's fine.

I often imagined, as my grandmother and my mother would tell me the stories of his coming to campus, what would it be like to have your father born a slave, have you become a carpenter, save enough money for your education as a slave knowing that education was your path to the upward mobility, and then you get on a train from Wilmington and you come to Boston. And what must that have been like when he came to this campus. I don't think he was warmly embraced. I can't imagine he was. And many of his white colleagues probably had never met a Black person before unless the person worked in their home, right.

And so what was that like? And how did he-- and so throughout my life, anytime I get nervous-- and I often do when faced with a new challenge-- I think, to myself, well, if he could do that, you can do anything. And I think that's what I would say to the students is if he could do that, just imagine what you can do with a little hard work and perseverance and resilience.

And I'm sure he reached-- he had enormous adversity in his life. And no one in our family really tells that story. They talk about the perseverance and the creative genius and what he did with his life, how he chose to spend his life. And so lead a purposeful life, and you're getting an incredible education. And just think of what's happened since he graduated from this institution and what will happen in the next chapters of your life. So do good out there, please.

All right, well, we have our marching orders, and that's not just from for the students. That's for everyone.

For everybody, right. We're never too old to do good.

We will now take questions from the audience.

I think this is a first.

It can't be a shy crowd.

This has got to be a first.

Come on. Somebody can break the ice but not my cousins because nobody-- we don't know where that would take us, but they may help me answer it. You have one over here.

Question here.

[INAUDIBLE]

Black man in America in the 1800s. I mean, look I just-- I mean we do know that he looked for job opportunities North and couldn't find them. Thank goodness Booker T. Washington was in a position to recruit him to go to Tuskegee. He built those schools for the children because there was no one else who was going to build those kids-- for the-- but and so you just in that era he must have faced an enormous amount of discrimination and racism. What was that train ride like for him certainly even and living through the early teens and 20s and 30s, it just must have been terribly challenging, which is why I think Tuskegee was such a wonderful place for him to be where he could be around other extraordinarily talented Black people and help educate the next generation.

And so my imagination is that was just a extraordinary way to live given what was going on in the rest of the country and that he knew he was preparing that next generation to go out and do some things that he didn't have a chance to do. But he did an awful lot.

Hashim?

Thank you.

We heard about the father and son and the transmission of the skills and the profession. Yes? What about the children and the grandchildren and the great grandchildren. Anyone came to our world, became an architect?

Well, not an architect, but I will say Robert Robinson's son, my grandfather, Robert Rochon Taylor was a businessman, but he also was chairman of the board of the Chicago Housing Authority in the late '40s. And his vision for public housing, I think, was very influenced by his father. And what he wanted to do was to build housing that was blended into the urban fabric that was architecturally indistinguishable from market rate and affordable housing, where people understood it was temporary waystation until they could get their feet back on the ground. And that he believed in giving them the resources they need, whether it was education and job training, whatever it was so that they could go forth and lead a productive and happy life.

And he thought if you build housing that way, then you would be providing this-- you would be providing the safety net. So important to just countless Americans at various points in their life. But then you would also propel them out of there and to make way for the new folks to come in. And so the irony is that in Chicago, the Robert Taylor Homes was named after my grandfather. And it was the largest public housing development in the world.

And it was the exact opposite in design of what my grandfather would have believed in because it were like 16 story high rise buildings over multiple blocks in Chicago, and there were no resources. There were no parks that were habitable. There was no economic development. The grocery shopping was terrible, and these became horrible dens of crime.

And so for my grandfather, thankfully, it was named after him long after he died because he's still turning over in his grave. But I do think that his father really instilled in him as he did in my cousin's mom and other kids this sense of have to go forth, and you have to work really hard. And the sky's the limit and that you can't-- I mean, I think part of our core values is that you can't look at what you can't do. You have to just keep pushing the envelope and doing what you can do and try to do it with integrity and grace and good humor. And those are the kinds of core values I think he got from his father and that then were passed on down to our parents. There was a question in the back.

Sorry, I'll come to you. I grew up in Arkansas, and this is the first that I had heard about these schoolhouses that were built in the South. And I'm curious was the family aware of all these schoolhouses throughout the South that Mr. Taylor designed.

Yes.

And where did the resources come from to build so many of these buildings.

Yeah, Julius Rosenwald who founded Sears and Roebuck was the philanthropist behind the schools. And Mr. Rosenwald believed that Black children should have an opportunity for an education. And he invested in these schools. And I don't know whether he actually collected money from others, but they were called the Rosenwald School. So my guess is it's because he paid for all of them.

And interestingly, he also built a large development in Chicago in what was under the restrictive covenants a Black community, but it was where my grandfather lived. And my grandfather, in addition to chairing the board of the housing authority, managed this huge complex. And you had everything from Pullman porters to doctors and lawyers and dentists because in the Black community everyone had to live in one particular area. And he managed that building the same way he managed the housing authority.

And we used to joke, as my grandmother would tell these stories that-- I don't know, that the [INAUDIBLE] you would have been very happy with him because if you didn't behave he would discipline your children. If they dropped garbage, he'd make them go clean it up. If you really didn't behave, he evicted you. But he also believed in giving the people in those buildings an enormous support network.

And it became a community. And many of the folks in that community-- like, my cousin Carolyn's father grew up in that building. And my mother was in that building. So long before her parents got married, they all knew each other.

And I think that that was typical in the Black community. The middle class was from lower middle to upper middle class community where you were forced to live together. And if your properties were well managed by people who had high standards, then people thrived. And that was the standard he tried to apply to low income housing as well. There's a movie about those schools, by the way. I don't remember the name of it.

It's Rosenwald.

That's what it's called. Yeah, it's a documentary about the schools. So if you're interested in learning more about them, it's called Rosenwald.

Hi, I'm Rachel. I'm a graduate student in the personal robots group here at MIT, and I'm really interested in learning about how your continuing your great grandfather's legacy through your work with the Obama Foundation, particularly, in the realm of education. And I'm happy to give a little context into why I'm interested in learning about that. So I created a six week data activism curriculum for minoritized students in Cambridge. And they learned how they can use data science to mitigate systemic oppression. And I'm really curious to learn how you would suggest that I spread that curriculum to the broader African-American community.

Wow. See this is what I'm talking about.

[APPLAUSE]

That is what I'm talking about. Wow. So thank you for asking about the Obama Foundation. So the Obama Foundation is headquartered in Chicago. It is about two miles from where Tony, Janice, and I grew up. We used to ride our bikes through Jackson Park all the time. It's on the beautiful lakefront of Chicago but on the side of the city that traditionally was disinvested.

And so it has on two sides, predominantly low-income Black community. And our hope is in addition to infusing nearly $1 billion in creating this campus. So it's far more than just a library from his presidential period in time, but it is really intended to be a place where we can-- we call it like a beacon of hope for the city and an economic engine for the city and also will attract people from around the world.

And our hope is people will come and experience the story of his life, which isn't just-- and those who preceded him. It begins with those upon whose shoulders we stand. And then go through it and see how he and his wife connected and lives intertwined and he became president eight years and leave inspired and empowered to go do something different in your own life.

And then the rest of the center is really dedicated to the future. So we will have a forum building, an athletic center, a Chicago Public Library, a walking trails, sledding hills. Chicago's very flat. And Michelle Obama said, could we have some hills? I always wanted to sled as a kid. And we said we can build you some hills. So we'll have some hills for the kids to go out in the wintertime.

And then we have a whole bunch of programs that are already up and running now. My Brother's Keeper designed to improve the trajectory of boys and young men of color, in fact, my cousin Tony is on that board. It started when the President was in the White House, and then he moved it over to the foundation.

Girls Opportunity Alliance, Mrs. Obama was in New York last night speaking about adolescent girls not just here in the United States but all around the world that if they were to stay in school, obviously, that would improve the trajectory of their lives. And what are the impediments to them staying in school. We want to remove those barriers.

And then we have leadership programs in Asia, Africa, and Europe designed to train the next generation of leaders. And we also have those leadership programs for undergraduates at Columbia and graduate students at the University of Chicago. And I would love to have one at MIT, where we augment the education to talk about inclusive community-based leadership. We teach everything about everything from resilience to a business plan, to a marketing strategy, to communicating in this era where it's very difficult to get a message out.

What else do we have? That's like-- that's my elevator pitch of what we do. And I would love to figure out how what you're doing could be helpful because you know a lot more about it than I do.

And part of what we want to do is find young talented people like you, connect you to other people, and just give you some tools that we have to set you on your way. And so the work that you're doing I'm sure could be impactful, and we could figure out some ways to work together. So you give me your number before you leave.

[APPLAUSE]

I have a question here. OK.

OK, thank you very much. Let me add my warm welcome to you and your family. Such an uplifting day to have you here with us. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

I wanted-- I had the great pleasure of speaking to students at Tuskegee a couple of years ago. And it was really a life-changing experience to hear those students talk about what their dreams are and how they hope to spread out after graduating from Tuskegee and change the world in so many ways. It was really a memorable experience. I wanted to ask you, please, what is your hope for this relationship between MIT and Tuskegee.

A good relationship is a two-way street. And it's wonderful that we've had students from Tuskegee come here, but my impression being down there is that MIT could learn a lot from Tuskegee. So I wonder if you'd say a couple of things. Thank you.

Well, absolutely. And look, I just had a one hour tutorial on it today. So don't test me on everything I learned, but I will say to you the point you made is such an important one. What was clear to me is that it's a two-way street. And the work that they're doing at Tuskegee around preservation is not something that MIT does.

And there are a lot of things that are done at MIT that may not be done at Tuskegee. And not just the sharing in terms of the discipline but just the community, they're going to create a connection between the two institutions that will go far deeper. And look, I appreciate the intellectual rigor that happens in these places, but relationships are also part of what you hope to get when you're a part of a University.

And so I think the sky is the limit. And the fact that you can see the mutual respect and collaboration and enthusiasm at every level makes me feel actually much better about the donation that we gave for the diploma because it makes me think that there will be a sustainable relationship long beyond the fact that my great grandfather attended this school. This is-- I can't think of a better testament to his legacy than the creation of this new relationship.

Hi, Valerie. Larry [INAUDIBLE] from Department of Architecture. First was just it's amazing to meet you. I had the pleasure of watching Barack Obama speak here on energy in, I think, it was 2009. And unfortunately, I missed you. I was out of the country when you were here, but it's just as great to see you today.

Thank you.

And now that you know-- before I want to preface this. Taylor had a long list of buildings that he constructed, and you as his great granddaughter have a long list of organizations that you have started and that you continue to build. I was wondering if you could give us some advice about how we can build this relationship. And I just want to preface that I've been to Tuskegee three times, and I'm just-- sometimes I wish that there was a way to build up some of their infrastructure or the way that we have here because there is a notable difference between the amount of equipment, technology, resources that we have here and Tuskegee. And Tuskegee, we need to figure out how to build those resources for Tuskegee.

In your experience building so many organizations, how did you start? Where did you-- what was your main emphasis at the beginning of your projects?

Meet people where they are. Look you have a lot of alumni at MIT-- well, maybe not a lot. You have many alumni at MIT who are Black, right. You have many alumni at MIT who are now in a position to be philanthropic. So why not tap into that family in addition to the family that currently supports Tuskegee?

So you have-- you got to meet people where they are and help them understand why it is in their best interest to do something. That's how you build an organization. So you listen, and I would say go and listen to not just the folks who are alumni but the broader MIT community. Have them hear what we heard at lunch today, which was just extraordinary. Have them meet some of the folks who are part of this new partnership.

Take them down to Tuskegee and let them see that campus. I mean, the last time I was there was when Michelle Obama gave the commencement speech. And you can feel the energy on that campus. People there are proud to have been Tuskegee students and to be graduates. And the community from the faculty, the administrators to the students, it's palpable. And so encourage people to take that trip.

And relationships, I just gave this speech yesterday about somebody asked me about developing professional and personal relationships. And I said, they're all relationships. I don't really-- I've never distinguished between the two. Some of my best friends are people with whom I was a work colleague at some point in time. And my work colleagues same thing.

And relationships take time, and they're built in trust. And I felt trust today at lunch, and that's because of the work that's been going on for a while. This didn't just start at lunch today.

And so taking the time to build trust and understand that it will evolve over time, that's part of, I think, how you start organizations. And then be inclusive as opposed to inclusive. And make people I learned today belonging, and this might be a better word than inclusive. That's what you're doing here.