Congress chartered the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company (the Freedman’s Bank) in March 1865 to help African Americans build economic strength through savings and investment. The bank worked well for several years and attracted some 70,000 depositors in 16 states and Washington, D.C.––but mismanagement and the economic panic of 1873 led to its failure.
It is each man’s duty to earn all he can honestly; to use it for the support of his family and for sending his children to school. All after that he should put by in some safe place where he will get interest on it.
Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, National Archives and Records Administration
National Savings Bank, Vol. I, No. 1, Washington, D.C., January 1, 1868 (publication of the Freedman's Savings and Trust)
The Freedmen's Bureau
In 1865 Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, to address the needs of displaced and formerly enslaved persons. The bureau administered humanitarian, economic, and legal services; supervised labor contracts; and redistributed abandoned lands. Congress re-chartered the Freedmen’s Bureau over President Andrew Johnson’s veto in 1866, but terminated its activities in 1872. African Americans elected to the House who had worked for the Freedmen’s Bureau included John Mercer Langston, Jeremiah Haralson, Josiah Walls, and Robert C. De Large.
The greatest success of the Freedmen’s Bureau lay in the planting of the free school among the Negroes, and the idea of free elementary education among all classes in the South.
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Freedmen’s Bureau, 1901
Congress chartered the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company (the Freedman’s Bank) in March 1865 to help African Americans build economic strength through savings and investment. The bank worked well for several years and attracted some 70,000 depositors in 16 states and Washington, D.C.––but mismanagement and the economic panic of 1873 led to its failure.
It is each man’s duty to earn all he can honestly; to use it for the support of his family and for sending his children to school. All after that he should put by in some safe place where he will get interest on it.
Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, National Archives and Records Administration
