The Rise and Fall of the Freedmen's Bank
Good Intentions Are Like "Thoughts and Prayers"
After the Civil War ended in 1865, the combined number of enslaved people free Black people in America exceeded four million. This number included Black people born free, those who attained freedom via the Emancipation Proclamation, and the vast majority released after the Civil War. What they all had in common was uncertainty about how to navigate in a society that didn't treat them as equals.
Even free Black people had curfews and rules applying only to them, and should they acquire enough assets to attract attention, they risked having them taken away. The newly freed Black people were targets for swindlers. Everyone promising to assist them didn't mean them well. They needed the protection of a formalized banking system generally available only to white people.
“For we colored people did not know how to be free and the white people did not know how to have a free colored person about them.” — Houston Hartsfield Holloway.
In anticipation of the end of the Civil War, a bill was sent to Congress on January 27, 1865, proposing a Freedmen's Bank. Congress quickly approved the bill, and it was signed into law by Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1865. The bank was established to help freed men and women, with John W. Alvord, a…
