The author tells the history of the Freedman’s Savings Bank, how it grew much too quickly, why it failed and the impact on Black America. The end of slavery in the United States left thousands of enslaved people with the need to survive the transition to freedom, including food, clothing, shelter, and medical care. They would also need education, money and financial services. In 1865 Congress passed legislation to create the Freedman’s Bureau to provide those services. It also created the Freedman’s Savings Bank. Large numbers of the formerly enslaved people had been paid for service in the Union Army – the first time many had cash. And they had no safe depository. The Freedman’s Bank offered that, expanding quickly and gained millions in deposits – mostly ranging from $5 to $50. But inexperience and corruption doomed it to failure, costing many of the small depositors their savings. Some of the biggest issues facing Black consumers today may be able to trace their roots back to this debacle, from the historical distrust in banks to the racial wealth gap. Why publish now? On the heels of the social justice protests of 2020 and the Covid pandemic, some of the persistent and long-lasting problems facing Black Americans bubbled to the top. Black Americans suffered more than White Americans – they got sicker and died more frequently. In addition, they bore the brunt of the job losses economically and business failures. White Americans (and many Black Americans) learned about how vibrant Black communities like Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, were burned to the ground by angry White mobs, destroying generational Black wealth. The racial wealth gap was pushed to the forefront of the debates. Many of those issues in the wealth gap – including the distrust of Banks and the lack of generational wealth in the Black community can be traced back to the collapse of the Freedman’s Savings Bank and the resulting loss of wealth and generational wealth in Black America. This book will put the Freedman’s Savings Bank in the conversation with reparations, Baby Bonds and financial literacy.

The author tells the history of the Freedman's Savings Bank, how it grew much too quickly, why it failed and the impact on Black America. The Freedman's Bank offered a safe depository for formerly enslaved people, expanded quickly and gained millions in deposits - mostly ranging from $5 to $50. But inexperience and corruption doomed it to failure, costing may of the small depositors their savings.

A leading historian exposes how the rise and tragic failure of the Freedman's Bank has shaped economic inequality in America.

History of Freedman's Savings and Trust Company in Washington, D.C.

“Read this book. It explains so much about the moment...Beautiful, heartbreaking work.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates “A deep accounting of how America got to a point where a median white family has 13 times more wealth than the median black family.” —The Atlantic “Extraordinary...Baradaran focuses on a part of the American story that’s often ignored: the way African Americans were locked out of the financial engines that create wealth in America.” —Ezra Klein When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the black community owned less than 1 percent of the total wealth in America. More than 150 years later, that number has barely budged. The Color of Money seeks to explain the stubborn persistence of this racial wealth gap by focusing on the generators of wealth in the black community: black banks. With the civil rights movement in full swing, President Nixon promoted “black capitalism,” a plan to support black banks and minority-owned businesses. But the catch-22 of black banking is that the very institutions needed to help communities escape the deep poverty caused by discrimination and segregation inevitably became victims of that same poverty. In this timely and eye-opening account, Baradaran challenges the long-standing belief that black communities could ever really hope to accumulate wealth in a segregated economy. “Black capitalism has not improved the economic lives of black people, and Baradaran deftly explains the reasons why.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “A must read for anyone interested in closing America’s racial wealth gap.” —Black Perspectives

The everyday lives of enslaved people were filled with the backbreaking tasks that their enslavers forced them to complete. But in spare moments, they found time in which to earn money and obtain goods for themselves. Enslaved people led vibrant economic lives, cultivating produce and raising livestock to trade and sell. They exchanged goods with nonslaveholding whites and even sold products to their enslavers. Did these pursuits represent a modicum of freedom in the interstices of slavery, or did they further shackle enslaved people by other means? Justene Hill Edwards illuminates the inner workings of the slaves’ economy and the strategies that enslaved people used to participate in the market. Focusing on South Carolina from the colonial period to the Civil War, she examines how the capitalist development of slavery influenced the economic lives of enslaved people. Hill Edwards demonstrates that as enslavers embraced increasingly capitalist principles, enslaved people slowly lost their economic autonomy. As slaveholders became more profit-oriented in the nineteenth century, they also sought to control enslaved people’s economic behavior and capture the gains. Despite enslaved people’s aptitude for enterprise, their market activities came to be one more part of the violent and exploitative regime that shaped their lives. Drawing on wide-ranging archival research to expand our understanding of racial capitalism, Unfree Markets shows the limits of the connection between economic activity and freedom.