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Freedmen’s Bureau

Freedmen’s Bureau. Congress passes Freedmen’s Bureau Act of 1866 In what ways will the Freedmen’s Bureau try to help the former slaves?. Freedmen’s Bureau. Food/clothing/shelter $$ for transportation to move or to help find family members that were shipped away Education/jobs

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Freedmen’s Bureau

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  1. Freedmen’s Bureau Congress passes Freedmen’s Bureau Act of 1866 In what ways will the Freedmen’s Bureau try to help the former slaves?

  2. Freedmen’s Bureau • Food/clothing/shelter • $$ for transportation to move or to help find family members that were shipped away • Education/jobs • Lawyers to legalize slave marriages • Problems faced by Freedmen’s Bureau • Lack of $$$ • Few volunteers/ low paying • Resistance by southern whites

  3. Importance of Schools • Elderly former slave on why he attends school- “Ole missus used to read the good book to us on Sunday evenin’s, but she mostly read dem places where it says, “Servants obey your masters”. Now we is free, there’s heaps of tings in that old book we is just suffering to learn” • Reading and religion were two most important subjects taught

  4. Importance of Black Churches • Why were black churches vital for the building of black society? • Controlled by blacks/black ministers • Social centers • Political meeting halls • Schools • National Baptist Convention • African Methodist Episcopal Church

  5. Rise of Republican Party in the South • 80% eligible freedmen joined Republican party • 7 blacks in 1870 Congress (Hiram Revels- 1st black Senator, took Jefferson Davis old seat in Senate • 90% eligible freedmen voted (at first) • Carpetbaggers • Northerners who moved to the South to “help” in Reconstruction • Scalawags • Ancient Irish term for a runty, worthless animal • Southerners who joined Republican Party/aided Reconstruction • General Longstreet

  6. Realities of Reconstruction • If you were now a former freed slave, would you a) try to go back to Africa b) move to the North c) stay in the South • Why?????? • 97% stayed in the South (500 freedmen from Virginia moved North) Why so few?? • No $$ to move North • Low paying jobs in the North • The only skill they had was farming, factory work foreign to them • Almost all were born in the US by now, so Africa was not their home • Families in the South • By 1910, only 10% of blacks lived in the North or West of the US • WWI- “Great Migration” to the North

  7. Sharecropping • Most former slaves took part in the labor system of sharecropping • Freedmen rented land from former slave owner • Gave ½ to 2/3 of their crop yield to the landowner • Fair System? • Positives • Kind of their own land • Personal stake in the outcome • Not wage labor/share with landowner risk/reward system • Negatives • Borrowing $ until crop yields for basic necessities/permanent debt • Never owning their own land/similar to serf system in Middle Ages • Lasted for almost 100 years

  8. Plantation to Sharecropping

  9. Black land ownership • 1867- South Carolina govt.(really a shocker!!) redistributes 14,000 acres of land by reselling on the cheap to the landless • Southern Homestead Act 1866 • 44 million acres • 80 acre plots • Mostly swampland • Sherman’s 40 acres and a mule

  10. Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B. Dubois • Washington • “Up From Slavery” • Basically self-educated, born into slavery • Tuskegee Institute (Alabama) • Gradual equality- accept discrimination now….get education, skills, earn good living, then equal rights will come • “Atlanta Compromise” • Du Bois • Founded NAACP • Wanted equal rights immediately • 1stto graduate from Harvard w/ Dr. degree • “Talented Tenth” vs. “Submerged Tenth” • Which guy do you agree with more and why?

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