The Freedmen's Bureau

In 1865, in the aftermath of the Civil War, the War Department formally established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, popularly known as the Freedmen's Bureau. The Freedmen's Bureau undertook the monumental task of assisting freed former slaves in finding places to live and work, obtaining medical care, getting an education, reuniting families torn asunder by slavery and war, and providing for immediate needs of refugees such as food and clothing.

Some thirty years later, W.E.B. Dubois wrote of the Bureau, "It set going a system of free labor, established the black peasant proprietor, it secured recognition of black freemen before courts of law, it founded the free public school system in the South...It relieved a vast amount of physical suffering; it transported 7000 refugees from congested centres back to the farm; and best of all, it inaugurated the crusade of the New England schoolma'am." In its first year, the educational infrastructure of the Freedmen's Bureau educated 100,000 people.

The Freedmen's Bureau, like any U.S. military-run bureaucracy, kept extensive records, which in many cases are the only records that exist to document the histories of African American families prior to the Civil War. The documents include marriage records, work contracts, death certificates, as well as records of travel, relief provided, and crimes committed against freedmen in the aftermath of the war. The hundred and thirty-year-old documents are currently stored in boxes in Washington, D.C. and other locations. While available to the public for purposes of historical research and tracing genealogies, these irreplaceable original records are difficult to access and are physically deteriorating.

On September 12, 2000, Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald, D-Torrance, and Rep. J.C.Watts, R-Oklahoma, introduced the Freedmen's Bureau Preservation Act of 2000. The bill is intended to provide funding to restore the crumbling Freedmen's Bureau records and make them accessible by indexing them and imaging them on microfiche. Please encourage your Congressman to support this bill so that an invaluable part of our African American history will not be lost.

Also, for a truly fascinating website click here: www.freedmensbureau.com

This website includes all kinds of information about the Bureau with some examples of the archived records as well as the super essay by W.E.B. Dubois. []