Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Bank

Advertising card for The National Freedmen’s Savings & Trust Company, Norfolk, Virginia Branch

The National Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company,  also known as the Freedman’s Bank, was an opportunity for African Americans to build assets. Incorporated in 1865, there were had 37 branches in 17 states and the District of Columbia. In 1870 the bank’s headquarters moved from New York to Washington. DC.

“Most bank depositors were primarily low-wage earners: laborers, cooks, janitors, nurses, seamstresses, and soldiers but African American churches, businesses, schools and other organizations also put their money in the bank. In addition, depositors included individuals who had been free long before Emancipation such as physicians from Freedmen’s Hospital now Howard University Hospital, professors at Howard University, attorneys, and notables like Frederick Douglass, Captain O.S.B. Wall and many others.  It is estimated that over the nine-year life of the bank approximately 100,000 individuals and institutions opened accounts with bank deposits totaling more than $57 million. That is equivalent to $115 billion today based on its relative share of gross domestic product.”
“The Story of the Freedman’s Bank Building” (2019)
Note: The four-minute video produced by the U.S. Department of the Treasury is on YouTube.

“For Colored Voters, The Freedman’s Bank Swindle [True Story of How the Freedmen Were Robbed]” (August 28, 1876)
Note: This item includes a speech by Col. Fred A. Conkling, letter of Senator H.W. Revels, and letter of Rev. John W. Dungee.

Walter L. Fleming. “The Freedman’s Savings Bank” (1906)
Note: This paper was expanded and published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1927.

Walter L. Fleming. The Freedman’s Savings Bank: A Chapter in the Economic History of the Negro Race. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1927
Note: This is an expansion of a paper that was published in the Yale Review in 1906.

Reginald Washington. “The Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company and African American Genealogical Research,” Federal Records and African American History (Summer 1997, Vol. 29, No. 2)