The Freedmen's Savings Bank

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 175265076X

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-129631

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Fleming, Walter Lynwood http://d-nb.info/gnd/120660560X

Title:: The Freedmen's Savings Bank

Place of publication:: Chapel Hill

Publisher:: Univ. of North Carolina Press

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: x, 170 S.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter I. The negro at the close of the Civil War

Collection:: Economics Books

2 THE FREEDMEN’S SAVINGS BANK tion, to describe its possibilities, its development, its decline and collapse, and to show how it in- fluenced the Negroes. ECONOMIC WEAKNESS OF THE NEGRO RACE Aside from the question of race and status per- haps the greatest weakness of the Negro popula- tion in 1865 was its extreme poverty. In spite of destruction by war there was still much accumu- lated wealth in the southern states, but it was in the hands of the stronger race; the Negro, therefore, could not begin with equal opportuni- ties. Under slavery the Negro had assimilated much of the white man’s civilization: he could speak the language; he had accepted the Chris- tian religion; and in manners and customs he had imitated the whites. But slavery, though it had eradicated many primitive traits and had shown the Negro what he had not previously known, the virtue of hard labor, still had not taught him self-reliance or thrift. So the year 1865 saw the Negro population of the United States, with what it had gained during the period of servi- tude, thrown suddenly into a somewhat highly organized, though defective, economic society, with some serious weaknesses to hinder its well- being and progress. It was an alien race in Amer- ica;it was not self-reliant;it was not experienced; it was uneducated; and it had almost no eco- nomic asset except its capacity for labor. The Negro’s ability to work was then, and has been at all times since then, the greatest strength of the race. In the South this labor was much needed, and there was a possibility that within

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