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 VI. The administration of Frederick Douglass. The collapse of the bank

Collection:: Economics Books

THE FREEDMEN’S SAVINGS BANK an immediate loan of $10,000 was necessary and that it could not be secured from outside sources. So they asked him for and secured a loan of $10,000 in United States bonds which he, Doug- lass, had on deposit. Douglass declared that it was with difficulty that he recovered the $10,000. When he discovered that the trustees and offi- cials were withdrawing their deposits, he turned to Congress for relief. STATEMENT OF DOUGLASS In his Life and Times, Douglass narrates his experience as president of the moribund bank. The account is so interesting and so well de- scribes the situation that it is here reproduced: It is not altogether without a feeling of humiliation that I must narrate my connection with the “Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company.” This was an institution designed to furnish a place of security and profit for the hard earnings of the colored people, especially at the South. Though its title was the “Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company,” it is known as the “Freedmen’s Bank.” According to its managers it was to be this and something more. There was something missionary in its composition, and it dealt largely in exhortations as well as promises. The men connected with its management were generally church members, and reputed eminent for their piety. Some of its agents had been preachers of the “Word? Their aim was now to instill into the minds of the un- tutored Africans lessons of sobriety, wisdom, and economy, and to show them how to rise in the world. Like snow- flakes in winter, circulars, tracts and other papers were, by this benevolent institution, scattered among the sable millions, and they were told to “look” to the Freedmen’s Bank and “live.” Branches were established in all the 8 Bruce Report, pp. 236, and Appendix, p. 44; Ho. Misc. Doc. No. 16, 43 Cong., 2 Sess.; New York Herald, May 1, 1874; Douglas Report, p. 178; Douglass, Life and Times, pp. 488-490, QQ

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