160 THE FREEDMEN’S SAVINGS BANK 
Negroes? What could these four or five millions of blacks 
just emancipated from slavery think about that? If you 
will think about that, think about the fact that Congress 
itself had supported this movement, and that Congress 
had given these men authority to come in and to gather 
up this money and had given them the power to establish 
these banks, here and there, one in Richmond, and I was 
a depositor in that bank, and so was my father and my 
mother, and so were all of us there, because we thought 
and believed that this great big Government was behind 
it and that we were simply putting our funds into the 
hands of the Government. That is all. The Negro forty- 
five years ago did not have very much discretion and 
could not read signs. He was simply being led by the white 
men who had the authority and whom they believed the 
Government had sent, and so we turned loose every dollar 
we could rake and scrape and save in the hope of making 
something of ourselves, hoping to start out along the line 
of progress. . . . 
I can remember that I used to walk up the bank and 
put in the few pennies that I could rake and scrape to- 
gether. We thought that it was the Government. We did 
not know anything but that Congress had created it and 
that the United States had given the power to these people 
to start it. The preachers were speaking about it, and 
they were collecting from all the societies, churches and 
Sunday schools. Every cent that they could rake and 
scrape was shoved into this institution with the idea that 
in the future we were going to live more like other men, 
That was the condition forty-five years ago. It ran on for 
nine years. The Negro had no part in it, and he could 
not have managed it if he had. He did not have the ability 
or training or anything else that made it possible for him 
to do anything. . . . 
That little failure in 1874 did more to rob the Negro 
of hope and to rob him of faith in banks than any other 
occurrence that has happened since he landed at James- 
town. . ... 
Richmond was the center of all the influx of people just 
turned loose, and meetings were held in all the churches, 
and societies were being formed, and this money was col-