Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank

Savings and Trust, in beautifully written and accessible prose, is a must-read that offers crucial context for understanding the economic plight of formerly enslaved people after the Civil War, racial capitalism, the racial wealth gap, and contemporary calls for reparations.--Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, author of They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South
A gripping read. Justine Hill Edwards's Savings and Trust tells the heartbreaking story of the impact that the Freedman's Bank collapse had on Black wealth building at a time during the Reconstruction period when newly freed Black Americans could least afford to absorb it. What began as an unqualified good would become an origin story for subsequent iterations of anti-Black race discrimination perpetrated by the banking industry.--Dorothy A. Brown, author of The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans--and How We Can Fix It
In her gripping and elegantly written account of the Freedman's Bank, Justene Hill Edwards illuminates the extent to which the insidious backlash to Reconstruction resonates with us today. An essential read for anyone concerned about racial and economic justice.--Marcia Chatelain, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America
This is a revealing history of banking innovation and experimentation, the financial acuity of Black men and women, corruption among powerful trustees, and the failure of Congressional oversight that feels all too familiar in our own era of bank failures, governmental dysfunction, and financial malfeasance. Justene Hill Edwards argues convincingly that the Freedman's Bank debacle that lost millions of dollars earned and saved by hardworking, self-sacrificing, recently enslaved people is another little-known cause of the contemporary racial wealth gap.--Tiya Miles, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
The failure of the Freedman's Bank, so damaging to Black Americans' hopes through no fault of their own, has never been explained as fully or fairly as it is in this eloquent book. Justene Hill Edwards, with careful research and deep compassion, finally sets the accounts straight by assigning debt and credit to their proper places.--Edward L. Ayers, author of American Visions: The United States, 1800-1860
This tragic history originates the American racial wealth gap in which, again and again, Black people accumulate wealth, only to have it stolen from them. This book, as essential as it is heartrending, offers a fundamental understanding of American history's entanglement of racism and capitalism.--Nell Irvin Painter, author of I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays
Deeply researched and powerfully argued, Savings and Trust shows how, at the dawn of emancipation, Black aspirations for an expansive freedom were undermined by the greed and thieving of their purported white Republican allies. Little known and short-lived, the Freedman's Bank nonetheless cast a long and dark shadow over the prospects for racial equality and justice in the United States.--Steven Hahn, author of Illiberal America: A History
Devastating to Black depositors and communities, the collapse of the Freedman's Bank created generations of distrust and helped lay the foundation for the racial wealth gap that remains today. With vivid prose and extensive research, Justene Hill Edwards's account is a disturbingly relevant reminder that financial disasters do not simply happen. They are made.--Joshua D. Rothman, author of The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America
Savings and Trust offers a fresh look at the remarkable ascent and tragic downfall of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company. In this well-researched, brilliantly analyzed, and compellingly told account, Justene Hill Edwards brings to life the dramatic expansion of America's racial wealth gap with a focus on Black resourcefulness and trust and white betrayal and plunder during Reconstruction.--Kidada E. Williams, author of I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War against Reconstruction