In Savings and Trust, historian Justene Hill Edwards tells the story of the Freedman's Bank. Created for formerly enslaved people following the Civil War, its collapse cost depositors millions. She spoke with Tonya Molsey about how this part of history reverberates today. Also, book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Vanishing Treasures. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
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This is FRESH AIR.
I'm Tanya Moseley.
In July of 1874, waves of black Americans rushed to their local bank branches to find out if the news they were hearing was true.
The Friedman Savings and Trust Company, a bank for newly emancipated black Americans, was abruptly shutting down.
And patrons at bank branches throughout the country were met with locked doors and cashiers who had to break the news.
Most of their savings were gone.
The rise and fall of the Freedmen Savings and Trust Company is the subject of a new book by my guest historian Justine Hill Edwards.
And the years after the Civil War, tens of thousands of formerly enslaved people deposited millions into the Freedmen's bank with high hopes that as free people, they too could create a piece of the American dream for themselves.
Abolitionist Frederick Douglass even encouraged black Americans to trust the banking system, but even his leadership as the president before its collapse could not save it.
Hill Edwards book documents how the bank's white trustees drove the bank to the ground by lending out millions in loans to white finance financiers and businessmen.
Justine Hill Edwards is a historian and associate professor of history at the University of Virginia.
Her research explores the intersection of African American history, the history of slavery and the history of American capitalism.
Her book is called Savings and Trust.
Justine Hill Edwards, welcome to FRESH air.