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In the years immediately after the Civil War, tens of thousands of former slaves deposited millions of dollars into the Freedman’s Bank, a new institution envisioned as a launching pad for economic growth and self-determination.  Informed by new archival findings, historian Justene Hill Edwards charts the bank’s rise and tragic failure.

A page-turning story filled with well-known figures like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Jay and Henry Cooke, and General O. O. Howard, and lesser-known figures like Dr. Charles B. Purvis, John Mercer Langston, Congressman Robert Smalls, and Ellen Baptiste Lubin, Savings and Trust illuminates the hope with which the Freedman’s Bank was first envisioned and the impact of its collapse on our American families and the pursuit of economic equality. Professor Hill Edwards argues for a new interpretation of its failure: the bank’s white financiers drove the bank into the ground, not Fredrick Douglass, its final president, or its Black depositors and cashiers. This comprehensive account is necessary reading for those seeking to understand post-Civil War America. Don’t miss the professor’s presentation of one “Best Nonfiction Book of 2024” (Publishers Weekly) and discussion following with the remarkable genealogist Kenyatta D. Berry.

Justene Hill Edwards is an associate professor of history at the University of Virginia and the author of both Unfree Markets and a forthcoming Norton Short on the history of inequality in America. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Kenyatta D. Berry is an author, attorney, lecturer, professional genealogist, and television personality, host of the “Genealogy Roadshow” on PBS. She is also a contributor to the groundbreaking “1619 Project” published by the New York Times. Her illustrious career as a genealogist spans over 20 years of data collection, in-depth genealogical research, and historical content. An expert in African American genealogy, enslaved ancestral research, and DNA, and she has published features in Black Enterprise, Good Housekeeping, Spartan Magazine, Real Simple, Wall Street Journal, and Woman’s World.

Presented in partnership with American Ancestors’ 10 Million Names Project