Moving Forward, Looking Back
A Freedman’s Fight for Education
The contributions of our local Freedmen’s Bureau office in establishing education during Reconstruction.
On March 3, 1865, nine months before the ratification of the thirteenth amendment and official end to slavery, the U.S. Congress passed a bill to formally create the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Commonly called the Freedmen's Bureau, this agency deemed by some historians as the first federal welfare agency, was given the task of assisting the more than 4 million newly freed slaves in their transition from the plantation to freedom. And, to carry out this enormous task, local Freedmen’s Bureau offices were opened across the south, including right in our backyard with the bureau’s Brooksville office. Through the available records, correspondents, and reports from the Brooksville Freedmen’s Bureau office we catch a vivid…
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