GLC@Lunch with Ben Davidson: “The Freedman’s Savings Bank, Civil War Memory, and the Possibilities of Reparations”

In creating the Freedman’s Savings Bank, United States government officials intended to encourage formerly enslaved people to develop connections to the nation’s financial system. By the time of its collapse following the panic of 1873, there were over 60,000 depositors and the holdings of the Bank exceeded $3 million. In the years that followed the collapse of the Bank in 1874, depositors were reimbursed for only a portion of their deposits, but Black activists and other citizens continued fighting for full reimbursement through the first two decades of the new century and beyond. This talk considers struggles for reimbursement as they unfolded from 1874 to 1910. In exploring this complex story of loss, activism, freedom, and reparations in the context of struggles over memories of emancipation, we can better understand the possibilities of historical justice in the past and present.