Administering Freedom: The State of Emancipation after the Freedmen's Bureau

This book offers the definitive history of how formerly enslaved men and women pursued federal benefits from the Civil War to the New Deal and, in the process, transformed themselves from a stateless people into documented citizens. As claimants, Black southerners engaged an array of federal agencies. Their encounters with the more familiar Freedmen’s Bureau and Pension Bureau are presented here in a striking new light, while their struggles with the long-forgotten Freedmen’s Branch appear ...