A congressionally chartered bank served freedpeople’s financial needs

Evidence

The Freedmen’s Bureau also established a savings bank, chartered by Congress to help four million formerly enslaved people gain financial freedom. The bank’s exclusive mission was to offer Black people generally, and Black Civil War veterans specifically, a safe place to deposit and grow their money. Black veterans were among the bank’s first depositors, climbing out of the war with back pay and enlistment bonuses. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 895

Categorization

• XREF: The Freedmen’s Savings Bank later collapsed, wiping out depositors’ money - a detail worth flagging as a potential follow-up thread.