Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in African American Studies
Episode: Justene Hill Edwards, "Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank" (Norton, 2024)
Description: In Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank (W. W. Norton, 2024), Justene Hill Edwards exposes how the rise and tragic failure of the Freedman’s Bank has shaped economic inequality in America. In the years immediately after the Civil War, tens of thousands of former slaves deposited millions of dollars into the Freedman’s Bank. African Americans envisioned this new bank as a launching pad for economic growth and self-determination. But only nine years after it opened, their trust was betrayed and the Freedman’s Bank collapsed.Fully informed by new archival findings, historian J...