The Freedmen's Bureau

Describe schools, food, medical care, and work contracts, and how it reunited families.

Warm-up, learn, try it together, practice, then a quick check. About 15 minutes.

What children learn in Level 73

Imagine leaving slavery with no money, no land, and no school behind you, and your family sold to places you don't know. About four million people faced that in 1865.
In March 1865, Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Most people called it the Freedmen's Bureau. General Oliver O. Howard ran it.
It handed out food and gave medical care, to Black and white Southerners alike. The war had left many hungry and sick.
It helped start schools. Adults sat beside children, because enslaved people had mostly been kept from learning to read. The Bureau also helped colleges, such as Atlanta University, begin.
It checked work contracts, so freed workers could get fair deals. And it helped people find mothers, fathers, and children who'd been sold away.
The Bureau was small, and many white Southerners fought against it. Congress ended it in 1872, with much of the work unfinished. But the schools it helped build lasted.

Georgia Standards of Excellence in Social Studies:

SS4H6.b — Explain the work of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen's Bureau).