Whispers from the Dust

The Freedmen Records andAfrican American Family History

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey Douglas

The central question

“What shall be done with the slaves?” W.E.B. Du Bois, 1901, Atlantic Monthly

W.E.B. DuBois

What to do with the slavesduring the war?

Signed: January 1, 1863Lincoln: "I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper.”

”. . . all persons held as slaves within any State . . . in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

The Emancipation Proclamationprovided the moral and legal frame

What to do with the freedmen after the war?

• On March 3, 1865, Lincoln signed into law

– The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Land

• A public institution

– The Freedman’s Savings & Trust Company

• A private institution

The Freedmen’s Bureauwas directed to:

“set apart, for the use of loyal . . . freedmen, such tracts of land within the insurrectionary states as shall have been abandoned . . . and to every male citizen . . . there shall be assigned not more than forty acres of such land.”

Trampled hopes

General Howard sent the news to Sea Islands, Georgia.

One asked: “Why, General Howard, why do you take away our lands?”

“An old woman on the outskirts of the throng began singing this song (‘Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen’); all the mass joined with her, swaying. And the soldier wept.” -- Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

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Two freedmen legacies

100 years of discrimination

“This is the hope of the Freedmen records, to open a window, even if a small one, into that important transitional period that began with the end of slavery.” Alex Haley, at a World conference on Family History

The Records

Hawkins WilsonSought help from the Bureau

• “I have no other one to apply to but you.

• “My name is Hawkins Wilson . . . Who was sold at Sheriff’s sale and used to belong to Jackson Talley

Benjamin Manson and Sarah White marriage certificate

Original Marriage Date: Oct, 28, 1843

Official Marriage Date: April 19, 1866

Lists 9 of their 16 children

Marrow deep

"In all of us there is a hunger marrow-deep, to know our heritage - to know who we are and where we have come from.

“Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum. An emptiness. And the most disquieting loneliness.”

Alex Haley, at a World conference on Family History

Alex Haley1921-1992