ABSTRACT
It held classes to teach black people to read and write, set up public schools and universities, helped freed slaves reunite with their families, offered legal advice, and supported former slaves in finding employment. Foner also casts a close critical eye on the economic benefits the North enjoyed in the years following the war, while the Southern economy and culture were almost ruined. Prior to the Civil War, nearly all black people were illiterate because they were prohibited from accessing public education and, in most states, it was illegal to teach slaves to read or write. In fact, just after the Freedmen's Bureau was established, Southern legislatures began passing the Black Codes, laws that criminalized the movement and unemployment of African Americans, and limited their rights to freedom of speech and assembly. By making unemployment and vagrancy a crime within an environment where racism was rife, the majority of former slaves were pressured into sharecropping.
