Following the American Civil War, the United States and its policy makers faced the dilemma of how to recover from its widespread devastation, which included rebuilding the South and transitioning 4 million freed slaves from captivity to citizenship. As told by historians Paul Cimbala and Randall Miller (1999), until then, "there was no tradition of government responsibility for a huge refugee population and no [national] bureaucracy to administer a large welfare, employment, [education], and land reform program." The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, later known as the Freedmen's Bureau, was considered the first United States federal social welfare agency, aimed to repair damages in the aftermath of the American Civil War.
…show more content…
The Freedmen's Bureau did not force integration of existing programs and services; rather by creating programs for blacks, it established a dual welfare system based on race. In effect, whites maintained support from those organizations whereas blacks did not have the same affordances. The Freedmen's Bureau instituted federal social welfare programs to facilitate the transition from captivity to citizenship which consisted of a multilayer of objectives including clothing and rations provisions, shelter, health care, child and family advocacy, education, and employment. As the first federal agency in the United States, its most important impacts for social welfare were its overarching federal nature and model for private and public …show more content…
Subsequent to the establishment of the Bureau, Congress passed a series of land-grant acts, the Morrill Acts, which provided states funding to establish “colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts (Cimbala & Miller, 1999; Brown & Davis, 2001). The Second Morrill Act (1890), had specific significance for African-Americans. This legislation restricted any disbursement of federal funds to states that discriminated against Blacks or refused “separate but equal” facilities. As a result the act led to the immediate establishment of Black land-grant institutions (Brown, 1999). Ironically this codified the the segregative and unequal practice among institutions of higher learning (Brown & Davis,
The Freedmen's Bureau did not force integration of existing programs and services; rather by creating programs for blacks, it established a dual welfare system based on race. In effect, whites maintained support from those organizations whereas blacks did not have the same affordances. The Freedmen's Bureau instituted federal social welfare programs to facilitate the transition from captivity to citizenship which consisted of a multilayer of objectives including clothing and rations provisions, shelter, health care, child and family advocacy, education, and employment. As the first federal agency in the United States, its most important impacts for social welfare were its overarching federal nature and model for private and public …show more content…
Subsequent to the establishment of the Bureau, Congress passed a series of land-grant acts, the Morrill Acts, which provided states funding to establish “colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts (Cimbala & Miller, 1999; Brown & Davis, 2001). The Second Morrill Act (1890), had specific significance for African-Americans. This legislation restricted any disbursement of federal funds to states that discriminated against Blacks or refused “separate but equal” facilities. As a result the act led to the immediate establishment of Black land-grant institutions (Brown, 1999). Ironically this codified the the segregative and unequal practice among institutions of higher learning (Brown & Davis,