SHREVEPORT – The Spring Street Museum in downtown is housed in one of Shreveport’s oldest buildings that’s historically been associated with various banks in its first decades after construction in the 1860s.
One of these banks is a branch of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, the first bank available to African Americans in Shreveport and one of the first such banks in the United States.
The Shreveport branch opened in late 1870 and was the second location in Louisiana (New Orleans was the first) and one of the first 30 branches opened nationally after the Freedman’s banks were created by the U.S. Congress following the end of the Civil War in 1865.
A special exhibit about the Freedman’s bank and its impact is on display at the LSUS Spring Street Museum this month.
“This is the very first time in American history the federal government is including people of color in the federal banking system after the act of Congress passed in 1865 and signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln,” said Dominick Mercer, coordinator of museum services who put together the exhibit. “The U.S. economy is experiencing a major transition to a wage-based system during this time, and having access to banking is fundamental to participating in that system.
“Shreveport has a direct connection to that history, and it’s relatively unknown.”
The exhibit begins Friday and will be available throughout February. The Spring Street Museum is open Monday-Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. School tours can be arranged by emailing Mercer at Dominick.Mercer@lsus.edu.
According to an issue of the Caddo Gazette, the bank reported assets of approximately $3,000 from 1,152 different deposits in the first three weeks of operation, highlighting the desire and need of African Americans to access the banking system following the end of slavery.
Local African American cashier Samuel Peters operated Shreveport’s Freedman bank in the Tally Building (now Spring Street Museum).
The exhibit highlights the history of the Freedman’s Bank with copies of local registers and records, accompanied by photographs and other archival materials.
Records include the first African American woman to ever bank in Shreveport history – a 25-year-old named Sarah Jones.
Jones appears in the register on Feb. 20, 1871, about three months after the Shreveport branch opened. The record reports that Jones, who worked as a basketwoman, “draws only for herself,” meaning she was the owner of the account, and that she lived behind “St. Paul’s The Zion Church close to the railroad.”
“According to information from the Treasury Department website, African Americans were able to obtain loans to buy things like land, homes, farm animals, and tools,” Mercer said. “This building played a significant role in Shreveporters who were exercising newly acquired financial freedoms.”
Shreveport was chosen as a location for a Freedman’s Bank branch because of the number of formerly enslaved who lived in the area.
“Shreveport was selected due to the population of Freedman living here and the density of the Freedman population relative to other racial groups living in the city at that time,” Mercer said, citing records from The Library of Congress. “The only other area in Louisiana with more people of color living per square mile was New Orleans, which was selected in the original group of Freedman Banks in 1865.”
