education
The Freedmen's Bureau established the first system of public schools and teaching for freedmen, and as a result increased opportunities for African Americans to find jobs as well as a higher education.
Perhaps the field the Freedmen’s Bureau was most successful in was education. It was able to establish multiple colleges and training schools for blacks such as Howard University and Hampton Institute. Prior to emancipation, slaves had been restricted from learning to read and write. In some states, it was even considered illegal to teach a slave to read or write. However, while education in the South was scarce, it was not unheard of. In 1865, nearly 400,000 African Americans, about 10 percent of those in the South, claimed to be literate. Once slaves had their freedom, thousands were eager to learn. Education was seen as an opportunity to achieve employment, political, social, and economic equality. Thousands of women came from the North and the Midwest to teach and literacy rates in the South among African Americans skyrocketed within the first decade of Reconstruction.
"The greatest success of the Freedmen's Bureau lay in the planting of the free school among Negroes, and the idea of free elementary education among all classes in the South."
~ W. E. B. Du Bois
The Freedmen's Bureau focused on raising funds to manage schools and pay teachers as well as overseeing the daily operation of individual schools. Although the Bureau did not directly hire teachers or operate schools, it assisted missionary and aid societies by renting buildings for schoolrooms, providing housing and transportation for teachers, and superintending the schools. The Freedmen's Bureau published their own freedmen's textbook that emphasized a hard work ethic, piety, and humbleness. By the end of 1865, more than 90,000 former slaves were enrolled as students in public schools and by 1870 more than 1,000 schools for freedmen in the South.