In addition to teaching freed men, women, and children to read and write, northern missionary and relief associations also established industrial schools for adults to help African Americans achieve self-sufficiency in the new free labor market.
Virginia Christian was represented by two attorneys: George W. Fields and J. Thomas Newsome. This letter probably accompanied Christian's Petition for Commutation.
George Lewis was born free before the Civil War and attended Freedmen's Bureau schools in Richmond before earning a law degree from Howard University. In this interview he talks about his family background, his education, the Civil War and the…