Freedwomen and the Freedmen's Bureau: Race, Gender, and Public Policy in the Age of EmancipationEstablished by congress in early 1865, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands more commonly known as "the Freedmen's Bureau" assumed the Herculean task of overseeing the transition from slavery to freedom in the post Civil War South. Although it was called the Freedmen's Bureau, the agency profoundly affected African American women. Until now remarkably little has been written about the relationship between black women and this federal