Originally Posted by Jafro

There were no records of black people in the US prior to the abolition of slavery, and a program called the "Freedman's Bureau" -which is really a tragic institution for what it was established to do- was set up to give black people the ability to have bank accounts. The bank register was a big deal back then because they had never been able to hold an account, and having one meant you were "somebody". What it turned into was the fleecing of recently-liberated black America. After Lincoln so rudely and abruptly left the presidency, the deposits black families made were eventually cleaned out by embezzlers* that were in charge of the Freedman's Bureau. But one good thing came out of it. Genealogy.

In order for black people to open a bank account, they had to fill out an application that included the names, ages and relations of their family members. This became the first piece of recorded history for the lineage of black Americans, and these records are now available on-line thanks to the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints' hard work. They put forth an open-source project that allows people to review digitized documents and decipher/translate them into ASCII.

I looked through these for weeks, but still can't figure out where my enormous penis came from.

* The "embezzlers" were Democrat politicians that took control of it after the Republicans were gone. They felt black people shouldn't have money. They were never prosecuted. They're still no different today.