It organized a supply of teachers from the North and provided housing for them, to set up and teach in schools in the South for freedmen and their children.
The Society was supported by a variety of religious groups and denominations, and it began work in the South three months after organizing.
[3] By the turn of the century, blacks had raised their rate of literacy by an amazing amount; it was a major success story since the end of the war.
By then the Democratic-dominated state legislatures had imposed racial segregation and were underfunding black schools and other facilities.
Leadership and control of the Freedmen's Aid Society has been attributed to both the Congregational and the Methodist Episcopal churches.