Mission: To make Civil War-era historical records detailing the lives of four million freed African-American men, women, and children searchable online.

Background: The Freedmen's Bureau, officially known as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, was a federal government agency established in 1865 to help emancipated African Americans at the end of the Civil War transition from slavery to citizenship. From 1865 to 1872, the bureau opened schools, managed hospitals, rationed food and clothing, solemnized marriages, and gave support to an estimated four million former slaves — in the process, gathering information about their marriages and families, military service, medical care, and banking and property transactions.

The Freedmen's Bureau Project works to make these records searchable online through the help of volunteers. Since the project was launched on June 19, 2015 (also known as "Juneteenth," traditionally, the day marking the abolition of slavery in Texas), more than ten thousand volunteers have visited the site and helped index over 440,865 "raw records," or more than 15 percent of the records in the project's database. The goal is to have all records fully indexed and freely available online in time for the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in September. FamilySearch, the Mormon-run genealogy website, is working with the Smithsonian, the Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society, and the California African American Museum to make the records available online.

Outstanding Web Features: Many of the records kept by the Freedman's Bureau were transferred to microfilm in the twentieth century and subsequently scanned for safe keeping (and digitization at a later date). To help index the records, volunteers log on to the site, pull up as many scanned documents as they like, and enter names and dates into the fields provided. (The site provides a handy set of instructions on how to get started.) A lot of the indexing typically involves a parent, grandparent, or relative who can share a name and/or story, photo, or other information that can be matched to a record in the archive. On FamilySearch's Freedmen's Bureau Project page, there are several record categories with items awaiting indexing, including bureau labor contracts, as well as court, education, marriage, and property records. The site also provides access to infographics, notable quotes, tips and tricks for using the collection for research, and a media page that provides journalists with access videos and historical images, a list of resources, and information about the project's partners. In addition, visitors and volunteers alike are encouraged to share their discoveries via social media with the hashtag #DiscoverFreedmen.