Carrie Hall, a white woman, wrote to the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1867 asking them to protect her and her African American husband. After the Civil War, Southern whites fought fiercely to enforce the old racial hierarchy. Interracial couples met legal obstacles and faced violent opposition.

Married by a Georgia minister, Carrie and Sandy Hall kept their marriage a secret for fear of white retaliation. However, Carrie wrote that “white people have learnt” of their marriage and “are making grate talk of what they are going to do.” Carrie asked for the Bureau’s help against this violence, declaring, “no one has every right to interfeare with me or my Husband or at least I dont think they have under the circumstances as he was my choice.”