United States
In the United States, the term "freedmen" refers chiefly to former slaves emancipated during the American Civil War.
Slaves freed before the war, usually by individual manumissions, often in wills, were generally referred to as "Free Negroes". In Louisiana and other areas of the former New France (especially before annexation to the US under the Louisiana Purchase), free people of color were so identified in French: gens de couleur libres. Many were part of the Creoles of color community, well-established before Louisiana became part of the US. The community in New Orleans increased in 1808 and 1809, with a wave of Haitian immigrants after the Haitian Revolution. This strengthened the French-speaking community of free people of color.
Although the Emancipation Proclamation declared all slaves in states not under the control of the United States of America to be free (e.g. the Confederacy), it did not end slavery in the Union states. Abolition of all slavery (affecting four million people—not all of them of color) was accomplished as a result of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment gave ex-slaves full citizenship. The Fifteenth Amendment gave voting rights to adult males among the free people. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments are known as the "civil rights amendments", the "post-Civil War amendments", and the "Reconstruction Amendments".
To help freedmen transition from slavery to freedom, including a free labor market, President Abraham Lincoln created the Freedmen's Bureau, which assigned agents throughout the South. The Bureau created schools to educate freedmen, both adults and children; helped freedmen negotiate labor contracts, and tried to minimize violence against freedmen. The era of Reconstruction was an attempt to establish new governments in the former Confederacy and to bring freedmen into society as voting citizens.
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