April 17, 2001 marked the opening of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation online database of records. There were 50 million hits to the site within the first 6 hours, clearly indicating the interest in finding one's ancestors is extremely popular. This database of 22 million names-representing 60% of all US immigration records-has opened the floodgates for a huge increase in the number of amateur genealogists. Released in February 2001, the Freedman's Bank CD contains biographical information on the roughly 500,000 African Americans who deposited money into Freedman's Bank following the Civil War. It is estimated that 8-10 million African Americans living today have ancestors whose records are contained in the Freedman's database.