A CLASS action lawsuit was filed on Wednesday against three US companies demanding reparations for the descendants of black American slaves from firms that benefited from the slave trade.
New York Life Insurance Co., Wall St. investment firm Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. and Norfolk Southern Corp. were named in the suit filed in federal court in Newark on behalf of Richard E. Barber Sr., a former deputy executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.
”This is just another step in a series of upcoming political and legal moves that will address the issue of reparations for American slave descendants,” said plaintiff attorney Edward Fagan, who was involved in reaching recent Holocaust settlements with German companies and Swiss banks.
”Similar suits will be filed all over the country in the coming months,” Fagan added.
Last month Aetna Inc., CSX Corp. and FleetBoston Financial Corp. were named in a lawsuit filed by the same group of attorneys in Brooklyn federal court on behalf of a 36-year-old black activist.
Barber, who served as regional administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration in the Carter administration, described the suit as ”a debt owed to the descendants of slaves.”
”Certain corporations benefited from the use of stolen labour and built their profits and wealth on the backs of enslaved Africans,” he said. ”It is finally time for them to account for these historical injustices and to pay back the monies unjustly acquired by their actions.”
The lawsuit demanded an accounting by the companies for monies derived from the slave trade and that unjust profits be turned over. It also wanted production of corporate documents and the establishment of a humanitarian fund to benefit the black community, lawyer Roger Wareham said.
Fagan said the black American reparation suits were similar to Holocaust suits in demanding an accounting of slave labour profits in the same way corporations were required to account for their profiteering from Jewish slave labour during World War Two.
Courts also allowed descendants of Holocaust survivors to benefit, which is necessary in the slave cases as none still are alive.
According to the suit, one third of the first 1 000 life insurance policies written by New York Life predecessor Nautilus Insurance Co. between 1846 and 1847 were on the lives of slaves.
New York Life, one of the largest US life insurers, did not comment on the merits of the suit but issued a statement saying it would provide company records for examination.
”Any lawsuits about events 150 years ago face huge legal hurdles, and we believe it is far more appropriate to judge a company by its values and actions today,” said William Werfelman, a spokesman for 157-year-old New York Life.
”We profoundly regret that our predecessor company was associated with slavery in any way, for even a brief period of time,” Werfelman told Reuters. ”The fact that slavery was legal in certain parts of the United States at the time doesn’t make it any less repugnant.”
James and William Brown, founders of Brown Brothers Harriman, built their fortunes earning commissions on arranging shipments of cotton grown on plantations that used slaves to England, as well as loaning money to plantation owners for the purpose of buying slaves, the suit said.
It suit said that Louisiana records from the 1840s showed the Browns used 346 slaves on their two plantations.
A company statement said, ”We abhor that slavery ever existed in this country or any other country and have no direct knowledge about the activities of the time as being questioned, nor do we have any records.”
The suit said Norfolk Southern was successor-in-interest to numerous railroads allegedly constructed or operated in part by slaves. – Reuters