Large Corporations

The Issue:

Obviously, the basis for the call for reparations is economic: (predominantly white) America benefited (and continues to benefit!) from the unpaid labor and oppression of free and enslaved blacks; therefore, monetary retribution should be paid. Ideally, this money should come from the United States government – the main institution that supported and codified slavery and racism. Since people in power like to keep that power, however, the government is unlikely to rule that it owes African Americans billions, if not trillions, of dollars for unpaid labor and horrific hardships; in fact, they walked out of the UN Conference Against Racism that labeled the trans-Atlantic slave trade a Crime Against Humanity. But what about individual corporations that benefited from slavery?

That’s the question asked by Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, an activist and legal researcher from New York who has documented connections between contemporary corporations and slavery. She filed a lawsuit in March of 2002 demanding, on behalf of all African Americans who can claim slaves as forebears, that corporations that profited from slavery pay reparations. The three corporations in particular that she named were Aetna (a life insurance company that encouraged slave owners to insure their slaves in order to protect their own investments), CSX (a railroad company that used slave labor), and FleetBoston (a financial services company that grew out of a bank established by a merchant who ran slave ships). These cases are still pending, and Farmer-Paellmann and other activists have since sent letters to at least 13 other companies threatening similar lawsuits. Since nearly every company that existed during slavery profited in some way from the unpaid labor of blacks, the potential for this type of litigation is vast.

The lawsuit against Aetna, CSX, and FleetBoston does not seek a specific dollar amount, but estimates that slaves performed up to $40 million worth of unpaid labor, now valued at as much as $1.4 trillion. Predictably, the companies have claimed that crimes committed years and years ago no longer have any relevance – and, furthermore, now they do not discriminate and even occasionally donate money to African American causes.

Nonetheless, the lawsuits show no signs of abating and with the government refusing to take any responsibility for the slave trade and the poor economic conditions of black people in the United States, litigation against major corporations seems like a productive step in the battle for reparations.

Precedent for the case is based on the $4 billion in reparations that Holocaust survivors obtained from firms that used Nazi-era slave labor. The lawsuit was filed by activist and attorney Roger Wareham, who has pledged that any money won from the case will go toward a collective fund to help improve the education, health care, and housing of African Americans.

Articles:

CNN
Black News Weekly
USA Today
The BBC