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Paying
for the abuses of slavery
by
Peter Galuszka
Without
a doubt, the practice of slavery was the worst human
rights calamity in American history. Yet how can wrongs
be made right? Should monetary reparations be paid to
descendants? Who are they and how far back should the
payments go?
These
issues are taking a new and tortuous turn after a series
of provocative lawsuits that seek monetary reparations
against four, and possibly as many as 100, U.S. corporations
that may have profited by the institution of slavery.
Virginia, of course, has played a great role because
it was where slavery first began and was the epicenter
of slave-related controversy.
One
defendant is Richmond-based CSX Corp., which bought
another railroad, the Richmond, Fredericksburg &
Potomac, in 1991. The RF&P got its start 157 years
before when its owners began leasing slaves to hack
out roadbeds linking Richmond and Washington, D.C. For
decades, RF&P was a bustling but small carrier that
served as a critical link between Northern and Southern
rail empires.
Not
long after RF&P was taken over, a young African-American
woman named Deadria Farmer-Paellmann was researching
her family history. She had grown up in New York City,
but had ancestors who had been slaves in the South.
The more she plunged into her research, the angrier
she got. She found that the predecessors of many highly
profitable U.S. corporations had used slave labor or
somehow benefited from it. Farmer-Paellmann entered
law school with the goal of becoming a lawyer and filing
class action suits for reparations against the companies.
This
March, nearly two years after she got her law degree,
Farmer-Paellmann launched her legal blitz. She filed
federal lawsuits against Aetna insurance, claiming that
its predecessor profited from policies taken out on
slaves, and FleetBoston, whose earlier companies had
made money financing the slave trade. Besides CSX, Norfolk-based
railroad Norfolk Southern Corp. was named as a defendant.
The
Farmer-Paellmann suits seek restitution on behalf of
some 35 million African-Americans she claims are related
to the slaves whose labor was misappropriated. Some
estimate the value of the labor of those slaves to be
as high as $1.4 trillion. Possibly up to 100 companies
may become defendants. USA Today has identified dozens
of companies whose predecessor companies were linked
to slavery, including Media General, publisher of this
magazine, because one Richmond newspaper that was a
forerunner of the Richmond Times-Dispatch sold ads for
slave buyers.
Regarding
the four firms named in her suits, Farmer-Paellmann
states: "These are corporations that benefited
from stealing people, from stealing labor, from forced
breeding, from torture, from committing numerous horrendous
acts, and there's no reason why they should be able
to hold onto such assets they acquired through such
horrendous acts."
Paying
reparations to injured parties is nothing new. The Kaiser's
Germany was forced to pay war reparations and Jewish
survivors of the Holocaust got settlements from German
corporations. The U.S. government paid Japanese-Americans
interned during World War II.
When it comes to slavery, however, the issue of reparations
faces huge questions, chiefly because the practice of
slavery ended 137 years ago. To gain differing perspectives,
Virginia Business asked two commentators - one a professor
of history at Norfolk State University and another a
lawyer with pre-Civil War family ties to Virginia -
to weigh in for this month's Ideas section.
Return
to Virginia Business - July 2002
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