Commerce: US History: Slavery: Banks acknowledge past trafficking in Black slaves

Yesterday a prominent US bank, fourth largest in the county, acnknowledged that its predecessor institutions owned Black slaves prior to the American Civil War. Wachovia Bank's predecessors had received the slaves who were put up as collateral for loans only to have the previous owners default on their bank indebtedness. Wachovia, based in Charleston, NC, had become motivated to hire historical researchers of its 150 years-old records, because of the the 8 years of picketting and clamouring by the 66,000 member National Black Farmers Association. The researchers hired were employees of The History Factory, keeping the bank's commercial self-sleuthing at arms distance.

MSNBC News reported:

"We apologize to all Americans, and especially to African-Americans and people of African descent," [Wachovia chairman Ken] Thompson said. ¶ "While we can in no way atone for the past, we can learn from it, and we can continue to promote a better understanding of the African-American story, including the unique struggles, triumphs and contributions of African-Americans, and their important role in America's past and present," he added. ¶ John Boyd, the president of National Black Farmers Association, said his group has been picketing and lobbying Wachovia and other banking giants for eight years, urging them to investigate and acknowledge their historical involvement with the slave trade.

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At least 591 Black persons had been owned by the Wachovia predecessor companies, and in an earlier 2005 case the JPMorgan Chase & Company had already acknowledged the historical fact that it had owned "thousands of [Black] slaves as collateral prior to the Civil War." We should not lose sight of the racial specificity of this pattern; this was racism de rigueur. The banks in consultation with the appropriate Black organizations are now engaging in programs for college education and housing in neighborhoods of the Black poor. This anti-racist development is quite different from setting up a socialist Reparations program such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have advocated with the usual steaminess. But, in contrast, the current program of a few big banks, picketted at cost of time and labour by Black civic organizations like the National Black Farmers Association mentioned, has alerted several city governments to their responsiblities as state instruments for public justice. Chicago and Philadelphia have now passed ordinances requiring of businesses what the North Caronlina state legislature is now considering to enact statewide: a clear law requiring businesses to "disclose any past financial links to slavery." If the wording is not race-specific to Blacks, I could see the day when researchers and clients sue in civil courts businesses for past financial links to "white slavery" as well, a term which evokes a defnite reference to moneies accrued from forcible prostitution of women of all races, monies then depostied by pimps in bank accounts which earn said pimps a tidy interest.

Of couse, even as is, this development at Wachovia and JPMorganChase is altogether salutory in the long battle against racist features in American history, and also perhaps against the thriving enforced prostitution practiced widely by criminal elements today. On the front against racism, this development also offers an alternative to the Jackson/Sharpton scam that would impose Reparations taxes, for instance, on a family which had immigrated from Lithuania around the turn into the Twentieth Century and had no organized or personal involvement with slavery, having just escaped the rigours of the Czarist state themselves. It's palpably unfair to rig up a Reparations movement that would tax everybody to pay for something that only some sector of the population and specific institutions were guility of in the far past, and to do all this while hiding behind the rhetoric of "systemic racism," an important concept thereby diminished in value by broadbrush and seriously invalid usage. Numerous Black writers today are pointing out what a shame the Jackson/Sharpton approach has been and continues to be.

Further, having discussed Her Celebrity in a post on refWrite recently, I do hope Oprah is able to make the distinction between the Reparations scam and the present detailed historical research approach, and perhaps with such a distinction to fortify her, she perhaps may reverse the impact of her sob story over little Mo Atta, the 9/11 Islamicist terrorist she wants to cuddle - because of his nasty childhood in his father's harem or what? Give me the fortitude of John Boyd, the National Black Farmers Org, the researchers of The History Project, and pundits like La Shawn Barber and Dr Thomas Sowell, anyday. This new historical pursuit, arduous as it is, company by company, is a far better avenue of approach and will ultimately make a big difference for the real lives of Black people in poverty and in need of decent housing, educational advancement, and Black Christian schools in the ghettoes, supported by vouchers out of public tax dollars and endowments by formerly-slavery-implicated businesses that are around now long enuff to pay up. - Owlb

National Black Farmers website / The History Factory