Reparations leaders rip JP Morgan Chase's scholarship offer

• Originally published by the Chicago Sun Times [here] on January 23, 2005

Copyright © The Sun-Times Company


BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter  


Champions of the slave reparations movement are denouncing as "insulting" and a "joke" an offer from JPMorgan Chase & Co. -- parent company of Bank One -- to create a $5 million scholarship fund for African-American students in Louisiana to make amends for the banking behemoth's past ties to slavery.

Conrad Worrill, chairman of the National Black United Front, said Friday that the $5 million offer doesn't begin to repair the damage created when two of JPMorgan Chase's predecessor banks in Louisiana allowed 13,000 slaves to be used as collateral on loans and took ownership of 1,250 slaves when those loans defaulted.

"The Bill Daley/JPMorgan Chase [offer] is insulting. It's a joke. To admit they owned 13,000 slaves and say they're only going to come up with $5 million? What is $5 million over five years? That's like no money," Worrill said.

$5 mil. 'nowhere near enough'

"Calculate how much money they made off 13,000 slaves. This is a way to appease and get themselves off the hook. This is not addressing the profits they acquired from owning slaves. It's nothing. It's an effort to dilute and diminish the issue. They should sit with the leadership of the reparations movement and negotiate."

JPMorgan Chase's decision to "acknowledge the truth they've been denying" marks a "step in the right direction," but it's nowhere near enough, said Lionel Jean Baptiste, an attorney representing plaintiffs in a landmark slave reparations case filed in federal court. The case against JPMorgan Chase and other corporate entities was dismissed without prejudice. The plaintiffs' amended complaint is now pending along with the defendants' motion to dismiss.

"The demands of the plaintiffs were that the defendants establish a trust fund fully funded to address the ills of the black community. We're talking about education, health care, legal and family support services," Baptiste said.

"To give back $5 million [in scholarships] does not begin to make up for the tremendous amount of wealth that JPMorgan Chase extracted from the enslaved Africans. We need to come around the table, work out details of this trust fund and begin to make a dent in some of the problems we face that reflects the amount of capital extracted unjustly from these Africans."

Ald. Dorothy Tillman (3rd), City Council champion for slave reparations, refused to comment on the demands, nor would she say whether she thinks a $5 million college scholarship fund was sufficient.

Bill Daley, Midwest chairman of JPMorgan Chase and the mayor's brother, refused to comment on the demands.

Earlier in the week, Daley told the Chicago Sun-Times that the bank had gone "further than anybody" to comply with the city's disclosure ordinance.

'We complied with the law'

"People can file lawsuits. Let the courts deal with that. We complied with the law and put an apology out, and we're moving forward with a scholarship plan in Louisiana," Daley said.

"For me personally, it is very upsetting to see documents that refer to a period in the 1830s where people were treated as collateral or as property. If you see those documents, you can't help but be moved as to a period that none of us were proud of and a war was fought over. But this is a great institution."

In October 2002, Chicago became the first city in the nation to demand that city contractors either scour their records and come clean about past ties to slavery or get off the governmental gravy train.

Last year, Tillman accused JPMorgan Chase of profiting from the slave trade and lying about it on a sworn affidavit. She demanded the company be barred from doing business with the city. The bank hired a research firm to search through Louisiana records.