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Richmond has divested its pension and investments funds from financial institutions linked to slavery. The City Council unanimously passed an ordinance Tuesday in response to the state's Slaveholder Insurance Policies legislation, signed into law in 2000, which helps track what it describes as the "ill-gotten profits from slavery, which profits in part capitalized insurers whose successors remain in existence today." "I can't tell you how in other cities, this has been difficult to achieve, and that in itself says a lot about Richmond," said Councilwoman Maria Viramontes. Research shows that several major insurers, including Aetna, American Life Insurance Co., Baltimore Life Insurance Co., Chase Manhattan, and New York Life, wrote policies protecting slaveholders' investments in the case of harm or death to slaves. "We've found out a couple insurance companies had taken 1,300 slaves as collateral for loans," said assistant city attorney Bruce Soublet. "Once you start talking about slaves, you're going beyond African-Americans. They've discovered a company insured a ship of Chinese slave laborers headed for the U.S." Former state Sen. Tom Hayden, D-Los Angeles, sponsored the bill, which requires the insurance commissioner to cull insurance records for the names of slaveholders and slaves, and make that information available to the public. The law, which actually encompasses two bills, could clear the way for reparations for the descendants of slaves. "There's a legislative history going back three or four years," Soublet said. "Chicago enacted an ordinance in 2003." That ordinance requires companies that do business with the city, including bond underwriters, banks, financial vendors and insurers, to probe their backgrounds for links to slavery. U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has advanced legislation proposing reparations every year since 1989. His efforts have not panned out, but a few states have approved reparations to selected survivor communities.[more]