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Peter Flaherty, president of the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), today criticized JPMorgan Chase & Co. for apologizing for its alleged links to slavery. Flaherty said, "Instead of caving in to shakedown artists, the bank should have made the moral case against group guilt and in favor of individual sovereignty. This is an act of corporate cowardice." JPMorgan Chase apparently disregarded a warning by NLPC against appeasing reparations activists. In a Nov. 15, 2004 letter to JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO William B. Harrison, Jr., Flaherty wrote, "It is imperative that corporations resist the growing calls to pay slave reparations. Corporations are not legally or morally obligated to pay money just because their 19th century predecessors may have profited from slavery." JPMorgan Chase & Co., the parent company of Bank One, disclosed last week that two of its predecessor banks in Louisiana allowed 13,000 slaves to be used as collateral on loans and took ownership of 1,250 slaves when the loans defaulted. The bank purportedly took the action in order to comply with a 2002 City of Chicago ordinance that any company doing business with the city must reveal ties to slavery. The bank apologized for its links to slavery and created a $5 million college scholarship fund for African-American students in Louisiana. Flaherty continued, "Nothing required this kind of groveling or the payment of $5 million in tribute." Of the scholarship fund, Flaherty said, "If the scholarships are race-based, JPMorgan is making a mistake. Race-based scholarships operate off the same principle of slavery itself." [more]