Bank Adds To Slavery Disclosure

Fran Spielman, Chicago Sun-Times, May 4

Under pressure from the City Council’s champion for slave reparations, J.P. Morgan Chase amended its economic disclosure statement Monday to say that companies “relevant to the story of the Morgan family” may have “profited from business relationships with persons or companies that owned or used slaves.”

But J.P. Morgan Chase categorically denied a charge from Ald. Dorothy Tillman (3rd) that the company lied on an affidavit filed in response to a 2002 ordinance that demanded city contractors search their records and come clean about past ties to slavery.

If Tillman is right, J.P. Morgan Chase could be barred from doing business with the city and accepting deposits of Chicago tax dollars. The banking giant is one of nine teams vying for the right to operate the Chicago Skyway.

Frederick Hill, executive vice president of J.P. Morgan Chase, insisted that George Peabody & Co. and J.S. Morgan & Co. were “not predecessor entities” of J.P. Morgan Chase.

He said the predecessor of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. was a New York partnership formed for the first time in 1871 under the name Drexel Morgan & Co. It was this company that became J.P. Morgan & Co. in 1895.

Why, then, is the company amending its economic disclosure statement?

“We want to be a good neighbor. . . . We want to continue to do business with the city. We have a lot of employees here. … When we were challenged on this, it is in the spirit of good faith and in the spirit of cooperation with a community that’s very important to us that we have offered the amendment,” Hill said.

“However, when you look at the ordinance and what the ordinance requires, we believe … that we have, at all times, complied with that ordinance.”

Tillman disagreed. Her reading of what the economic disclosure statement requires is vastly different.

“It says that you have searched any and all of your records — your predecessors and everybody,” Tillman said.

“You signed an affidavit. You didn’t sign a resolution stating that you had done these things. … You perjured yourself. … What you’re trying to propose is very insulting. You’re not being for real.”

Hill countered: “It’s never our intent to insult you or any other member of City Council. We respect you. That’s why we’ve tried to comply with every question that you’ve asked in this regard.”

Ald. Ed Smith (28th) compared the appearance by Hill to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before the 9/11 commission.

“She was sent to be ate up by the wolves. That’s what happened. You’re being sent here to answer for some questions that took place in the company years ago, when you weren’t even born. You should have said to those people, ’You go take that heat,’ “ Smith said.

Armed with research unearthed in the Library of Congress by her 34-year-old daughter, Ebony, Tillman last week produced what she called irrefutable evidence to support her claim that J.P. Morgan Chase had past ties to slavery and lied about it on an affidavit.

The documents from Riggs, Peabody and Co., a predecessor of J.P. Morgan Chase, include a December 1833 receipt for a pair of shoes for a slave named Sally.

For William W. Corcoran, a client of George Peabody, there was a receipt for an August 1832 ad placed in the Columbia Gazette for the private sale of slaves. And there was a Peabody and Riggs receipt listing slaves transported on a ship called the Aurora.

The amendment filed Monday makes an important legal distinction that forms the cornerstone of the company’s defense.

“This information did not come from the corporate records of the undersigned, including those of its predecessor entities,” it states.