Historic Hearing on Slave Era Disclosure Bill and Reparations Resolution
Donna Lamb
February 21, 2005

Tough-nosed facts and deeply felt emotion. Both were much in evidence at
the historic City Council hearing on a bill requiring companies desiring
to do business with New York City to disclose whether they profited from
slavery and/or the slave industry. Also heard were two resolutions
regarding reparations to descendants of slavery.

This February 17th hearing was held jointly by the City Council’s
Governmental Operations Committee, chaired by Deputy Majority Leader
Bill Perkins, and the Contracts Committee, chaired by Council Member
Robert Jackson. They stated that its timing was no coincidence, but a
conscious effort to raise these important issues during Black History
Month when all thoughtful, patriotic Americans are urged to consider the
contributions of African Americans to this society.

As both Jackson and Perkins made clear, under their proposed slave era
disclosure ordinance, firms discovering their ties to slavery would not
be barred from receiving municipal contracts; however, any company found
falsifying its history would have its contracts voided. "This is about
truth, enlightenment and accountability,” Perkins explained. “By
exposing and confronting our past, no matter how painful, we can learn
to combat prejudice and indifference now."

The committees also considered a resolution calling on Congress to hold
fact-finding hearings regarding reparations for descendents of Africans
who were held in slavery in this country and its original colonies
between 1619 and 1865, and a resolution urging the establishment of a
reparations commission on slavery in New York City. “This is a very
emotional issue for me, going far beyond any kind of legislation we can
pass,” commented Council Member Charles Barron, the resolutions’ prime
sponsor. “It's hard for me to get intellectual when we talk about
murder, rape and robbery of a people, and the impact it’s had on us to
this very day psychologically, sociologically and economically. I hope
this hearing can bring some justice.”

The hearing began with testimony from Dr. Howard Dodson, Director of
the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He presented
background on the development of slavery and the slave trade going back
to 1625 when Dutch settlers brought the first enslaved Africans to the
city to exploit as its labor force. He showed how conditions went from
bad to worse for captive Africans after the British won control of New
Amsterdam in 1664 and the city became an even more aggressive actor in
the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. The Duke of York – for whom the city was
renamed – was a major shareholder in the firm that held the monopoly in
the British slave trade. York granted port privileges to ships engaged
in the slave trade and encouraged the city’s residents to become more
actively involved in it. All the while, New York developed elaborate
slave codes to control and restrict the behavior of enslaved Africans
and to strip free and half-free Blacks of the rights and property they
had held, however tenuously, under Dutch rule.

Dodson was followed by renowned Chicago Alderman Dorothy Tillman who
spoke in depth about the groundbreaking slave era disclosure ordinance
she spearheaded that passed unanimously in 2002 in her city’s council.
Similar laws now also exist in Los Angeles and Detroit.

Tillman pointed out that Chicago has 50 Council Members and only 19 are
Black, 6 or 7 are Latino and the rest are white; yet, they passed this
ordinance without a single dissenting vote. “That says New York can do
the same,” she declared. “I don't mean to imply that its passage was
easily accomplished because it wasn't,” she continued. “We put in many
weeks of hard work encouraging other council members to take a
leadership role and we spoke to community groups and organizations,
using every opportunity to educate and bring clarity and understanding
to what reparations means.”

Though there were four white councilmembers who stuck their noses into
the hearing room for a few minutes and left, Brooklyn Council Member
David Yassky not only remained for an extended period of time but spoke
eloquently, thanking Alderman Tillman for her leadership and
inspiration. He said, too, that he believes no one of goodwill should be
afraid of the truth and that we have to look at slavery not only in
broad outline but in detail because that's what makes it real. “And
anyone who thinks there's no connection between the centuries of slavery
and the fact that half of New York’s Black men are unemployed is
ignorant or just doesn't want to see,” he stated emphatically. “It's
important for people to understand how deep the roots of slavery go in
our society because that's how deep the solutions need to go.”

In stark contrast to the previous speakers was the testimony delivered
by Elisa Velazquez, General Counsel to the Mayor’s Office of Contract
Services. In essence, the Bloomberg Administration’s stance on the slave
era disclosure bill is that it “would deprive the City of the benefits
of open competition among responsible bidders and would therefore
violate the state's competitive bidding laws.” The Administration
doesn’t oppose the Council's encouragement of City vendors to search
their history for slave era profits “so long as we preserve the option
for the City to continue to do business with vendors who decline to
conduct such research or make such disclosures.”

As was swiftly pointed out by more than one councilmember, it was very
slick of Bloomberg to try to hide behind state law, and if the companies
were willing to do this research voluntarily, there would be no need for
this ordinance! Council Member Larry Seabrook was at his best as he
brought out the fact that this ordinance is not unique, for there are
already numerous entities, national and international, that the City is
prohibited from doing business with – such as firms with Mafia
connections and the entire country of Cuba.

Also presenting testimony were Regent Adelaide Sanford and 94 years old
Mary Lacey Madison, both granddaughters of enslaved Africans. They spoke
movingly of having intimate knowledge about chattel slavery from their
beloved grandparents and other relatives who endured it. Dr. James
Campbell, Chair of Brown University’s Steering Committee on Slavery and
Justice, also gave detailed testimony about how the university is
attempting to come to grips with and atone for its own extensive
involvement in slavery.

In his testimony Atty. Roger Wareham noted that JP Morgan Chase, one of
the defendants in their class action lawsuit, revealed its ties to
slavery only when faced with the very real threat of not being able to
do business with the city of Chicago. Viola Plummer of the December 12th
Movement spoke about such New York-based companies as Domino Sugar which owned 1,477 enslaved Africans in the early nineteenth century and 5,000 by 1860. “Blacks could certainly be assumed to have created the super
corporation that Domino Sugar became,” she declared.

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