Historic hearing on slave era disclosure bill and reparations resolution

ough-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 17^th 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 12^th 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.