Untold Legacy: Powerful New Film Documenting Slavery in New York City

In the main, "Untold Legacy" focuses on a February 2005 joint hearing in which the New York City Council Governmental Operations Committee, chaired by Deputy Majority Leader Bill Perkins, and the Contracts Committee, chaired by Council Member Robert Jackson, considered a bill that would require companies doing business with the City to investigate and reveal any past relationship to slavery. Under this proposed Slave Era Disclosure Ordinance, firms discovering such ties would not be barred from receiving municipal contracts; however, any company found falsifying its history would have its contracts voided.

Though resisted by Mayor Bloomberg, such legislation has already been passed in Chicago, Los Angeles and several other municipalities. Many more are considering it.

Using testimony provided at the hearing as well as statements by other reparationists, the film explores New York City’s slavery-based development and why redress is due. For instance, Dr. Howard Dodson, Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, states that the institution of slavery was established on this soil before the City of New Amsterdam was even established. In the early 16th century, the first enslaved Africans were brought to the settlement to be exploited for their labor. "Those enslaved individuals," Dodson explains, "did, in fact, lay the economic foundation for the development of the settlement eventually called New York City."

As Dodson also reveals, later on, New York City was the principal moneylender for the expansion of the slave trade. Further, the City positioned itself so that cotton from the South didn't go directly to Europe but came through New York ports and factories and was then shipped to Europe. "So New York was, in fact, controlling the flow of the cotton economy from the States," Dodson notes.

In "Untold Legacy," Deadria Farmer-Paellmann provides valuable details about how corporations played a variety of roles in the enslavement of Africans. For example, Aetna Inc. wrote life-insurance policies on slaves, with slave owners as the beneficiaries. She points out that, "Someone who might not have invested in very expensive human chattel had the security from Aetna to do so."

Farmer-Paellmann goes on to explain that with these domestic life insurance policies, enslaved Africans could be employed in ultra hazardous capacities on railroads, steamships, in coal mines – places where there were many tragic deaths. "So a company like Aetna owes restitution for helping to maintain Africans in these kinds of capacities through financing their enslavement," she says.

As always, speaking strongly is Council Member Charles Barron, sponsor of the Queen Mother Moore Reparations Resolution, which urges the establishment of a reparations commission on slavery in New York City. "When you mention slavery," he states, "conjure up in your mind the worst kind of human cruelty. Murder, rape and robbery of a people is the impact that this has had on us to this very day psychologically, sociologically and economically."

Agreeing with him is David Yassky, a courageous young white Council Member from Brooklyn. "For America to truly achieve its promise, we Americans have to come squarely to grips with the evil in our past along with the great," he declares. "And anybody who thinks that there is no link between the centuries of enslavement and the fact that half of African American men in New York are unemployed is ignorant or doesn't want to see the connection, because it's there."

Another person interviewed in the film is the current author, in my capacity as Communications Director for Caucasians United for Reparations and Emancipation. I speak of the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan where one can see by the skeletal remains that enslaved Africans were literally worked to death building this city. And I say that when people come to the US hoping to find and benefit from the "streets paved in gold," they don't know that "these streets were bathed in the blood, sweat and tears of enslaved Africans."

Also appearing in the film are Chicago Alderman Dorothy Tillman, J.P. Morgan Chase representative Thomas Kelly, and Elisa Velazquez, the General Counsel to the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services.

"Untold Legacy" concludes with the statement, "In Memory of the Millions of Africans Who Died During the Middle Passage and During 250 Plus Years of Brutal U.S. Slavery." As to why she made the film, Leslie Brown stated, "First and foremost it was to honor, remember and recognize the ancestors. I wanted to put information together about what they'd been through so I can help educate our current population of African Americans and, beyond that, educate the country about this history that has been so suppressed and distorted."

Brown said she will be following the Slavery Disclosure Bill through to the vote in the full City Council. Whether they vote to implement the bill or not, she plans to show the world the process in a full-length documentary.

To order "Untold Legacy," call Third World Newsreel at (212) 947-9277 or visit www.twn.org.