<br/>UNJUST ENRICHMENT: JPMorgan Got PAID Off Slavery

Says Predecessor Banks Owned Slaves

The banks loaned money to plantation owners, accepting slaves as collateral.

Banks that later became part of JPMorgan Chase & Co. received thousands of slaves as collateral for 19th century loans, the No. 2 U.S. bank said on Thursday in an apology. The bank made the revelation to the city of Chicago to comply with an ordinance requiring companies doing business with it to disclose any links to slavery. JPMorgan also sent a letter to employees apologizing for its' predecessors involvement in a "brutal and unjust institution." Citizens Bank and Canal Bank in Louisiana served plantations from the 1830s until the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), Chairman William Harrison and President Jamie Dimon said in the letter. The banks sometimes took ownership of slaves when plantation owners defaulted on loans. JPMorgan Chase, which became the second largest bank in the United States last year after buying Chicago-based Bank One Corp., estimated that between 1831 and 1865, Citizens Bank and Canal Bank accepted approximately 13,000 slaves as collateral. The banks eventually owned about 1,250 slaves. "We apologize to the African-American community, particularly those who are descendants of slaves, and to the rest of the American public for the role that Citizens Bank and Canal Bank played," the letter said. History Associates (who conducted the study for JPMorgan) found that Canal Bank and Citizens Bank merged in 1924, and an investor group led by a J.P. Morgan predecessor took control of the merged bank in 1931. The bank failed two years later. As a result, “there would not have been any economic benefit flowing through to any present-day organization,” a J.P. Morgan spokeswoman says. Some of the failed bank’s deposits and loans then were taken over by the National Bank of Commerce in New Orleans, which was bought out by Bank One in 1998.. [more] and [more] and [more] and [more]