Harlem Councilman calls on companies to disclose if they profited from slavery

On the steps of City Hall, Councilmember Bill Perkins (D- Harlem) announced hearings on legislation that would force companies seeking business with the city to disclose if they profited from slavery.  The city is following the lead of several other major cites like Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles that have already passed laws making companies doing business with them disclose their slave history.  ''This legislation will force companies to examine their pasts, uncover truths about slavery and help all of us think seriously and severely about this reprehensible period in our history,'' said Perkins, who chairs the Governmental Operations Committee. While companies that reveal that they have profited from slavery will not be kept from doing business with the city, companies who have business with the city and are caught hiding past slave profits will be stripped of their contacts, Perkins said.  The hearings, jointly held with Governmental Operations and Contracts Committees, raise the question of whether individuals of slave descendants will be able to bring lawsuits against companies that disclose they benefited from slavery in the past. The support for such legislation also comes as a minor victory to local-based groups like Millions for Reparations, which has been pushing the Governmental Operations Committee to pass resolutions that will help their ''campaign for reparations.''  Millions for Reparations is among the organizations and individuals scheduled to testify this week. Additional testimonies will come from members of the Bloomberg Administration, Howard Dodson of the Schomburg Center and Dorothy Tillman, the Chicago Alderman who announced last year that J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. indirectly profited from slavery in the 1800s.  ''Too often when we think of slavery, we only think of southern cotton fields. New York has a substantial history of slavery,” Perkins said. “In fact, the government of New York State not only legalized the enslavement of Africans and their descendants, but also enacted slave codes and taxes on the sale of enslaved persons. This legislation is a giant step to getting the reality out. We must acknowledge the past. We must uncover the truth. [more]

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