Daley Faces Tough Questions about JP Morgan's Role in Slave Trade

• Originally published in the Chicago Sun Times, 5/18/2004 [here]
  

Bill Daley takes key position with J.P. Morgan Chase
Bill Daley's appointment as chairman of the Midwest for J.P. Morgan Chase places him at the center of a political firestorm over slave reparations. Ald. Dorothy Tillman (3rd Ward), City Council champion of the reparations movement, has accused J.P. Morgan Chase of profiting from the slave trade, and lying about it on a sworn affidavit.

Bill Daley's appointment as chairman of the Midwest for J.P. Morgan Chase places him at the center of a political firestorm over slave reparations.

Ald. Dorothy Tillman (3rd Ward), City Council champion of the reparations movement, has accused J.P. Morgan Chase of profiting from the slave trade, and lying about it on a sworn affidavit. "J.P. Morgan Chase violated the law. They have to come into compliance. ... This is as important as Brown vs. the Board of Education. It's a precedent for the reparations movement and our struggles in this city. It's a precedent for the country and for all those other companies that have lied and the others who are thinking about lying."

How the controversy is resolved will determine whether J.P. Morgan Chase is barred from accepting deposits of Chicago tax dollars, and whether it can remain in the running as one of 10 teams vying to operate the Chicago Skyway for the next 50 years.

That's apparently why Tillman was on the receiving end of one of the first calls Daley made after his appointment was publicly announced.

The alderman refused to disclose the substance of that conversation. She would only say she's more hopeful than ever that J.P. Morgan Chase will stop its stonewalling, and honor a 2002 ordinance that demanded that city contractors search their records and come clean about past ties to slavery.

"He understands the lay of the land here. ... I don't expect Bill Daley to come in and make J.P. Morgan Chase above the law -- a law that even his brother supported. It might just be the opposite," Tillman said. "J.P. Morgan Chase violated the law. They have to come into compliance. ... This is as important as Brown vs. the Board of Education. It's a precedent for the reparations movement and our struggles in this city. It's a precedent for the country and for all those other companies that have lied and the others who are thinking about lying."

Daley said he told Tillman that "I really don't know anything about the issue other than what I've read, and senior people at J.P. Morgan are taking it seriously, they've met with her, they will continue to meet with her and try to get it behind all of us."

J.P. Morgan Chase has responded to the research that Tillman's daughter conducted in the Library of Congress by offering to amend its economic disclosure statement to say that companies "relevant to the story of the Morgan family" may have "profited from business relationships with persons or companies that owned or used slaves." But, the company categorically denied that it lied on its sworn affidavit.

Frederick Hill, executive vice-president of J.P. Morgan Chase, insisted that George Peabody & Co. and J.S. Morgan & Co. were "not predecessor entities" of J.P. Morgan Chase.

Corporation Counsel Mara Georges has ruled that the 2002 ordinance requires city contractors to search not only their own records, but those of "every known antecedent entity, acquired entities, components of earlier mergers and entities acquired by and subsurned into a prior entity that became a predecessor."

In an April 29 letter to Finance Committee Chairman Edward M. Burke (14th), Georges also ruled that a city contractor "may not ignore records archived outside its possession," such as those located at a museum, university library, historical society or trade association.