In 2002, descendants of African slaves filed a historic class-action lawsuit in U.S. federal court demanding reparations from financial, railroad, tobacco, insurance and textile companies that had benefited from their predecessors. Reparations lawyer Deadria Farmer-Paellmann was tasked with proving direct links between the plaintiffs and the slave trade, so she submitted to the court DNA …
THE GUARDIAN – Barclays admits possible link to slavery after reparation call
Barclays bank is coming under mounting pressure to pay millions of pounds in reparations as fresh allegations suggest that banks it has taken over were founded on profits made from slavery. New evidence prompted leading black American campaigners to write to senior Barclays officials last week demanding meetings over the issue. Barclays, which is trying …
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ABC: The World Today – Slave Descendants sue British Insurance Company
HAMISH ROBERTSON: In a case set to test the bounds of the legal definition of "pain and suffering", the American descendents of Africans forced into slavery have launched a legal action against the British insurance company, Lloyds of London. The multi-billion dollar claim in the US courts alleges that Lloyds conspired with the American tobacco …
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THE NEW YORK SUN – From J.P. Morgan Chase, an Apology And $5 Million in Slavery Reparations
J.P. Morgan Chase & Company's recent apology for ties to slavery and a corresponding $5 million scholarship program it set up for black students was a "step in the right direction for a tainted corporation," but the nation's no. 2 bank has a long way to go before it has fully paid its debt to …
LA TIMES – Seeking Justice for Slavery’s Sins
NEW YORK — Forty acres and a mule. We were supposed to get 40 acres and a mule. It always sounded like a myth to Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, a kind of urban legend black people told one another. Like when her grandfather would occasionally complain about some sort of government injustice and invariably end his grumbling by saying …
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CNN – Suit seeks billions in slave reparations
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Attorneys for a former law student, who discovered evidence linking U.S. corporations to the slave trade, filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday that could seek billions of dollars in reparations for the descendants of slaves in America. The lawsuit filed in federal court in Brooklyn names FleetBoston Financial, the railroad firm CSX and …
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USA TODAY – Farmer-Paellmann not afraid of huge corporations
By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY Deadria Farmer-Paellmann has spent five years digging for evidence that ties Corporate America to pre-Civil War slavery. She confronted Aetna in 2000. . . NEW YORK — Her husband, who's German and white, didn't believe her. So they played a game. They'd go to a store and each make a …
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LA TIMES – Aetna Apologizes for Slave Insurance
Aetna Inc., the nation’s largest health insurer, apologized for selling policies in the 1850s that reimbursed slave owners for financial losses when those they enslaved died. “Aetna has long acknowledged that for several years shortly after its founding in 1853 that the company may have insured the lives of slaves,” Aetna spokesman Fred Laberge said …
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Restitution Study Group 