(The following Associated Press article by Pete Yost was published in the January 5 online issue of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As corporate executives, President Bush’s nominees for Treasury secretary and Securities and Exchange Commission chairman personally approved public statements rebuffing efforts to collect financial restitution from their companies for descendants of black slaves.
As head of CSX railroad, Treasury Secretary-designate John Snow signed off on a news release last year after his company was sued for reparations. “Courtrooms are not the proper place to address” the issue, said the statement.
It called slavery a “tragic chapter in our nation’s history” but said it “cannot be attributed to any single company or industry.”
William Donaldson, Bush’s choice to run the SEC, approved a statement in 2000 as head of Aetna insurance that gave an unprecedented apology for the company’s 19th-century role in slavery. The statement added that “beyond our apology no further actions are required.” Aetna was sued last year for reparations.
With the Trent Lott race controversy still fresh in the public’s mind, private attorneys for blacks suing 17 railroads, insurers, financial institutions and tobacco companies for slave reparations are highlighting Snow’s and Donaldson’s roles as they prepare for Senate confirmation hearings this month.
Bill Fletcher Jr., president of TransAfrica Forum, said the two nominees “treat history as if it’s an abstraction.”
The companies point to their records in philanthropy and in promoting diversity in the workplace as signs of their commitment to blacks.
In the case against CSX, the recent lawsuits note that slave labor built some of the lines. Regarding Aetna, the lawsuits cite its sale of policies to slave owners on the lives of their slaves shortly after the insurance company was founded in 1853.