Monday, Jan 24, 2005
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By David Teather
NEW YORK, JAN. 23. America's second biggest bank, JP Morgan Chase, has made a rare apology for its subsidiaries' involvement in the slave trade 200 years ago, admitting that it accepted slaves as loan collateral and ended up owning several hundred. The Wall Street heavyweight said parts of the business accepted thousands of slaves as collateral on loans made to plantation owners in the South in the 19th century. It sent a letter to employees expressing contrition for its involvement in a ``brutal and unjust institution''. It made the disclosure to comply with a rule requiring companies to detail past dealings with the trade when they are doing business with the city of Chicago. Citizens' Bank and Canal Bank in Louisiana, both now part of JP Morgan, served plantations from the 1830s until the American Civil War, which ended in 1865.
Tragic past
Banks sometimes took ownership of slaves when the plantation owners defaulted on loans. The company estimated that between 1831 and 1865 the two banks accepted 13,000 slaves as collateral and ended up owning 1,250 of them. In the letter, the chief executive, William Harrison, said: ``We apologise 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 slavery era was a tragic time in U.S. history and in our company's history.'' Citizens' and Canal merged in 1924 and were bought by Chase in 1931, which merged with JP Morgan in 2000. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
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