Lehman Brothers Admits Past Slavery Ties

• Originally published on 11/25/03 on YahooNews.com [here]
  

Lehman Brothers has become the first contractor with the city of Chicago to acknowledge past ties to slavery under a law requiring the disclosure. An affidavit filed by the financial services firm said that the three brothers who founded the company bought at least one female slave, and "may have personally owned other slaves." In October 2002, the Chicago City Council passed a groundbreaking ordinance dictating that companies working with the city disclose whether they ever profited from slavery.

New York-based Lehman Brothers made the disclosure in connection with its role as co-manager of a $145 million O'Hare Airport bond issue, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Monday.

More than 2,000 slavery disclosure affidavits have been filed by city contractors, officials said, but Lehman Brothers was the first to acknowledge ties to slavery.

"I don't think it means that we're the only firm that has that part in our history. It just means that we took it very seriously and we're quick to disclose what we know," said Carole Brown, a senior vice president of the company and chairwoman of the board of the Chicago Transit Authority.

The company was founded by three brothers in 1850 in Montgomery, Ala.

"The Lehman Brothers in the 1850s is not the company that it is today," said Brown, who is black.

Alderwoman Dorothy Tillman, who sponsored the law, said only companies who lie in their affidavits could lose their contracts with the city.

The disclosure could encourage people to seek reparations from Lehman Brothers, experts said.

"All of the efforts of the reparations movement ... have now paid off," Roosevelt University history professor Christopher Reed said.