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By Bill Rigby
NEW YORK, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Giant insurers Aetna Inc. (AET) and New York Life Insurance Co., among others, are set to come under pressure to hand over details of slave insurance policies they sold 150 years ago following a new law passed in California this weekend.
The move could be the first step towards compulsory hearings to determine if they should make reparations -- possibly worth millions of dollars -- to black slaves' descendants.
The move comes soon after California's Insurance Commissioner threatened to close down some European insurers' operations in the state unless they honoured Nazi-era life insurance policies.
The new law, signed by California Governor Gray Davis on Saturday, gives California's Insurance Commissioner, Harry Low, the power to ask all insurers doing business in the state to hand over details of slave policies written in the 1850s and 1860s that paid out money to slave owners rather than the families when a slave died.
Although the practice was not illegal, the law's supporters say immoral profits from slavery should be returned to slaves' descendants.
Under a typical slave policy, a slave owner would get a $500 payout from an annual premium of about $11 on an insured slave. The policies disappeared with the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865.
In March of this year, Aetna, the U.S. No. 1 health insurer, became the first American corporation to issue a public apology over its involvement in slavery, expressing regret over the slave policies it underwrote in the firm's early years in the 1850s. The Hartford, Conn.-based insurer stopped short, however, of committing any money to restitution or compensation.
Aetna will comply with any requirements to turn over records to the California Insurance Commissioner, Aetna spokesman Fred Laberge told Reuters on Wednesday. He added that Aetna only had records of five such polices, as far as he was aware.
At least three other insurers still operating in California also issued slave policies, and may come under scrutiny.
According to research by African-American historian Dee Parmer Woodtor, other companies that sold slave polices include New York Life, one of the top 10 U.S. life insurance firms, and mutual insurers Baltimore Life Insurance Co. and American Life Insurance Co.
The now defunct life insurer Hartford Life -- which is not connected to the company of the same name owned by Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. (HIG) -- is also thought to have issued slave policies.
Representatives of each of those companies did not return calls this week.
Bermudan insurer Ace Ltd. (ACL) may also have to answer questions on the subject, as it now owns The Insurance Co. of North America, which also sold slave policies, according to research by authors Charles Blockson and Ron Fry in their 1977 book 'Black Genealogy'.
Ace acquired the company last year when it bought the U.S. property-casualty insurance operations of health insurer Cigna Corp. (CI).
The California legislation -- passed in the form of two bills -- was introduced by Democratic Senator Tom Hayden, and supported by African American groups such as Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH coalition and the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) in California.
The first law, entitled the Slaveholder Insurance Policies Bill (SB 2199), calls on California's Insurance Commissioner to request records on slave policies from insurers in the state, and the second, the UC Slavery Colloquium Bill (SB 1737) asks the University of California to hold a conference to look into "the economic legacy of slavery", which supporters hope will unearth more evidence of the practice.
"Centuries of slavery subsidised business formation and growth," Hayden said in an interview with Reuters. "(This legislation) is a good opportunity to fill some gaps (in history), or ask why the gaps have existed."
"Corporate archives now hide the details of how my enslaved ancestors lived, worked, and died to make corporations wealthy," said Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, a New York-based campaigner whose requests prompted Aetna's apology earlier this year.
"The passage of these bills brings descendants of enslaved Africans one step closer to knowing the truth and achieving restitution from these unjustly enriched institutions."
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