In Search of Policies Past.

A new California law requires insurers to divulge policies they wrote to insure slaves. Activists are requesting reparations for the insureds' descendents.

A chapter in insurance history will be opened this month, as insurance companies--including Ace Ltd., Aetna Inc. and New York Life Insurance Co.--will be asked to turn over any policies they wrote to insure slaves.

California Insurance Commissioner Harry Low will make the request to enforce a new law, which went into effect Jan. 1. The law seeks information, not monetary damages, although there's a growing movement among activists to ask insurers that may have profited from insuring slaves to pay reparations.

Handwritten policies dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries may be crumbling and hard to read, but they're an important part of American history activists and historians say.

For example, Thomas P. Allen paid a premium of $13.50 to insure Sabrina, a 24-year-old slave, for $600, according to an 1856 policy which is archived at the South Carolina Historical Society. Aetna Life Insurance Co., the forerunner of Aetna Inc., issued the Allen policy. The historical society doesn't have a record to show whether a claim was ever filed on the policy but if it was, Aetna would have paid Allen or his beneficiaries, not Sabrina's biological family.

When it was legal to own slaves, before the Civil War, it would have been legal for owners to insure slaves, just as they may have insured other "property." The new California law will require insurance companies, especially those that date their beginnings back to the 1800s and earlier, to pore through musty archives to see if they--or any predecessor company--wrote such policies.

"These documents provide the first evidence of ill-gotten profits from slavery, which profits in part capitalized insurers whose successors remain in existence today," the California law reads. "Descendants of slaves, whose ancestors were defined as private property, dehumanized, divided from their families, forced to perform labor without appropriate compensation or benefits, and whose ancestors' owners were compensated for damages by insurers, are entitled to full disclosure."

A Public Apology

Aetna Inc. issued a public apology for its role in insuring slaves after it found five such policies in its archives earlier this year. "We regret we have been involved, but it in no way reflects the company today," said Fred Laberge, a spokesman for Aetna Inc.

Other insurers who have written slave policies may include Ace Ltd. and New York Life Insurance Co.

The five policies that Aetna has in its archives are written on letterhead that says Aetna Insurance Co., which was a separate company founded by some of the same people who launched Aetna Life Insurance Co. in 1853, Laberge said. The policies--which do not include the Allen policy held at the South Carolina Historical Society-are signed by Eliphalet A. Bulkeley, Aetna Life's first president. Aetna Life evolved into what is now Aetna Inc.

However, Aetna Insurance Co., which was founded in 1819, is now part of Ace Ltd. Ace also said it is examining those records, plus the records of INA, which it acquired in July 1999. INA was founded in Pennsylvania in 1792 as the Insurance Company of North America. That was 12 years before Pennsylvania abolished slavery, and 53 years before Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Brian Duperreault, chairman and chief executive officer of Ace Ltd., said in a memo to his employees.

Besides searching company archives, the company will appoint an independent task force to investigate the matter, Duperreault said.

"No one within the Ace organization disagrees with the fact that slavery was an abhorrent stain on history," Duperreault said in the memo. "We cannot change the past; we can only learn from it. Ace will fully cooperate with all responsible efforts to explore these historical antecedents and will fully comply with its legal obligations."

New York Life, which traces its history back to 1845 when the Nautilus Insurance Co. was founded, also will search its records, said Bill Werfelman, a spokesman.

"The idea of helping people trace their genealogy is laudable," Werfelman said. "New York Life will do what it can do to assist in that regard."

Aetna was prompted to look for the policies by a request by New York activist Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, who also asked Aetna to pay reparations. Aetna said it wouldn't pay reparations, and while the California law doesn't seek monetary

damages from companies who may have insured slaves, other activists have called for them.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, leader of the Rainbow/Push Coalition, called for insurers to make reparations at the coalition's annual meeting in Chicago in July. "The wealth of certain insurance companies was built, in part, from profits earned from the sale of insurance to slave owners to recover losses in the values of their slave holdings," the Chicago Sun-Times quoted Jackson as saying in July.

Whether insurers should be forced to pay reparations for a practice that was legal isn't clear, said Joanne Pope Melish, associate professor of history at the University of Kentucky and author of "Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and 'Race' in New England."

Slave insurance might have been common, she said, noting her research shows ships carrying slaves were insured--for both the ship and its human cargo.

"African-Americans see Japanese-American descendants of those herded into interment camps receiving reparations. They see Native Americans allowed to own casinos... they see the U.S. government actively working to get reparations for Jewish survivors and descendants of the Holocaust. And they watch these things, and say, 'What about this holocaust of our own?'" Melish said.

Insurers have the means to make reparations, she said. "Maybe every African-American deserves some sort of reparations," Melish said.

A Different Time

Bob Hartwig, chief economist of the Insurance Information Institute, said it isn't appropriate for insurers to pay reparations since insuring slaves "was a regrettable practice that occurred in the pre-Civil War at a time when slaves were viewed as personal property," Hartwig said. "You can't view it through 21st century eyes. You must view it with the eyes of someone in 1865."

In 1865, when the war finally ended, the North took no action to seek reparations from the South, Hartwig said.

"The emphasis was on reunifying the country. The North made a conscious decision not to seek out any damages from those who had benefited from the slave industry," Hartwig said. To seek reparations now doesn't make sense, he said. Also, it would be difficult to determine who should qualify for reparations if they were to be awarded.

Whether reparations will ever be paid remains to be seen. However, it's important for insurers to share what information they have about this period, said those who support the California law.

"In this state, the political climate in recent years gives the impression that we are not better off speaking about racism and redressing the historic injustices against African-Americans," the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles wrote in support of the law. "However, healing is not possible without full disclosure of the score and depth of an illness."