Retro-Indignation

I’m going to get a seriously stiff neck from shaking my head at the media…

This morning revealed a gripping headline at the Chicago Sun-Times:

Company admits slave history

This apparently is a crucial issue in award of the underwriting of a $1.5 billion O'Hare Airport bond, and refers to the Lehman Brothers financial services firm.

Here’s a snippet:

"Specifically, records in Montgomery show that the partnership owned a total of three slaves in 1852, two slaves in 1858, three slaves in 1859, two slaves in 1860, four slaves in 1861 and five slaves in 1864," Polizzotto said.

"Neither we nor our consultant have been able to locate any records that would enable us to determine the extent to which the original partnership profited from its ties to slavery or to account for the partnership's profits from its transactions involving the cotton industry."

Wait just a minute here – a company in this country is admitting that it owned slaves during a time when slavery was legal? Why, I oughta -

Oh, hold on….that’s not news…it’s HISTORY.

The slavery reparations lawsuit will determine whether or not companies are liable financially for long-past slave ownership. But we did fight a little, teeny, insignificant WAR to rectify the situation, you know……

Was slavery wrong? Yes. IS IT OVER? In this country, YES.

Call me crazy, but holding a company responsible for activities that were legal 200 years ago (with the practitioners long deceased) – or that were abolished by a war - just doesn’t seem on the up-and-up to me.

At any rate, I’m just eagerly awaiting these headlines…

“England admits to taxation without representation in the American colonies.”

“Man admits to drinking alcohol during Prohibition”

"Daimler-Benz admits Hitler had Mercedes."

"Davy Crockett owned handguns without permit, say scholars."