A can of worms for sure but much more perhaps. It?s likely Tom Hayden and Gary Davis have sown the wind and the people of California will reap the legal costs of the whirlwind for years and years to come. As this issue heats up, some very thorny legal questions will have to be addressed. The first being a legal and supportable definition of ?profiting from slavery? needs to be hammered out. If too narrow and only targets one industry, rest assured that target industry is going to scream bloody murder, demand due process, equal protection under the law and cite discrimination. If too broad, that will include any Northern or non-US industry that traded with the anti bellum/pre Civil War South. And that would include many, many big name US organizations and many non-US organizations that still exist today. That surely will tie up the State and Federal courts for the remainder of the century.
Here is an interesting one. A Connecticut manufacturer of men?s fancy linen shirts gets the cotton textile feedstock from the rural pre Civil War South. This shirt manufacturing company gets into the arms manufacturing business and becomes the Winchester repeating arms company (real story). Of course, Colt, Smith & Wesson and Winchester sold arms to slave owners prior to the Civil War. What is that to be called and are they signed up? Is this profiting from slavery?
Here is a probable. The early ancestor of General Motors made horse carriages and farm utility wagons. What if they sold a carriage or utility wagon to a salve owner, what then?
For sure, every linear inch of railway in the South came from Northern steel mills and nearly every locomotive that ran in the South came from the Baldwin works in Lester, PA. Who gets signed up for that?
Did the then US Federal Government ever collect taxes based on exports from or imports to the pre Civil War South? If so, was that not profiting from slavery and where do ya go from there? What about still existing Federal facilities that were built by slave labor, where do they fit in? Ft. Sumter for example.
At least for me, these questions are rather interesting to contemplate.
A second thorny issue is the question of if contemporary organizations can be held liable for the legal conduct of parent organizations 150 years ago. Moral and legal may or may not be the same so that is a sticky question. I wouldn?t want to see the court system retrofit contemporary law and morality into situations of 150 years ago and come up with some punitive award and/or judgment. ?Found guilty of legally conducting business 150 years ago and therefore liable? doesn?t sound right to me and would seem to make a mockery of due process.
Then the last question of exactly who should receive reparations if and when a punitive judgment is rendered is even bigger and will tie up the courts even more. No doubt attorneys and organizations like the Rainbow Coalition will be the first in line at the payday window and there will be little or nothing left for the allegedly aggrieved individuals. So court battles as to who should be first at the payday window will come with the territory and that will get, mighty, mighty ugly for sure. The question as to who does and who does not represents the common good will have to be hammered out and I don?t see the ?non-profits? winning that battle.
Fair seas, Bill
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