Aetna Reviewing Archived Insurance Policies on Slaves

WASHINGTON — Before the Civil War, the corporate ancestor of insurance giant Aetna Inc. sold policies that reimbursed slave owners for financial losses when their human chattel perished, a company spokesman said Wednesday.

Aetna, prompted by a New York activist who challenged the company to reveal details from its history, is studying the sale of such policies and considering “a meaningful way to demonstrate” its commitment to diversity, said spokesman Fred Laberge.

“This is something that’s in our distant past. It’s not anything about Aetna today,” asserted Laberge, who said the practice was legal in the era before slavery was outlawed. “We express deep regret over any participation at all in something like slavery, or in the insuring of slaves.”

Assigning responsibility and demanding reparations for America’s slaveholding past are delicate issues for historians, politicians and interested citizens.

Each legislative session since 1989, for example, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) has introduced a bill to examine slavery and its lingering ripples. Each session, it fails to win even a hearing.

U.S. exhumations of 19th century corporate histories are uncommon, in contrast to the recent experience of Swiss banks that handled Nazi-era gold and corporations that did business with Germany’s Third Reich.

The Aetna issue surfaced recently, Laberge said, when New York lawyer Deadria Farmer-Paellmann contacted the Hartford-based insurance company to seek an apology and reparations. In their archives, Aetna researchers found four such policies dating to the 1850s, as well as a reference to the practice in the company history compiled in 1956.

“They were insurance policies that were purchased by owners of slaves. If something happened to those slaves, the owner was reimbursed,” Laberge said.

Farmer-Paellmann could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.