Twenty years ago, Chicago became the first city in the nation to pass a law requiring firms doing business with the city to disclose whether they profited from slavery. Now two decades later, there is no record that Chicago leaders — during the tenure of three mayors — fully implemented the law, officials said Thursday.
But Ald. Stephanie Coleman , the chair of the Subcommittee on Reparations, said Thursday her efforts to obtain two decades of those reports had been unsuccessful. Coleman said she had hoped to use that information to guide the next steps of the subcommittee.Only six firms doing business with the city appear to have disclosed any information to the city in 20 years about their links to the slave trade and only one of those reports is complete, Coleman said.
While U.S. Holdings, Bank of America, Aetna Insurance, PNC Bank, Wells Fargo and Harvard College filed statements with the city about their historical ties to the slave trade, only the statement filed by Aetna was complete, Coleman said. Those reports came from the mayor's office, Coleman said. Chief Procurement Officer Aileen Velazquez, appointed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot in September 2021, told members her office did not have the annual reports required by the slavery-era disclosure ordinance and could not provide them to the subcommittee. The 2021 report will be complete by June 30 and submitted to the City Council, Velazquez said.
Formed in June 2020 and spurred in part by the demands for racial justice that swept the nation in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the City Council’s Subcommittee on Reparations met for just the second time in two years on Thursday.