The report, commissioned by State Street, details the bank’s roots in the slave economy

In April 2019, State Street CEO Ron O’Hanley appeared before the House Financial Services Committee as one of several bank executives to criticize his institution’s involvement in the slave trade.

When asked to raise their hands on whether their banks profited from slavery, O’Hanley held his hands on the table in front of him, indicating that State Street had not.

But GBH News obtained a report commissioned by State Street and completed this spring that tells a very different story.

A team of researchers from Rutgers University has discovered that the wealth accumulated as a result of the slave trade served as seed capital for the founding of State Street’s oldest ancestor, Union Bank.

Rutgers researchers found that many of the bank’s founders owned at least one black slave before 1783, when slavery was abolished in Massachusetts.

Moses Gill, president of Union Bank and acting governor of Massachusetts for a year before his death, is confirmed to have enslaved at least six people. Three of these slaves marked the graves, indicating that Gill was their captor.

The report also said Union Bank’s original State Street office was a mansion that housed slaves for decades before it was converted into a bank.

Paul Francisco, State Street’s chief diversity officer, confirmed that the company has commissioned a historical analysis of its involvement in the slave trade. The landmark report is the result of the company’s efforts to advance social justice beyond 2020, Francisco said.

“There is no conclusive word in the report that State Street … has benefited from slavery today,” Francisco told GBH News.

The report found that many of the company’s founders and early shareholders, including its first president, had profited from slavery.

Since those beginnings, State Street has become the 14th largest bank in the country and one of the largest banks in the world, with total assets of $325 billion. Union Bank became the National Union Bank of Boston after obtaining a national charter in 1865. State Street Deposit & Trust was founded in July 1891. Today’s State Street resulted from the merger of National Union and State Street in October 1925, retaining the State Street name but operating under the National Union charter.

Historians say that the level of involvement of the founders in the slave trade, especially in a port city, is not particularly surprising.

Margaret Newell, a professor of history at Ohio State University, said slavery and the slave trade were not limited to a few people at the time.

“They were built into the New England economy from the beginning,” she said.

“Historians know that many of these financial institutions in the early republic had pretty deep ties to slavery, even in the abstract,” said author and historian Jared Ross Hardesty.

For example, the Rutgers report found that Union Bank and Gill had close ties to the prominent Boylston family, a family that made its fortune through the transatlantic slave trade, owning several slave ships and profiting from goods produced by slaves.

Gill was married to a daughter of the Boylston family and wrote a letter to his son-in-law Thomas Boylston in November 1792 urging him to become a shareholder, as “stock is mostly owned by a gentleman in trade”. Brother Boylston and the slave trader agreed to invest in the Union Bank, and a few months after the initial investment, Gill wrote to Thomas in March 1793 saying he would send “a statement of the Union Bank stock I have purchased for you, when the dividends are 8 per cent.” will be done.”

Hardesty said these historical institutions are better off sharing that past with the public.

“Not acknowledging the story will do more damage to the brand than open acknowledgment,” Hardesty said. “At some point, not acknowledging it when it’s common knowledge becomes a bit difficult.”

Francisco said the Rutgers report was given to all of State Street’s 40,000 employees this summer, and that employee opinion outweighed that of the public.

“The reason we haven’t made it public is because it’s not yet for general consumption. This is something we want to manage and we want to manage with our employees,” Francisco said.

“We are proud of what we do on State Street. We are proud of our journey in this space. We are one of the few companies that is still very committed to doing this job right and public opinion is not going to derail us,” he added.

Since the report was completed in the spring, Francisco said the company has been talking to its employees, particularly black employees, asking for their input and holding listening sessions and open forums.

“It would be very premature for us to make anything public when we still don’t know exactly what we want to do (or) how we want to address these findings,” he said.

As of 2020, the company has internally resolved its involvement in slavery. State Street conducted a civil rights audit that outlined a plan to “be a leader” in racial justice. In February, the company also announced a $100 million investment in community lenders.

In June 2020, Hannah Grove, then State Street’s director of marketing, told employees via the Collaborate message board: “We have no reason to believe that State Street’s parent bank had anything to do with or finance the ships used by the slave traders . »

A little more than two years later, in September 2022, O’Hanley said the company would commission an independent researcher to better understand State Street’s ties, “if any,” to slavery.

“We are committed to being transparent about our research so that we can understand, treat and build on our findings,” O’Hanley said in an internal statement at the time.

The Rutgers research group said the report was “intended to be illustrative rather than exhaustive in its coverage of the topic.”

The individual researchers and the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers did not respond to requests for comment.

Francisco said there is no timeline for when State Street plans to release the report. Boston city officials are currently commissioning their own report on slavery, and Francisco said there may be an opportunity for collaboration on that front.

“I’ve had a conversation with Boston City Hall about their efforts, and they’re aware of our efforts,” Francisco said.