Insurers to provide data on slave policies

ANNAPOLIS, Md., April 16 (UPI) -- Insurance companies in Maryland must compile information on policies sold to slave owners before 1865 under a new state law.

The reports will be kept in an archive at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore and published on the state Insurance Department Web site, The Baltimore Sun reported. Students at the law school developed the idea for the law.

Insurers did not oppose the measure.

Assemblywoman Lisa Gladden, a Baltimore Democrat who sponsored the bill, said that insuring owners against the death or illness of their slaves was "hugely profitable" for the companies. Now, she said, those records provide valuable data on the slave economy and genealogical information.

"As a genealogist and someone interested in my own history, this allows me to look at records that perhaps are not public records and that are held by insurance companies," she said.

Similar laws are on the books in California, Illinois and Iowa.