Lawsuits charging that three companies profited from the slave trade are just the beginning of a larger legal effort to seek reparations for American blacks who are descendants of slaves.

More than a dozen of the nation’s most prominent black attorneys and scholars expect to file suit against the U.S. government later this year, said Randall Robinson, co-chairman of the Reparations Coordinating Committee.

“The centerpiece of the campaign will unfold in the fall,” said Robinson, whose book “The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks,” argues for reparations. “We’re talking about the responsibility of the government that participates in a crime against humanity.”

The group still is working out details such as whether there will be a single lawsuit or multiple ones, the city where suits should be filed and what form reparations should take, members said.

The high-powered team building the case includes Harvard University professors Charles Ogletree and Cornel West and attorneys Johnnie Cochran and Willie Gary.

The group has been meeting every few months for about two years; another meeting is scheduled this month, University of Maryland political scientist and committee member Ronald Walters said.

Last week, three slave descendants filed suit against Aetna insurance company, FleetBoston Financial Corp. and railroad giant CSX on behalf of themselves and millions of other blacks, claiming the companies or their corporate predecessors unjustly profited from slavery.

Ed Fagan, who worked on those suits, and other attorneys plan to file more suits in the next few months against businesses in the merchant banking and tobacco industries, along with European insurance companies. He said about 60 companies will be named.

Yet another effort this one by the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America also may result in lawsuits against the government and the private sector, said Adjoa Aiyetoro, the group’s chief legal counsel and a member of the reparations committee. The national coalition has been working on developing lawsuits since 1997, and began advocating for reparations a decade before that.

At the heart of the reparations movement is the idea that modern-day disparities between blacks and whites, in everything from education to income, are the legacy of slavery.

“There is a straight line from slavery to the socio-economic and psychological conditions of African-Americans today,” Walters said.

Those who oppose reparations say they could cause greater racial divisions and that many Americans today have no connection to slavery.