Brooklyn, N.Y. ? The great-great-granddaughter of a South Carolina slave opened a new phase in a wrenching national debate Tuesday when she sued three companies in federal court for a share of the profits they allegedly gained from slavery.

The lawsuit by Deadria Farmer-Paellmann of New York is the first of several expected in the coming months to use new strategies to seek reparations for descendants of blacks who were enslaved before the United States outlawed the practice in 1865.

“We are finally holding corporations accountable for their actions against my ancestors,” Farmer-Paellmann, a prominent researcher of the role of slaves in U.S. business history, said after filing the suit.

Several prominent black academics, activists and attorneys, including Harvard University law professor Charles Ogletree and noted trial lawyer Johnnie Cochran, also are pursuing slavery reparations cases. They expect to file in June, said Michael Hausfeld, a Washington, D.C., attorney who is working with them. Hausfeld has handled successful suits by Holocaust victims.

The new legal moves feed a heated national debate about the effects of slavery and whether any government or company can be considered responsible more than a century later. The suits also open the door to a greater acknowledgement by mainstream America of the after-effects of slavery and the discrimination that followed, said Bill Spriggs, director of the National Urban League’s Institute for Opportunity and Equality in Washington.

Even if the lawsuits do not succeed, as many expect, they, along with political pressure and public relations campaigns, may persuade many companies to settle out of court with black plaintiffs.

Pressure also is building for President Bush to appoint a commission to study whether the federal government and private corporations should pay reparations. Bush opposes reparations, as did President Bill Clinton. Clinton, who was extremely popular among blacks, offered a formal apology for slavery in 1998.

Companies apologize

Farmer-Paellmann’s lawsuit, filed on behalf of “all African-American slave descendants,” singles out three companies that it charges were “unjustly enriched” by slavery. They are Aetna Inc. of Hartford, Conn., the nation’s largest insurer; FleetBoston Financial Corp., a Boston-based financial services company; and CSX Corp. of Richmond, Va., a leading railroad company.

Aetna, the suit claims, insured slave owners against the deaths of their slaves. FleetBoston is accused of purchasing a Rhode Island bank that had made profitable loans to a slave trader. CSX allegedly purchased companies that built railroads with slave labor.

Aetna apologized in March 2000 for insuring slaves but opposes reparations because slavery was legal at the time.

CSX vowed to “oppose the lawsuit vigorously.” In a statement, it called slavery a “tragic chapter in our nation’s history,” but added, “It is a history shared by every American, and its impacts cannot be attributed to any single company or industry.”

The suit says that as many as 100 other companies with histories of slavery-related gains may be added to the claim. They include tobacco, cotton and textile, sugar and produce companies. Other possible targets are universities that gained directly or indirectly from slavery, state and local governments that used slave labor, and newspaper companies that profited from ads for slaves.

Going to court is a new strategy in the long-standing push for slavery reparations. It appears to be inspired partly by the recent success of Holocaust victims in winning restitution from companies that employed them as slave laborers and from Swiss banks that took their assets.

Those cases, initially regarded with skepticism by legal experts, led to multibillion-dollar settlements for the victims and in some cases their children.

The legal hurdles are extremely high for the slavery reparation cases, legal experts said. They include statutes of limitations, which require that lawsuits be filed within a few years of the injury, and the lack of direct victims, since no former slaves are still alive.