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Trying to atone: Politics, revelations renew resolution to apologize for slavery

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published March 9, 2007

America is once again struggling to atone for slavery and its aftermath.

Inspired by a resolution apologizing for slavery that Virginia legislators passed last month, black lawmakers in Georgia said Thursday that they plan to introduce a similar measure there. Maryland and Missouri also are discussing an apology.

A white Memphis congressman has gathered 36 co-sponsors for a bill that, if passed, would bring an apology to the federal level.

The FBI announced last week it is actively reinvestigating about a dozen cases of blacks slain in the 1950s and '60s as possible civil rights violations. As many as 100 more cases are being considered for similar treatment.

"Much time has passed on these crimes," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said. "The wounds they left are deep, and many of them still have not healed."

It has been decades since these crimes were committed, and nearly 142 years since the Civil War ended and Congress ratified the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery.

Why are public officials making amends now?

Because revelations about the past are pushing some people to think about race in America in new ways. Plus, echoes of racial bias remain all too obvious, and politicians may be grasping for new ways to show concern.

Generations after the civil rights movement began, blacks generally remain poorer, less educated and more likely to be in prison than whites.

Many historians, political scientists and public policy experts argue that this is rooted in blacks' unhealed wounds from slavery, combined with widespread tactics during the century or so that followed to keep blacks from equal education, jobs and housing.

"This country is built on their (blacks') backs, so when you talk about some of the ills that we face now in society, I'm sure that some of it's got to trace back to that," said Maryland Sen. Nathaniel Exum, sponsor of his state's resolution, which will likely be voted on this month.

Some question whether public officials' apology resolutions mean much.

"What would it mean to vote against a resolution like this? Would it mean you were racially insensitive?" asked David Pilgrim, a sociologist at Ferris State University in Michigan. "Conversely, I'm not sure what it would mean that you were voting for it."

[Last modified March 9, 2007, 02:28:43]