The Living Consequences

According to the Boston Globe, Senator Sam Brownback intends to offer a resolution in the Senate this week calling for Congress to apologize for slavery.

Brownback, a social conservative running for president, says that he has a Democratic partner for his proposal, which fits with earlier efforts on his part to address historic injustices committed against American Indians and others.

This resolution would join H.Res. 194, Rep. Cohen’s earlier resolution currently before the House.

H.R. 3432, which establishes a commission to commemorate the bicentennial of the abolition of the U.S. slave trade, passed the House of Representatives yesterday afternoon.

The bill has already been received in the Senate, where it will be referred to the judiciary committee.

This is good news for those of us who believe that the nation should be paying more attention to this milestone in our history.

Many people are familiar with H.R. 40, the perennial House bill proposing a commission to examine the legacy of slavery and possible remedies. Rep. John Conyers (D), currently chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has introduced this bill in every Congress since 1989. (The bill number is chosen to reflect the phrase “forty acres and a mule,” which came to symbolize the brief and unrealized promise of compensation to slaves freed after the Civil War.)

There are two other major items pending in the U.S. House which also bear on slavery and the slave trade:

Click here to read the rest of this entry

I congratulate you, fellow citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may … constitutionally … withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights … which the morality, the reputation, and the best of our country have long been eager to proscribe.

— President Thomas Jefferson, in his annual message to Congress, Dec. 2, 1806

With these words, President Thomas Jefferson proposed abolishing the U.S. slave trade, effective on January 1, 1808, when the constitutional prohibition on outlawing the trade expired. Within four months, both the U.S. and Britain had passed historic legislation outlawing their trade in human cargo.

On January 1, 2008, the U.S. will commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the U.S. slave trade. At least, it may do so. Despite legislation pending in the U.S. House of Representatives, it isn’t clear whether the U.S. will officially acknowledge, much less pause to observe, this early milestone on the road to abolition and racial equality.

Click here to read the rest of this entry