[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 78 (Tuesday, June 20, 2000)]
[House]
[Page H4682]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         SUPPORTING LEGISLATION CALLING FOR APOLOGY FOR SLAVERY

  (Ms. McKINNEY asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to support and cosponsor the 
legislation of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) that calls for an 
apology for slavery. I have heard the snickers, the snide comments, the 
perplexed faces from Members baffled by the gentleman's quest for 
justice. I think we all need to check ourselves.
  This great Nation of ours did something terribly wrong during its 
infancy: I was written out of its Constitution, and it turned its head 
on slavery. And when our country actually saw itself for the first time 
in a mirror, its response was to proclaim that the black man had no 
rights that a white man was bound to respect.
  It took a second look, however, and began to exorcise its demons; 
that is what reparations to Native Americans, Holocaust victims, and 
Japanese Americans was all about. Sadly, nobody thought about me. Yet 
an unarmed black man can be murdered on the streets of America and no 
one blinks an eye.
  Innocent black men disappear to death row. Crack cocaine dumped into 
our neighborhoods. Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., murdered 
in conspiracies.
  The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) is trying to close these wounds, 
not reopen them.

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