[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4694-4695]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 OUR COUNTRY MUST APOLOGIZE FOR SLAVERY

  (Mr. COHEN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen of the House, today I am 
going to introduce a bill to call on the United States Government to 
apologize for the history in this country of having a slave system and 
for Jim Crow laws that went on for a hundred additional years.
  The State of Virginia is to be commended for its action this past 
week in making, in essence, an apology saying they regretted a system 
of slavery in this country.
  For 246 years, our Constitution and our laws allowed a system that 
made people slaves, that divided people from their families and treated 
them as property. And for 100 years thereafter, a system of laws in 
many States throughout the country had Jim Crow laws that deprived 
people of the opportunity for equal access to education, health care, 
public facilities, and other types of programs. These ended by law in 
the sixties somewhat through the efforts of Thurgood Marshall and other 
attorneys in Brown v. Board of Education, but the effects are 
lingering.
  This country needs to apologize for a brutal, inhumane system of 
slavery and Jim Crow laws. President Bush has made remarks similar to 
this in Senegal; President Clinton also in the State of Virginia most 
recently.
  I hope we will have all our colleagues sign on and pass this 
unanimously, as the State of Virginia did, and make a proper apology 
for a harmful and unfortunate part of our history.

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