The Senate vote last night formally apologizing for the body’s failures to stand against the lynching of thousands of African Americans was long overdue. But, while I’m pleased it was successful, some of the details from yesterday were disconcerting.
The U.S. Senate last night approved a resolution apologizing for its failure to enact federal anti-lynching legislation decades ago, marking the first time the body has apologized for the nation’s treatment of African Americans.
One-hundred and five years after the first anti-lynching bill was proposed by a black congressman, senators approved by a voice vote Resolution 39, which called for the lawmakers to apologize to lynching victims, survivors and their descendants, several of whom watched from the gallery.
“There may be no other injustice in American history for which the Senate so uniquely bears responsibility,” Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said before the vote.
Unfortunately, that’s absolutely right. While thousands of black men were being killed, nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress. The House passed three, but southern senators blocked Senate passage every time. The need for an apology was painfully obvious.
But not all of the news was good. First, the measure passed by voice vote, meaning that senators escaped putting themselves on record on the apology. Second, there were 80 co-sponsors for the measure, not 100.
And third, there’s the small matter of the chief Republican sponsor of the apology resolution, Senator George Allen of Virginia.
Allen, to be sure, said all of the right things yesterday, noting that the vote finally put the Senate “on the record condemning the brutal atrocity that plagued our great nation.”
But while Allen helped lead the way on this apology, when it comes to race relations, he may still have a ways to go. This is the same George Allen who, as governor of Virginia, opposed a state holiday honoring Martin Luther King and referred to the NAACP as an “extremist group.” The Washington Post reported last year:
[I]n the late 1990s, former governor George Allen (R) issued a Confederate History Month proclamation, calling the Civil War “a four-year struggle for independence and sovereign rights.” It was observed during April, the month in which the Civil War essentially began with the Confederates’ attack on Fort Sumter, S.C., and ended with the Army of Northern Virginia’s surrender at Appomattox. The declaration made no mention of slavery, angering many civil rights groups.
What’s more, though Allen was pushing the apology resolution in the Senate, he started his career by keeping a Confederate flag and a noose in his law office.
Now, of course, Allen is preparing a presidential campaign and is anxious to rehabilitate his image on race relations. Was yesterday’s vote a sincere gesture and act of contrition on Allen’s part or an act of political expediency for a politician who’s worried about the black vote in 2008?