State at hub of US slave trade is first to say sorry

Published on Monday 26 February 2007 00:18

ONE of the American states most closely associated with slavery has become the first in the US to issue a formal apology.

The Virginia General Assembly voted unanimously to express "profound regret" for the state's role in slavery, the latest in a series of strides taken in an attempt to overcome its segregationist past.

The motion also expressed regret for "the exploitation of native Americans".

Sponsors of the resolution said they knew of no other US state that had apologised for slavery, although Missouri is considering doing so.

The resolution does not carry the weight of law but sends an important symbolic message, supporters said.

"This session will be remembered for a lot of things, but 20 years hence, I suspect one of those things will be the fact that we came together and passed this resolution," said Donald McEachin, a Democrat who sponsored it in the state's House of Delegates.

The resolution passed the house 96-0 and also cleared the 40-member senate on a unanimous vote. It does not require the approval of the governor, Timothy Kaine.

The resolution was introduced as Virginia begins its celebration of the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, where the first Africans arrived in 1619.

Richmond, Virginia, later became another point of arrival for Africans and a slave-trade hub.

The resolution says government-sanctioned slavery "ranks as the most horrendous of all depredations of human rights and violations of our founding ideals in our nation's history, and the abolition of slavery was followed by systematic discrimination, enforced segregation, and other insidious institutions and practices toward Americans of African descent that were rooted in racism, racial bias and racial misunderstanding".

Among those voting for the measure was Frank Hargrove, an 80-year-old Republican who infuriated rights leaders last month by saying "black citizens should get over" slavery. After a barrage of criticism, he successfully co-sponsored a resolution calling on Virginia to celebrate "Juneteenth", a holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the US.

In Virginia, black-voter turnout was suppressed with a poll tax and literacy tests, before those practices were struck down by federal courts. In the 1950s and early 1960s, state leaders responded to federally ordered school desegregation with a "Massive Resistance" movement and some communities created exclusive whites-only schools.

However, Virginia was also the first state to elect a black governor - Douglas Wilder in 1989 - and in 2004 the state legislature took a step toward atoning for its Massive Resistance programme by creating a scholarship fund for black students whose universities were shut down between 1954 and 1964.

Meanwhile, Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, has promised to raise more than 5 million for local public schools and give free tuition to graduate students who pledge to work there in response to a report that found slave labour had played a role in the establishment's beginnings.

The university, which is a member of the top-flight Ivy League group, said it would also explore the possibility of creating an academic centre on slavery and justice, strengthen its Africana studies department, begin planning for a slavery memorial and revise its official history to provide a more accurate account of its early years.

The report was issued last autumn by a committee that was instructed in 2003 to study the university's early relationship with slavery and recommend how the school should take responsibility.

It identified about 30 former members of the college's governing corporation, who at one time either owned or captained slave ships.

It also found that slave labour had been used in the construction of Brown's oldest building.

Money used to create the university and ensure its early growth was also derived directly or indirectly from the slave trade.

'Chilling' ancestral ties that link civil rights opponents

THE American civil rights activist the Rev Al Sharpton has been revealed to be a descendant of a slave owned by relatives of the late Strom Thurmond, a senator who was once considered a symbol of racial segregation.

Professional genealogists uncovered the ancestral ties between Mr Sharpton, one of the United States' best-known black leaders, and the controversial southern politician.

"I have always wondered what was the background of my family," said Mr Sharpton, who ran for president in 2004 and is considering another bid.

"But nothing - nothing - could prepare me for this. It's chilling. It's amazing."

Mr Thurmond's niece, Ellen Senter, 61, said:

"I doubt you can find many native South Carolinians today whose family, if you traced them back far enough, didn't own slaves. And it is wonderful that [Mr Sharpton] was able to become what he is in spite of what his forefather was."

The genealogists, working for a newspaper, found documents showing Mr Sharpton's great-grandfather, Coleman Sharpton, was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond, whose grandfather was Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather. Coleman Sharpton was later freed.

During a 1948 bid for the presidency, Mr Thurmond promised to preserve racial segregation.

MARGARET NEIGHBOUR