Senate Apologizes for Lynching-Ban Delays

[Pirate Smile]

Senate Apologizes for Lynching-Ban Delays

By JIM ABRAMS
The Associated Press
Monday, June 13, 2005; 10:33 PM

WASHINGTON -- The Senate on Monday acknowledged its own failure to stand against the lynching of thousands of black people, a practice that continued well into the 20th century.

"It's important that we are honest with ourselves and that we tell the truth about what happened," Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said before the Senate by voice vote approved an apology for blocking anti-lynching legislation at a time when mob violence against blacks was commonplace. At least 80 senators signed on as co-sponsors.

Nearly 200 descendants of lynching victims, and a 91-year-old man thought to be the only living survivor of a lynching attempt, listened from the visitors' gallery to speeches about what Sen. George Allen, R-Va., described as "the failure of the Senate to take action when action was most needed."

"I came here to bear witness on behalf of my cousin Jimmy," said Janet Langhart Cohen, wife of former Defense Secretary William Cohen and a member of the group that has pushed for the apology.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/13/AR2005061300459.html


Senator Mary Landrieu, D-La., takes part in a luncheon on Capitol Hill Monday, June 13, 2005, for family members of lynching victims. Doria Dee Johnson, the great-great granddaughter of a black South Carolina farmer who was killed by a white mob nearly a century ago, is at left. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook) (Dennis Cook - AP)

(Whoever is working at the WP tonight put the picture in up-side down, geez)

[mbee]

1. Gee, when will they apologize for what bushco has done?

[whistle]

6. In another 140 years, say around 2145....

....listen, there are some 54 million adults 18 years old or over, who are not registered to vote. I am estimating that 80% of those non-registered voters would vote democratic in the 2006, if we could get them signed up and make sure that they be allowed to vote. That would certainly take care of those Senators and Representatives from the House who find it really hard to apologize for the lynchings committed against blacks and other minorities in this country. Compassionate conservatives indeed! They are still doing these dastardly crimes against others in America, such as gays and detainees.

[struggle4progress]

2. Howard Dean's remarks tying the Rs to the "white xian nation" crowd ..

.. may really have helped push this through, since the Rs needed to find cover as quickly as possible. Thanks, Howard!

[pocket]

4. unfortunately, it was a Democrat that filibustered anti-lynching bills

Robert Byrd :|

[alfredo]

7. He's made a real turn around on the issue.

the ones that didn't want to change became Republicans. Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond come to mind.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

10. And was the last time he participated in a filibuster on this subject?....

...At what point will everything he's done since then cause these types of questions to go away?

I'm more concerned about the fact that he voted for the new Bankruptcy Law...that's going to really hurt a lot of middle and lower income people when it goes into effect in October.

[struggle4progress]

12. Byrd certainly has a less than perfect history, but there were hundreds ..

.. of efforts over many decades to produce anti-lynching bills, and Byrd cannot possibly be blamed fairly for all these failures: I do not know to what degree, in fact, he came be blamed for the failure of ANY anti-lynching bill, although your claim that Byrd was responsible seems to be a popular current right wing "talking point."

In any case, the heyday of lynching was the first half of the twentieth century, with especially high activity associated with the consolidation of Jim Crow, and Byrd was not elected to the Senate until 1958, at which time the civil rights movement aimed for rather more than a mere anti-lynching law.

I consider it intellectually dishonest to tie the racist Dixiecrats to the current Democratic Party. In fact, the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by a Democratic Congress under a southern Democratic President alienated the Dixiecrats, and it was precisely Nixon's Southern strategy to split the Dixiecrats from the Democratic Party and to realign them with the Republicans, who thereby obtained such segregationist luminaries as Jesse Helms. By the time of Nixon's re-election in 1972, the "white xian nation" crowd that had previously been Dixiecrat (because no Southerner would vote for the party that had nominated Lincoln a century earlier) has been firmly in the Republican camp.

So I will reiterate what I said: it seems that Dean's "white xian" comments were well-timed to put the Rs on the defensive, forcing them to seek shelter in this Senate apology ...

[struggle4progress]

13. " .. On Oct. 20, 2000, before the state NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner ..

.. on the campus of West Virginia State University, Sen. Byrd spoke these words:

'I was raised in rural Southern West Virginia. In the teens and 20s, it was a long way away, in more ways than one, from the urban beginnings of the NAACP in New York City in 1909. I grew up in an atmosphere that probably had not changed substantially since Reconstruction. As I look back now, I can see that many of the attitudes and influences that surrounded me in my aunt and uncle's boarding house would now be termed racist. But, to me at the time, these attitudes were normal, so common that they went unquestioned and unexamined. I absorbed those lessons in the air that I breathed, even though my own direct dealings with blacks while growing up were positive.

'Without conscious effort, we poor pathetic humans, trapped within our own skulls, can view life only from the prism of our own surroundings. We cannot lift ourselves out of particular biases, we cannot question our prejudices, we cannot loose our bonds of rigid and wrong thinking without letting the light of knowledge cut the darkness. Education is the way to open our minds and our hearts. Understanding and empathy usually follow, and those two qualities nourish the soul as well as the mind. It is largely because of organizations like the NAACP, and your efforts to educate a nation about equality and fairness, that attitudes have so changed' ..."

http://www.wvpatriotsforpeace.org/news_articles/2005/04_22_05/gazette_04_22_05.html

[Catherine Vincent]

3. LOL.

Not at the topic but at the pic.:-)

[alfredo]

5. Who were the 12 who refused to co sponsor?

[Rainscents]

8. Is there Bill number for this?

I hope we will find out who those 12 senators who is not supporting this bill.

[WillyT]

9. Damn... I Always Thought There Were 100 Senators !!!

Because EVERY red-blooded American Senator would want to be a co-sponsor...

WOULDN'T THEY!!!

:argh:

Fucking kow-towing cracker pussies!!!!!

:argh:

[AuntiBush]

11. The photo is be-fitting for our times. Leave it upside down.

Explains everything.

[AirAmFan]

14. 'Senate Issues an Apology for Inaction on Lynchings'--LA Times

From http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-lynch14jun14,1,7681839.story?coll=la-news-politics-national

'June 14, 2005

Senate Issues an Apology for Inaction on Lynchings: An attack survivor and descendants of other victims are on hand as decades of obstruction are acknowledged. No compensation is offered.

By Mary Curtius, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON ... A total of 4,742 Americans are documented to have been lynched between 1882 and 1968, with the practice most prevalent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, according to figures provided by the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. Lynchings occurred in all but four states, and victims included whites, Asians, Italians and Jews. But the practice was most common in the South, and most often aimed at blacks. Of the known victims, 3,452 were African Americans. With local law enforcement officials and juries usually handling the cases, historians have estimated that fewer than 1% of the lynchers were ever convicted....

The resolution apologizes for the Senate's failure to act, expressing "the deepest sympathies and most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching, the ancestors of whom were deprived of life, human dignity and the constitutional protections accorded all citizens of the United States." The resolution offers no compensation to victims or their families. Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau, said it was important that Congress follow up the apology with an effort to compensate victims and their families. "If this is all the Senate does on this issue, it is a rather hollow gesture," Shelton said. "If this is the beginning of a process, then indeed it can be very healthy and very important to our society."

Supporters of the apology said that despite the efforts of various groups, Congress had never apologized for slavery. Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.) said a book filled with powerful images of lynchings spurred her to push for Monday's resolution, which she cosponsored with Sen. George Allen (R-Va.). The book, "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America," is the work of James Allen, an Atlanta antiques dealer who spent 15 years collecting photographs and postcards of lynchings. It was the crowds milling about the bloodied, dangling bodies that most disturbed her, Landrieu said. They sometimes included laughing, smiling children dressed in their Sunday best. The images made her realize, Landrieu said, that these were not crimes committed in secret  they were often community events. "This was domestic terrorism," she said, "and the Senate is uniquely culpable" for failing to act against it.

Some senators complained that the debate was taking place on a Monday night, when few senators were present, and that the leadership scheduled a voice vote rather than a roll call vote. "I think that's a mistake," Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said when he rose in support of the resolution. "I think the United States Senate should stand up and every man and woman here would have to vote during a roll call, one way or the other."'

[AirAmFan]

15. 21 Senators refused to cosponsor the bill, introduced in Feb

18 signed on at the very last minute. This fact itself is shameful--most Democrats signed on four months ago!

The apology passed by voice vote Monday evening with very few Senators present. Kerry's speech, rebroadcast at least twice on CSPAN2, mentioned the absence of unanimity and lack of a roll call vote, along with continuing deep racial injustices many states continue to perpetuate in voting rights and in education.

The 21 who did not sign consist of 18 Rs and 3 Ds. Most noteworthy were Lott and Cochran of MS, Shelby of AL, Alexander of TN, Cornyn and Hutchison of TX, Voinovich of OH, Grassley of IA, Smith of OR, and Kyl of AZ. They have millions of African-American constituents to whom their failure to denounce a century of Senate complicity in lynching is a slap in the face.

Hatch of UT has very few African-American constituents, but much should be made of his seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, along with Kyl's, Grassley's, and Cornyn's. If anything is a Rule of Law issue, it is Senate complicity in lynching! Are these Senators still continuing to argue for the supremacy of "States' Rights" over the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Fourteenth Amendment?

The complete shameful list of 21 holdout Senators follows. When talk of the "nuclear option" resumes, this list may come in handy should some of the 18 Rs on it dare to try to argue the filibuster is intrinsically racist. At that time, they should be asked, "Then why did you not denounce racist use of the filibuster when you had the chance?"

R-AK Murkowski, Lisa
R-AL Shelby, Richard
R-AZ Kyl, Jon

R-IA Grassley, Chuck
R-ID Crapo, Michael
R-MS Cochran, Thad

R-MS Lott, Trent
R-NH Gregg, Judd
R-NH Sununu, John

R-OH Voinovich, George
R-OR Smith, Gordon
R-TN Alexander, Lamar

R-TX Cornyn, John
R-TX Hutchison, Kay
R-UT Bennett, Robert

R-UT Hatch, Orrin
R-WY Enzi, Michael
R-WY Thomas, Craig

D-ND Conrad, Kent
D-NM Bingaman, Jeff
D-RI Reed, Jack

This list is the difference between the 79 sponsors/cosponsors of the apology (at http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:SE00039:@@@P ) and the list of all 100 Senators (at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm ).

[Blaq Dem]

16. Where's the MONEY?

What? No compensation for the victims' family? This was a horrifying experience for many.

[AnnInLa]

17. No "up or down vote"

Trying to hide in a voice vote....shameful. It will be interesting to hear their creative explanations for voting no.

[damntexdem]

18. Gee, we're just so sorry that we delayed this resolution until it was ...

fairly meaningless.