Thursday, April 12, 2007
DAVID WHITE
News staff writer
MONTGOMERY - The state Senate today likely will debate a resolution "expressing profound regret for Alabama's role in slavery."
The six-page resolution, introduced Wednesday by Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma, says "an apology for centuries of brutal dehumanization and injustices cannot erase the past, but confession of the wrongs can speed racial healing and reconciliation and help African-American and white citizens confront the ghosts of their collective pasts together."
Sanders said it is modeled after one passed recently by Virginia lawmakers. The North Carolina House and Senate have passed a similar measure and Georgia is considering a proposal. Maryland lawmakers approved their own apology for slavery late last month.
The resolution recounts a history of slavery, and says that "to prime Africans for slavery, the fundamental values of the Africans were shattered, they were brutalized, humiliated, dehumanized, and subjected to the indignity of being stripped of their names and heritage, women and girls were raped, and families were disassembled as husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, and fathers and sons were sold into slavery apart from one another."
Twelve Democratic senators by early Wednesday afternoon had signed on as co-sponsors. But some senators expressed doubts.
"I have problems apologizing simply for something that I had no part in, and God knows I would never have a part in," Sen. Charles Bishop, R-Arley, told Sanders on the Senate floor.
Sen. Scott Beason, R-Fultondale, said in an interview that he opposes the measure.
"There's not anyone alive today who was a slave. There's not anybody alive today who owned a slave. So why do we continue to do this kind of thing every year or so and beat up on ourselves?" Beason said. "I don't understand it."
Sen. Jabo Waggoner, R-Vestavia Hills, said, "I had nothing to do with that. I don't feel like I ought to apologize for myself or on behalf of the state. That's ancient history, and I think we need to forget it and move on."
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