Alabama set to issue slavery apology

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – The Alabama Legislature passed a resolution Thursday that expresses “profound regret” for the state’s role in slavery and apologizes for slavery’s wrongs and lingering effects on the United States.

When Gov. Bob Riley signs the bill, which spokesman Jeff Emerson said he will do as soon as he receives it, Alabama will become the fourth state to formally apologize for slavery in recent months, after Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina.

In the Senate, the resolution vote split along party lines, with 20 Democrats in support and eight Republicans in opposition. The House took a voice vote, which provided no record of how anyone voted.

Sen. Hank Sanders, a Selma Democrat who guided the resolution through the Senate, said the vote “sends a message that Alabama is finally standing on its history rather than having its history weigh it down.”

The resolution, a combination of earlier House and Senate legislation, expresses the Legislature’s “profound regret for the State of Alabama’s role in slavery and that we apologize for the wrongs inflicted by slavery and its after effects in the United States of America.”

Sanders said the resolution made it clear that it can’t be used as the basis for litigation.

Sen. Scott Beason, a Republican, voted against the resolution because he said it’s time for the state to focus on its future.

“This is the kind of thing we need to let go of. There’s no one alive today who owned a slave. There’s no one alive who was a slave. It’s time to move forward,” Beason said.

“Everybody detests slavery,” said House Minority Leader Mike Hubbard, a Republican. But he said some Republicans opposed the resolution because they felt it contained “inflammatory language.”

The resolution described “centuries of brutal dehumanization and injustices” and said “the vestiges of slavery are ever before African-American citizens.”