Apologizing For The Enslavement And Racial Segregation Of African-Americans

Floor Speech

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Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 194 appropriately reminds us of the horrors of slavery. Slavery was a stain on our original Constitution. It took the blood of hundreds of thousands of Americans who died in the Civil War to erase that stain and to pave the way for passage of the Civil War amendments to our Constitution. We must never forget that.

This resolution exhorts us not to repeat the mistakes of the past. I would like to address two of those mistakes in some of this time.

One of the clauses of this resolution notes that after emancipation from 246 years of slavery, African Americans soon saw the fleeting political, social and economic gains they made during Reconstruction eviscerated by virulent racism and lynching.

It is worth noting in that regard that the government's campaign against the Ku Klux Klan during the Reconstruction Era included the use of military commissions approved by Congress to try those vicious terrorists of the day. Klan terrorists disguised in plain clothes embarked on a campaign of terror that included lynchings, assassinations and even the disemboweling of their innocent victims.

The experience, Mr. Speaker, of that period, presaged the dangers of extending habeas corpus litigation rights to enemy terrorists today. The campaign to defeat the Klan collapsed during the Reconstruction Era when Klansmen asserted habeas litigation rights in Federal court against their captors.

As one historian has written, the result of the required legal release of the Klan was that Klansmen not only escaped punishment, they turned the law on their erstwhile prosecutors with a series of suits and harassments that drove some of them from the State as fugitives. No sooner had Colonel George W. Kirk, the local commander, brought his prisoners to Raleigh, then two of them sued him for false arrest. He was released on bond and returned to his command, while other similar suits accumulated against him. In effect, he became a refugee from process servers and sheriffs, protected by his own soldiers.

I fear the Supreme Court has repeated that mistake today by granting terrorists habeas litigation rights to challenge their detentions in Federal Court. Resolutions like the one we consider now help to remind the Nation of the mistakes of the past so they will not be repeated in the future.

This resolution also expresses a commitment to rectifying the lingering consequences of the misdeeds committed against African Americans under slavery and Jim Crow. Those misdeeds, of course, were premised in the notion that people should be treated differently on account of their race.

One the most significant civil rights developments out of the 2006 elections was passage of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, an amendment to the Michigan State Constitution that passed by a wide margin, 58 percent to 42 percent. The Civil Rights Initiative in relevant part reads simply, and I have heard Ward Connerly make this statement in person and it booms from his voice and it reaches my heart, Mr. Speaker. It says, ``The State shall not discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting.'' Similar efforts are underway in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. This resolution reminds us all that American government should operate on a color-blind basis.

As I read through this resolution, I pick out some pieces that don't fit my sense of history. I would add that the Civil War is often taught to being fought over slavery. The people on the south side of the Mason Dixon Line would say it was fought over States' rights. I would say among those States' rights was the argument that the Southern States could declare their policy with regard to slavery.

Slavery has put a scar upon the United States that was a component of history as it arrived here, and it has been a component of most of the history within the continents. It has not, as it says here, imposed a rigid system of officially sanctioned racial segregation in virtually all areas of life. Subsequent to the Civil War and the emancipation, there were many areas in the North that were integrated, socially, economically, with a heart to do so, and I think they deserve some credit here as well, Mr. Speaker.

The vestiges of Jim Crow law today, I hope we learn what they are. The one I can think of is the Davis-Bacon wage scale. That is a vestige of Jim Crow. I can't think of the others.

I do appreciate the language that says, ``However long the journey, our destiny is set: Liberty and justice for all,'' and I mean that sincerely. And as this resolution apologizes to African Americans, I would correct that and say that there are many African Americans in this country who are immigrants from other countries, and they do very well here in America. They haven't felt the same sense as those who are descended from slaves that lived in this country. So I would say this resolution more speaks to the descendants of slaves and those being in this country exclusively African Americans.

I would add that there are some missing components altogether. I brought this book because I think it puts some more perspective on this as well, Mr. Speaker. This is a book written by Robert Davis, ``Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters.'' He is a professor, I believe, at Ohio State University.

I have read this carefully. It grips my soul like this subject grips my soul. It tells the story of 1.25 million Christian slaves hijacked on the seas of the Mediterranean who were subjected to slavery and forced to build the edifices along the Barbary Coast and the northern coast of Africa. They don't have descendants because they were worked to death and dumped overboard from the corsairs, those who pulled on the oars instead of built the edifices. Some of the women were pushed into being concubines. But, for the most part, this is very instructive. It says many of us are descended of relatives of slaves, but there are no descendants from these slaves because they didn't survive. That is 1.25 million.

So I think that in this context, this Nation is rising above this debate, and I would like to think we have put this debate behind us. I know that Chairman Conyers knows my head and my heart on this, and I have spoken about how deeply it has affected me to walk into a church in Port Gibson, Mississippi, and look up to the balcony and see that that balcony was made for African Americans, while white people went to church downstairs on the ground floor. It is hard for me to fathom a faith that would recognize a division like that, Mr. Speaker.

I know also that Abraham Lincoln spoke to this subject matter, and perhaps I will come back to that.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

As I listened to this debate, Mr. Speaker, I looked back through some documents that I made sure that I could take a look at before I came to floor, and one of them is H. Res. 1237. That is a resolution that passed here on 18 June 2008. And that date is timely, because it recognizes in the House of Representatives President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, but it recognizes especially Juneteenth, the date upon which the last slaves were freed. And that was roughly about 2 years from the time that President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. And it takes me to this point that I think is an important discussion.

This is a piece of information that I gathered from a Washington historian, and I qualify it a little bit because I haven't gone back and Googled it, I haven't checked Wikipedia, but I like this story so much that I want to tell it as qualified in that fashion, from a respectable Washington historian, but this way:

When President Lincoln was considering signing the Emancipation Proclamation, he reportedly called his cabinet together. They sat around the cabinet table, and President Lincoln laid out his argument that he wanted to emancipate the slaves. And so as he made the argument, the men--it would have all been men sitting around the cabinet table then in 1863. He turned to the first cabinet member and said, ``What say you?'' The first cabinet member reportedly said, ``Mr. President, you can't free the slaves. Those who are under your control and authority and jurisdiction are already free; they are north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Those on the other side, you can't reach because they are protected by the Confederate Army.''

And Lincoln turned to the next cabinet man and said, ``What say you?'' The next cabinet member said, ``Mr. President, I would suggest that there are men fighting in Union uniforms today that aren't so enthusiastic about ending slavery. They really want to defend the North and they want to defend the colors that we have, but there are really some racists in the Army. So you are going to lose their support if you emancipate the slaves.''

And he went to the next cabinet member and the next cabinet member, and each one came up with a different argument. As it came around the table, every single cabinet member had said to President Lincoln, ``Mr. President, do not sign the Emancipation Proclamation. My advice to you is there isn't enough upside to offset the downside.'' Or, as we say today, the juice is not worth the squeeze.

President Lincoln reportedly said, ``Well, gentlemen, the aye has it,'' and signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

Now whether that story is true or not, and I know there are a lot of urban legends around Lincoln, I really love that story, because that shows the character and the quality of leadership that we had in the White House at that time, and also a man who gave his life for the emancipation of the slaves. A man who believed it. A man who had such a strong conviction that when I stand at the Lincoln Memorial and I read the words of President Lincoln's second inaugural address that say, ``Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondsmen's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said `the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' ''

Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, the central part being: If the price to be paid was until every drop of blood drawn by the bondsmen's lash be paid by another drawn with the sword, Mr. Speaker, that is the powerful vision that there was a sin on this Nation, and Abraham Lincoln understood that. And 600,000 Americans died in the conflict to free the slaves.

I brought with me, this is my great, great, five times great uncle's Bible. This is the Bible that he carried in his shirt pocket for 3 years during the Civil War. If I open it up, I can show you fly specs and verses that are written in this Bible. His sister presented to it to him on the eve of his departure for the war, and he returned with it in his shirt pocket 3 years to the day. I found his grave when I was trimming grass around the gravestones for Memorial Day. No one knew where he had been buried. This is John Richardson's Bible. My great grandfather five times great was killed in the Civil War. All of his artifacts are lost. This remains. This remains as a connection to me, to my family members who were strong and powerful and committed abolitionists, and some of them gave their lives to free the slaves.

So as I read this resolution today, Mr. Speaker, I don't see a reference of gratitude for all the blood that was given by people to end slavery. I think that needs to be part of this record as well. The horrible price that was paid to pay back in blood drawn by the sword for every drop of blood drawn by the bondsmen's lash. That is a point, too, that the next generations need to learn and need to hear.

And then with the balance of this discussion, Mr. Speaker, I just would emphasize that this Nation threw off the yoke of slavery. We rose above it because we had a strong conviction as a people, we had a strong religious faith that rejected slavery as a sin against this Nation. We can be proud of the price that was paid to free the slaves. And it was a struggle of 100 years to pass the Civil Rights Act that lifted another level. And here we are today at a point where I look forward to the time when we can say we are fully integrated and there is no vestige of slavery and no vestige of racism, and an understanding that we are all God's children created in his image. And because he has blessed us with enough distinctions that we can tell each other apart, it is no reason for us to discriminate for or against anyone, as Ward Connerly says and as the Civil Rights Initiative in Michigan says so.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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