The Senate--
(1) apologizes to the victims of lynching for the failure of the Senate to enact anti-lynching legislation;
(2) expresses 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; and
(3) remembers the history of lynching , to ensure that these tragedies will be neither forgotten nor repeated.
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Remarks from the Senate Majority Leader Dr. Bill Frist
June 13th, 2005
For over 60 years, the United States Senate refused to act against lynching – against vigilante … mob murder. This was one of the worst failings of the Senate in its entire history. It was a shame on the institution. And it was a shame on the senators who didn’t just fail to act -- but deliberately kept the Senate and the whole of the federal government from acting. Though deep scars will always remain, I’m hopeful we will begin to heal and help close the wounds caused by lynching. Four out of five lynch mob victims were African-American.
The practice followed slavery as an ugly expression of racism and prejudice in our country. In the history of lynching, mobs murdered more than 4,700 people. Nearly 250 of those victims were from Tennessee, Very few had committed any sort of crime.
Lynching was a way to humiliate … to repress ... to dehumanize.
The Senate, disgracefully, bears some of the responsibility for this. Between 1890 and 1952, 7 presidents petitioned Congress to ban lynching. And, in those same 62 years, the House of Representatives passed three anti-lynching bills.
Each bill died in the Senate.
The Senate made a terrible, terrible mistake.
The tyranny of lynch mobs created an environment of fear throughout the American South.
Lynching took innocent lives. It divided society. And it thwarted the aspirations of African-Americans.
Lynching was nothing less than a form of racial terrorism.
It took the vision and courage of men and women like Mary White Ovington, W.E.B. DuBois, George H. White, Jane Adams and, of course, fellow Tennessean Ida Wells-Barnett to pass federal laws against lynching and put an end to this despicable practice. Ida Wells-Barnett, indeed, may have done more than any other person to expose the terrible evils of lynching. A school teacher in Memphis who put herself through college, she became one of the nation’s first female newspaper editors.
A civil rights crusader from her teens, Ida Wells committed herself to the fight against lynching after a mob murdered her friends -- Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry Stewart. These three men, driven by their entrepreneurial energy, opened a small grocery store that catered primarily to African-Americans. They took business away from nearby white business owners. Driven by hatred, jealousy, rage, and prejudice, an angry white mob stormed their store. Acting in self defense, Wells’ three friends fired on the rioters. The police arrested the grocers for defending themselves.
The mob kidnapped all three from jail. And all three were murdered in Memphis’ streets. These brutal murders galvanized Wells’ into action. Her righteous anger, blistering editorials, and strong sense of justice further enraged Memphis’ bigots. They burned her newspaper presses and threatened to murder her. Wells moved to Chicago and became one of that city’s leading social crusaders. Wells’ book Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases and her dogged investigative reporting exposed millions of Americans to the brutality of lynching.
In a nation rife with racism and prejudice, Ida Wells and her colleagues began the Civil Rights Movement. They helped bring us integration. They paved the way for equality. And they taught all of us that racism is a terrible evil. After many years of struggle … after many setbacks … after much heartache … they won.
From President Truman’s Executive Order ending segregation in the armed forces to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a series of civil rights laws moved the nation towards legal equality. But no civil rights law is as important to our nation’s political process as the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It enfranchised millions of African-American voters and it brought many black politicians into office. Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act will be up for reauthorization in 2007. President Reagan signed into law a 25 year reauthorization in 1982.
Section 4 contains a temporary pre-clearance provision that applies to Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and parts of Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, and North Carolina.
These states must submit any voting changes to the United States Department of Justice for pre-clearance. If the Department of Justice concludes that the change weakens the voting strength of minority voters, it can refuse to approve the change. While I recognize that this can impose a bureaucratic burden on states acting in good faith, we must continue our nation’s work to protect voting rights. And that is why we need to extend the Voting Rights Act.
Quite simply, we owe civil rights pioneers like Ida Wells nothing less. I hope the day will come when racism and prejudice are relegated completely to our past. This resolution is a positive step in the right direction. Transforming our nation requires that we recall our history – all of it. We can become a better people by celebrating the glories of our past – but also our imperfections. That includes continuing to do our utmost to protect voting rights for all Americans.
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The other Senator from Tennessee, a former governor of Tennessee, a former president of MY Alma Mater, The University of Tennessee would have nothing to do with this legislation. I guess, he, like others, doesn't see why an official apology is important.
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