After years of filibustering, it offers atonement
June 14, 2005
BY JIM ABRAMS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- The Senate made amends on Monday for failing to stand against the lynching of thousands of black people, a practice that continued well into the 20th Century.
Nearly 200 descendants of lynching victims, and a 91-year-old man thought to be the only living survivor of a lynching attempt, were on hand for the Senate apology for blocking antilynching legislation at a time when mob violence against blacks was commonplace.
"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.
Her third cousin, 17-year-old Jimmy Gillenwaters, was killed by a lynch mob near Bowling Green, Ky., in 1912.
He was one of 4,743 people killed by mob violence between 1882 and 1968, according to Tuskegee University records. Of those, nearly 75%, 3,446, were black people. Lynchings reached a peak of 230 in 1892.
During that time, nearly 200 antilynching bills were introduced in Congress, and three passed the House. Seven presidents between 1890 and 1952 petitioned Congress to pass a federal law.
The Senate, with Southern conservatives wielding their filibuster powers, refused to act. With the enactment of civil rights laws in the 1960s and changes in national attitudes, the issue faded away.
But not the haunting memories.
Lynching is variously defined as a violent act (usually a hanging), racial in nature, and denies a person due process of law. It is carried out with the complicity of the local society.
The sponsors of the resolution, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and Sen. George Allen, R-Va., said they were motivated by the book "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America," in which author James Allen collected lynching pictures, mostly taken by those who participated in the killings.
"More than a half-century ago, mere feet from where we sit ... the Senate failed you and your ancestors and our nation," Landrieu told descendants at a lunch in the Capitol before the resolution was passed.
"Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America" was at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit; it closed in March. A series of forums was held to foster public discussion about the legacy of lynching.
"We ought to come to the point of acknowledging a grossly inhumane thing that took place here in our country," said Arthur Johnson, president of the Detroit Branch National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1986 to 1996.
"We ought to have the strength and the will and the decency to acknowledge our own guilt," he said.
Lynching was both an inhumane practice and an ugly reminder of segregation.
"It was a form of social control" that supported the "system of white supremacy," said Norman McRae, a former Wayne State University instructor, who specializes in African-American history.
The nonbinding resolution, passed by a voice vote Monday, apologizes to the victims for the Senate's failure to act to end lynching.
The decree "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."
Acknowledging past mistakes "is an immensely important first step," said Emma Coleman Jordan, professor at the Georgetown Law Center and an expert on the subject. Other steps, she said, could include establishing a national research center and setting up trust funds for the descendants of victims.
Congress has apologized to Japanese Americans and other persecuted groups. But talk of reparations has complicated efforts to apologize to black people for slavery.
