Slavery: Trying to atone, but why now?

Fresh revelations
Another factor driving the recent public displays of contrition is that, with much of the nation's racial history still being written, fresh revelations come every year.

A new book about widespread post-Civil War attacks on blacks, "Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America," by journalist Elliot Jaspin, is due out this month.

Several newspapers looked into their own coverage of civil rights and then apologized last year for making racism worse. Editors at Florida's Tallahassee Democrat wrote: "It is inconceivable that a newspaper, an institution that exists freely only because of the Bill of Rights, could be so wrong on civil rights. But we were."

The research increasingly shows that slavery, Jim Crow and racism were not, as once thought, confined to the South.

Not just the South
They were part of all of America from day one and were kept in place by some of the nation's most powerful — government officials, big businesses, universities. Several U.S. presidents owned slaves. Slave labor helped build the U.S. Capitol and many other structures around the country.

That includes University Hall, the oldest building at Brown University in Rhode Island, according to a yearlong probe into the school's slavery links. The report found that the Brown family itself owned ships that transported stolen Africans, and profits from slavery helped found the university.

The main reason for such official complicity: The profits — economic and political — of 250-plus years of blacks' free labor and another century of black suppression were enormous. Most found it irresistible.

Today, some question whether public officials' apology resolutions mean much.

"What would it mean to vote against a resolution like this? Would it mean you were racially insensitive?" asked David Pilgrim, a sociologist at Ferris State University in Michigan. "Conversely, I'm not sure what it would mean that you were voting for it."

Next question: How to fix the damage?
Some civil rights advocates want an official, federal "I'm sorry" for slavery from the president. It has never come, perhaps because this would raise the logical — and thorny — next question: How to repair the damage?

Opponents say that attempts to compensate for racial crimes through reparations would deepen racial divisions.

Pilgrim, who is also curator of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, hopes the current wave of atonement does the opposite.

"If you look at American history, it wasn't that long ago that you couldn't get the most powerful people in the country talking about slavery," he said. "What is healthy is not the (apology) resolutions but the process of coming to the resolutions. All the discussions and debates get people talking honestly about race."

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