JESUIT SETTLEMENT ABUSE PRESSER This is the third largest settlement yet by the Catholic Church in the US. In this case, the Jesuits will pay $166 million to 500 abuse victims in the Northwest NW Jesuits to pay $166 million to sexual abuse victims In one of the largest settlements nationwide in the Roman Catholic Church's sexual abuse crisis, the Jesuits will pay $166.1 million to about 500 abuse victims - many of them Native Americans or Alaska Natives at schools the order ran throughout the Northwest. By Janet I. Tu Seattle Times staff reporter In one of the largest monetary payouts nationwide in the Roman Catholic Church's sexual abuse crisis, and the largest one by a religious order, the Jesuit order in the Northwest has agreed to pay $166.1 million to about 500 abuse victims as part of its bankrutpcy settlement. The settlement between the victims and the order's Oregon Province, the Northwest chapter of the Jesuits, also asks the order to provide a written apology to the victims and to share documents with them such as their personal medical records. Many of the abuses happened to Native American or Alaska Native children. Some were living in remote Alaskan villages when they were abused, others on reservations or in Christian boarding schools into which the federal government had forcibly placed them in an attempt to assimilate them into the dominant culture. The order was accused of regarding the villages and reservations as dumping grounds for problem priests - a characterization the province's leaders have repeatedly rejected. "Maybe the thought was: 'Little Indian girls would not say anything,' " said Dorothea Skalicky, 42, of Lewiston, Idaho, who says she was abused as a little girl by a Jesuit priest at Sacred Heart Church in Lapwai, Idaho, on the Nez Perce Reservation. "It's been a long journey" toward the settlement, said Skalicky, who did not tell anyone of her abuse until about two years ago. "I think a lot of people have this stigma (about lawsuits that) everyone is suing everybody these days. ... But because of these settlements, hopefully, (the church) is making substantial changes to prevent future abuses. That's the big thing." Before filing for bankruptcy in February 2009, the Jesuits' Oregon Province, which covers Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Idaho and Montana, had already settled about 200 abuse claims totaling more than $55 million. The province was facing about 200 more claims when it filed for Chapter 11 reorganization, listing assets of $4.8 million and liabilities of $61.8 million. It was believed to be the first Catholic religious order in the U.S. to file for bankruptcy because of abuse claims. Eventually, hundreds of creditors filed claims, some 500 of which alleged sexual abuse - including 172 from Washington state. In Washington state, the majority of the abuses happened at St. Mary's Mission and School, a former Jesuit-run Indian boarding school on the Colville Indian Reservation near Omak. More than 60 victims claimed they were abused there by Jesuit priests and brothers. A big question when the bankruptcy proceedings began was whether the assets of local Jesuit schools, including Seattle University, Gonzaga University, Seattle Preparatory School, Bellarmine Preparatory School and Gonzaga Preparatory School, belonged to the province. Attorneys for the victims had initially argued that they did and therefore could be used to pay creditors. The province and schools said they are separate from each other. But during the bankruptcy negotiations, the victims' attorneys did not pursue that argument. As a result, Friday's settlement does not include the schools, and they are not contributing any money toward the settlement. But that also means that lawsuits filed against the schools before the Jesuits declared bankruptcy will now move forward again - including claims against Seattle University alleging abuse by the Rev. Michael Toulouse, a former professor there. The Jesuits' settlement is believed to be the Catholic Church's third largest in the sex abuse cases, behind the Los Angeles Diocese, which agreed to pay $660 million to 508 victims, and the San Diego Diocese, which agreed to pay $198 million to 144 victims as part of its bankruptcy agreement, according to information from the website BishopAccountability.org Both the order and its insurers are paying into the settlement. The settlement ranks about 12th in terms of per-person award for cases involving 25 or more victims. Victms' attorneys declined to disclose what percentage of the settlement they would get, though the standard attorneys' contingency fees in abuse settlements range from about 33 to 40 percent.

An Indigenous Navajo high school teacher with a group of students in a school library.

<p></p>\n<p><b>--SUPERS</b>--</p>\n<p>Friday </p>\n<p>Laveen, AZ </p>\n<p></p>\n<p>President Joe Biden</p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>--SOT</b>--</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>And it's long overdue at the tribal school at a tribal school in Arizona, a community full of tradition and culture and joined by survivors and the centers to do just that apologize, apologize, apolo rewrite this history book correctly. I have a solemn responsibility to be the first president to formally apologize to the native peoples, native Americans, native alliances, native Alaskans and federal Indian boarding schools. It's long, long, long overdue, quite frankly, there's no excuse that this apology took 50 years to make. </p>\n<p></p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>--KEYWORD TAGS--</b></p>\n<p>POLITICS WASHINGTON ARIZONA</p>\n<p></p>

Gabe Desrosiers describes it as ironic.The University of Minnesota Morris teacher works to preserve and pass on the very thing that the federal government once sought to eradicate.The campus sits on land that was once the Morris Industrial School for Indians, a federally run boarding school that suppressed Indigenous children’s culture in an attempt at forced assimilation.“This was a place once that, you know, forbade Native students to learn about song and dance, to learn about language,” Desrosiers said. “This is what I do here on campus.”Desrosiers is reminded of that history every day. His office is housed in the last remaining building from the campus’ boarding school era. The two-story brick building served as the boy’s dormitory.“You can feel the presence of the children that were once here,” he said during a recent interview.The Morris campus is one of 20 sites in Minnesota identified in a federal investigation released this summer by the U.S. Department of the Interior.Following the extensive probe, the federal government is making amends for the first time in history.Late last month, President Joe Biden visited the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona and offered a formal apology to the Native families who have endured generational trauma as a result of the assimilation policies of the time.“It’s horribly, horribly wrong,” the president remarked. “A sin on our soul.”As the federal government takes responsibility for the policy of the time, school leaders at U of M Morris are moving ahead in their commitment to researching the school’s past.For decades, starting in the late 1800s, the government removed Native children from their families and sent them to boarding schools.Photos from the era show the students with their hair cut off and dressed in uniforms.In 2021, 5 INVESTIGATES traveled to Pipestone, Minn., the location of another federal Indian boarding school.Elders in the community recounted memories of the sprawling campus they remember from their youth.The federal investigation acknowledged that children endured harsh treatment in these schools and found 973 children died while attending boarding schools.But U of M Morris Chancellor Janet Ericksen said those findings are incomplete.“If you talk to anyone in a Native community around here, of course students died in boarding schools,” she said during an interview. “They knew it. They knew their relatives had died at this particular boarding school.”For nearly three decades, students and professors at the school have researched the boarding school era, attempting to learn more about what happened to the children who were sent here.Ericksen’s predecessor launched an effort to search the campus and surrounding grounds for any evidence of burial sites or other human remains.“We don’t have anything definitive to suggest that there are, but that’s why we keep looking,” she said.Desrosiers said while it was important to hear Biden’s apology, the government must follow it with action.“Doing that research and uncovering facts are important to begin the process of truth telling,” he said.The federal investigation lays out multiple recommendations for how to move forward, including investments in programs that support Native Americans and tribes, building a national memorial and identifying and repatriating the remains of children who never made it home.Next summer, Chancellor Ericksen said the school will partner with a private firm to search the campus using ground penetrating radar.The decision on what to do with any discoveries, however, will be left to Native people in the community.

HOUSE JUDICIARY SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING Immigration and Agriculture Subcommittee hearing with Arturo Rodriguez, United Farm Workers, Steven Colbert and others 09:38:33 THIS HEARING OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION, 09:38:37 CITIZENSHIP, REFUGEES, BORDER SECURITY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 09:38:40 WILL COME TO ORDER. WE REVISE THERE IS GREAT PLIGHT 09:38:48 OF MIGRANT FARM WORKERS IN AMERICA. 09:38:50 WE ASK THE PRESS ACTUALLY PULL BACK FROM THE TABLE SO THAT WE 09:38:56 CAN OBSERVE ALL FOUR OF OUR WITNESSES. 09:39:00 AND IF THE PRESS CANNOT DO SO, THEY'LL BE ASKED TO LEAVE THE 09:39:07 ROOM. I WOULD LIKE TO WELCOME OUR 09:39:10 WITNESSES. MEMBERS OF THE IMMIGRATION 09:39:13 SUBCOMMITTEE AND OTHERS WHO JOINED US TODAY TO THE 09:39:16 SUBCOMMITTEE'S HEARING ON PROTECTING AMERICA'S HARVEST. 09:39:19 THE AMERICAN AGRICULTURAL SECTOR HAS LONG SUFFERED FROM A LACK OF 09:39:24 AVAILABLE U.S. WORKERS TO GROW AND PICK AMERICA'S FRUITS AND 09:39:30 V VEGETABLES. 09:39:31 EVEN IN TODAY'S TOP ECONOMIC CLIMATE, WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR 09:39:34 NOT, INSUFFICIENT AND CONTINUAL NUMBER OF U.S. WORKERS ARE 09:39:40 WILLING TO FILL MANUAL AGRICULTURE JOBS. 09:39:42 AMERICA'S FARMS ARE DEPENDENT ON A RELIABLE WORKFORCE TO PRODUCE 09:39:45 OUR DOMESTIC FOOD SUPPLY AND TODAY'S FARMS ARE STRUGGLING TO 09:39:51 STAY IN BUSINESS AS A RESULT OF CURRENT LABOR CHALLENGES. 09:39:54 TODAY'S HEARING, THE LABOR NEEDS OF OUR AGRICULTURAL SECTOR, 09:40:00 ATTEMPT TO RECRUIT WORKERS FOR AGRICULTURAL LABOR, VISA PROGRAM 09:40:05 FOR AGRICULTURAL WORKERS AND POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS. 09:40:08 ONE EXPLANATION FOR WHY AMERICAN WORKERS MAY BE UNWILLING TO 09:40:13 ENGAGE IN MANUAL FARM WORKER WHEN THEY WERE WILLING TO SO 09:40:17 YEARS AGO MAY LIE IN OUR AGRICULTURAL SYSTEM. 09:40:20 IN THE 1940s AND '50s THE NATIVE-BORN WORKFORCE DIDN'T 09:40:26 HAVE A HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA. LAST YEAR THAT NUMBER WAS 5.7%. 09:40:29 IN ANY EVENT, THE DIFFICULT TO OF RECRUITING NATIVE-BORN 09:40:33 WORKERS TO WORK ON FARMS HAS BEEN HIGHLIGHTED BY THE UNITED 09:40:36 FORM WORKERS TAKE OUR JOBS PLEASE CAMPAIGN. 09:40:38 THE CAMPAIGN INVITES UNEMPLOYED AMERICANS TO USE THE UFW'S 09:40:45 ASSISTANCE TO OBTAIN EMPLOYMENT AS FARM WORKERS. 09:40:49 YET, ACCORDING TO UFW, EVEN IN THE PERIOD OF HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT 09:40:52 ACROSS ALL EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIOECONOMIC SECTORS OF OUR 09:40:57 SOCIETY, ONLY SEVEN U.S. WORKERS HAVE AGREED TO ACTUALLY WORK IN 09:41:01 THE FIELDS AS OF TODAY. I HAVE BEEN A LONGTIME ADVOCATE 09:41:04 FOR FARM WORKERS AND GROWERS. WHEN I WAS ON THE SANTA CLARA 09:41:09 COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS IN THE 1980s I WORKED CLOSELY WITH 09:41:13 THE UNITED FARM WORKERS AND FARM BUREAU. 09:41:16 I SPENT TIME AT MANY FARMS. RECENTLY I SPENT THE DAY PICKING 09:41:22 STRAWBERRIES AT A FARM NEAR MY DISTRICT. 09:41:25 UFW INVITED ME TO SPEND A DAY PICKING VEGETABLES AT A FARM IN 09:41:29 NEW YORK WITH STEPHEN COLBERT. I WANT TO THANK ARTURO RODRIGUEZ 09:41:35 FOR BRINGING US TOGETHER ON THIS IMPORTANT ISSUE, AND I WOULD 09:41:37 LIKE TO ADMONISH THE AUDIENCE BEFORE I CONTINUE MY STATEMENT, 09:41:42 THAT WE NEED TO MAINTAIN ORDER AND DECORUM THROUGHOUT THESE 09:41:46 PROCEEDINGS AND TO THAT END, I WOULD LIKE TO REMIND ALL OF THE 09:41:49 VISITORS IN THE AUDIENCE THAT THEY SHOULD REFRAIN FROM ANY 09:41:53 MANIFESTATION OF APPROVAL OR DISAPPROVAL OF THESE PROCEEDINGS 09:41:57 OR ANY OTHER DISRUPTIVE ACTIONS. IF NECESSARY, THE CAPITOL POLICE 09:42:02 ARE HERE TO REMOVE ANYONE WHO DISRUPTS THE HEARING. 09:42:06 WE CERTAINLY HOPE THAT WON'T BE NECESSARY. 09:42:08 PART OF WHAT I'VE LEARNED OVER THE YEARS IS WITHOUT A 09:42:11 SUFFICIENT U.S. LABOR FORCE U.S. FARMERS HAVE INCREASINGLY RELIED 09:42:15 ON UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS. ACCORDING TO THE DEPARTMENT OF 09:42:18 LABOR, OVER 50% OF ALL SEASONAL AGRICULTURAL WORKERS ARE 09:42:24 UNDOCUMENTED. EXPERTS BELIEVE DUE TO 09:42:27 UNDERREPORTING THAT NUMBER MAY ACTUALLY BE CLOSER TO 75%. 09:42:30 CRITICS ARGUE THAT THE SHORTAGE OF U.S. AGRICULTURAL WORKERS 09:42:33 COULD BE SOLVED BY SIMPLY INCREASING WAGES AND WORKING 09:42:37 CONDITIONS. AS A LONGTIME AND ARDENT 09:42:40 SUPPORTER OF FARM WORKERS I WOULD LIKE NOTHING BETTER. 09:42:43 WE MUST ALSO FACE THE REALITY THE NATION'S GROWERS COMPETE 09:42:46 WITH FARMERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD IN THIS INCREASINGLY 09:42:49 GLOBALIZED WORLD. INCREASING WAGES AND BENEFITS IN 09:42:53 AN AMOUNT NECESSARY TO ATTRACT BILLIONS OF EDUCATED U.S. 09:42:58 WORKERS TO THE FIELDS WOULD MEAN INCREASED PRODUCTION COST THAT 09:43:02 COULD RENDER U.S. FOOD PRODUCTS UNCOMPETITIVE WITH IMPORTED 09:43:06 PRODUCTS. AMERICAN FARMS WOULD THEN CLOSE 09:43:08 IN TURN RESULTING IN THE MASS OFFSHORING OF TENS OF MILLIONS 09:43:12 OF AGRICULTURE AND RELATED JOBS. INDEED, THIS IS ALREADY 09:43:17 HAPPENING. BETWEEN 2007 AND 2008, 1.56 09:43:22 MILLION ACRES OF U.S. FARMLAND WERE SHUT DOWN. 09:43:27 MANY OF THESE FARMS MOVED TO MEXICO. 09:43:31 WHEN FARMS CLOSE OUR COUNTRY SUFFERS. 09:43:33 NOT ONLY DO WE LOSE THE JOBS FILLED BY THOSE WHO WORK IN THE 09:43:38 FIELDS BUT LOSE THE MILLIONS OF UPSTREAM AND DOWNSTREAM JOBS 09:43:41 CONNECTED TO THOSE JOBS WHETHER IT'S PROCESSING, PACKAGING, 09:43:44 TRANSPORTATION, SEED TRUX, MANUFACTURING, ACCOUNTING, 09:43:47 ADVERTISING. THESE JOBS ARE OVERWHELMINGLY 09:43:49 FILLED BY U.S. WORKERS. YET THESE JOBS DISAPPEAR, TOO, 09:43:53 WHEN FARMS ARE CLOSED. ECONOMISTS BELIEVE THAT FOR 09:43:56 EVERY FARM JOB LOST, THE U.S. LOSES ANOTHER 3.1 COMPLEMENTARY 09:44:05 JOBS. ASIDE FROM THE LOSS OF 09:44:11 MILLIONS -- THE TRUTH IS OUR NATIONAL SECURITY DEPENDS ON OUR 09:44:12 ABILITY TO PRODUCE A STABLE DOMESTIC FOOD SUPPLY. 09:44:15 LIKE OIL, THE MORE WE RELY ON OTHER COUNTRIES FOR OUR FOOD 09:44:21 SUPPLY, THE MORE WE FALL VICTIM TO AN INCREASED TRADE DEBT, 09:44:25 SCARCITY IN TIMES OF DROUGHT, FLUCTUATING EXTERNAL MARKET 09:44:29 PRICES AND POLITICAL PRESSURE. WE WOULD ALSO INCREASE THE 09:44:32 POSSIBILITY OF FOOD-BORN ILLNESSES AND TERRORIST ATTACKS 09:44:34 THROUGH OUR NATION'S FOOD SUPPLY. 09:44:35 THE PLAIN TRUTH IS FOOD SECURITY IS NATIONAL SECURITY. 09:44:39 AMERICA CANNOT AFFORD TO STOP PRODUCING ITS OWN FOOD SUPPLY 09:44:42 ANDBY NEED THE LABOR FORCE TO DO SO. 09:44:45 TODAY WE WILL HEAR FROM OUR PANEL OF WITNESSES TO BETTER 09:44:49 UNDERSTAND THIS COMPLEX AND VERY IMPORTANT ISSUE FOR AMERICANS. 09:44:52 AMERICAN JOBS, OUR ECONOMY, AND OUR NATIONAL SECURITY. 09:44:56 PEOPLE IN THE MEDIA SPOTLIGHT HAVE A SPECIAL ABILITY TO FOCUS 09:45:00 PUBLIC OPINION ON AN ISSUE. WHETHER IT'S BONO TALKING ABOUT 09:45:05 THIRD WORLD POVERTY OR ANGELINA JOLIE ADVOCATING FOR PROTECTING 09:45:09 CHILDREN AGAINST HUMAN TRAFFICKING, THE POWER OF MEDIA 09:45:13 FIGURES TO USE THEIR CELEBRITY TO FOCUS ATTENTION ON A CENTRAL 09:45:17 PUBLIC ISSUES IS WELL KNOWN AND WELL REGARDED. 09:45:20 I'M HAPPY THAT STEPHEN COLBERT OF THE "COLBERT REPORT" HAS 09:45:25 JOINED THAT GROUP OF CELEBRITIES WHO WILL USE THEIR MEDIA 09:45:28 POSITION TO BENEFIT OTHERS. AS YOU CAN SEE FROM MR. 09:45:32 COLBERT'S WRITTEN TESTIMONY, HE'S TAKEN THE TIME TO WALK IN 09:45:35 THE SHOES OF MIGRANT FARM WORKERS AND URGES REFORM OF OUR 09:45:40 IMMIGRATION LAWS. HAPPY THE UNITED FARM WORKERS 09:45:44 HELPED INTRODUCE ME TO MR. COLBERT WHO I HAD NOT MET BEFORE 09:45:48 SO WE COULD SPEND A DAY ON THE FARM TOGETHER. 09:45:50 HIS ACTIONS ARE GOOD EXAMPLE OF HOW USING LEVITY AND FAME HE CAN 09:45:57 BRING ATTENTION TO THE GOOD OF THE NATION. 09:46:00 I APPRECIATE ALL OF OUR WITNESS'ESTS TO BE WITH US TODAY 09:46:05 AND THEIR LEADERSHIP IN THIS AREA. 09:46:06 I HOPE TOGETHER WE CAN FIND SOLUTIONS TO THESE PRESSING 09:46:09 PROBLEMS. I WOULD RECOGNIZE OUR 09:46:11 DISTINGUISHED RANKING MEMBER STEVE KING FOR HIS OPENING 09:46:15 STATEMENT. THANK YOU, MADAME CHAIR. 09:46:17 I APPRECIATE BEING RECOGNIZED. A THOUGHT THAT COMES TO MIND, 09:46:21 I'M WONDERING HOW THE ESKIMOS GOT ALONG WITHOUT FRESH FRUITS 09:46:27 AND VEGETABLES IF IT'S A NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE. 09:46:29 BEFORE WE START THE TESTIMONY FROM THE PANEL, I'D LIKE TO 09:46:32 FOCUS MY REMARKS ON PROTECTING AMERICAN WORKERS. 09:46:35 ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, THE LACK OF ENFORCEMENT OF OUR IMMIGRATION 09:46:39 LAWS IN TODAY'S JOBS, DEPRESSION, HAVE FORMED A 09:46:42 PERFECT STORM FOR HURTING AMERICANS. 09:46:44 THE MOST IMPORTANT DUTY OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE IS WE ENSURE OUR 09:46:46 NATION'S IMMIGRATION POLICY LIFTS UP AMERICANS AND NOT HOLDS 09:46:50 THEM DOWN. I FIND IT HARD TO UNDERSTAND WHY 09:46:52 SOME PEOPLE CARELESSLY CLAIM THAT AMERICANS WON'T DO HARD 09:46:56 WORK. I FIND THIS CLAIM INSULTING AS I 09:46:58 AM SURE MOST HARDWORKING AMERICANS DO. 09:47:01 IT'S MOST INSULTING TO THOSE BRAVE AMERICAN SOLDIERS WHO 09:47:04 VOLUNTARILY RISK THEIR LIVES TO DEFEND OUR FREEDOM AND WAY OF 09:47:07 LIFE EVERY DAY. THE MEN AND WOMEN THAT TAKE ON 09:47:10 TERRORISTS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN. 09:47:11 TREK FOR MILES ACROSS THE DESERT WITH 70 OR MORE POUNDS OF GEAR 09:47:15 IN 100-PLUS DEGREE TEMPERATURES FOR ABOUT $8.09 AN HOUR. 09:47:20 THAT INCLUDES THE MARINES. MAYBE WE SHOULD BE SPENDING LESS 09:47:25 TIME WATCHING "COMEDY CENTRAL" AND MORE TIME CONSIDERING THE 09:47:27 REAL JOBS OUT THERE, ONES THAT REQUIRE REAL HARD LABOR AND 09:47:32 DON'T INVOLVE SITTING BEHIND A DESK. 09:47:33 WE WOULD REALIZE EVERY DAY AMERICAN WORKERS PERFORM THE 09:47:36 DIRTIEST, MOST DIFFICULT, MOST DANGEROUS JOBS THAT CAN BE 09:47:39 THROWN AT THEM. FROM CRAB FISHERMEN TO VENTURE 09:47:41 INTO THE ROUGHEST AND MOST DANGEROUS WATERS IN THE WORLD TO 09:47:44 THE JOE THE PLUMBERS OF THE WORLD WHO MANY DAYS WOULD PREFER 09:47:49 THE AROMA OF FRESH DIRT TO THAT OF THE SEWAGE FROM AMERICAN 09:47:54 ELITISTS WHO DISPARAGE THEM EVEN AS THEY FLUSH. 09:47:57 THESE ARE REAL AMERICANS DOING REAL JOBS, TASKS THAT SIMPLY 09:48:02 MUST GET DONE. WHEN AMERICAN WORKERS ARE 09:48:05 TREATED WITH RESPECT AND PAID FOR THE LABOR THEY'LL DO ANY JOB 09:48:08 AND OUTWORK ANYONE ON EARTH. AMERICA'S SPIRIT IS HARD WORKING 09:48:13 AND SO ARE THE PEOPLE WHO COMPRISE THIS NATION. 09:48:16 I REPRESENT A RURAL DISTRICT MADE UP OF FARMERS IN FARM 09:48:19 COMMUNITIES AND THE PEOPLE OF IOWA KNOW WHAT IT TAKES TO 09:48:22 MANAGE AND EFFECTIVELY ONE A FARM. 09:48:24 ONE ISSUE WITH ATTRACTING MORE AMERICAN WORKERS TO SEASONAL 09:48:28 AGRICULTURAL LABOR IS MOST MIGRANT FARMERS -- THE 09:48:38 DEVASTATING IMPACT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION HAS ON AMERICAN FARM 09:48:41 WORKERS. OF COURSE IT IS ARGUED BY TOM 09:48:44 VILSACK, PRESIDENT OBAMA'S SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE, THAT 09:48:46 FOOD PRICES WOULD BE THREE, FOUR OR FIVE TIMES MORE IF IT WERE 09:48:50 NOT FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT WORKERS. 09:48:53 THIS IS BLATANTLY FALSE AND CAN'T BE SUPPORTED BY ANY DATA. 09:48:58 DOESN'T EVEN BOTHER TO DEFEND HIMSELF. 09:48:59 DATE TO FROM THE SECRETARY'S OWN DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE SHOWS 09:49:03 LABOR COSTS ONLY REPRESENT 6% OF THE PRICE CONSUMERS PAY FOR 09:49:07 FRESH FRUITS AND VEGETABLES. DOUBLE THE PAY OF WORKERS AND 09:49:10 SEE ONLY A 6% INCREASE IN CONSUMER PRICES. 09:49:14 HIGHLY RESPECTED AGRICULTURAL ECONOMIST PHILLIP MARTIN OF THE 09:49:17 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA NOTES IF THERE WAS A 40% INCREASE IN 09:49:20 FARM WAGES THE AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD WOULD ONLY SPEND $8 MORE A YEAR 09:49:25 ON FRUITS AND VEGETABLES, LESS THAN THE PRICE OF A MOVIE 09:49:30 TICKET. MOST AMERICANS WOULD PAY $8 MORE 09:49:32 A YEAR IN ORDER TO ENSURE A LEGAL WORKFORCE. 09:49:34 CHEAP LABOR IS NOT WORTH ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION'S COST TO AMERICANS 09:49:37 AS WORKERS OR TAXPAYERS. THE REALITY IS, EMPLOYERS HIRE 09:49:42 DESPERATE ALIENS WHO WILL WORK FOR MUCH LESS THAN AMERICANS, 09:49:45 DRIVING WAGES DOWN AND MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR AMERICAN WORKERS 09:49:49 TO COMPETE. AS RANKING MEMBER SMITH HAS 09:49:51 POINTED OUT, MANY TIMES IN THE PAST THERE ARE 8 MILLION ILLEGAL 09:49:55 IMMIGRANTS IN THE WORKFORCE COMPETING AGAINST THE 15.4 09:50:00 MILLION AMERICANS WHO ARE OFFICIALLY COUNTED AS 09:50:04 UNEMPLOYED, WHICH INCLUDES THE 80 MILLION WHO ARE SIMPLY NOT IN 09:50:09 THE WORKFORCE BECAUSE THEY'VE DROPPED OUT AND ARE NO 09:50:11 LOOKING FOR JOBS AND THEY ARE OF WORKING AGE. 09:50:13 AMERICANS HAVE GIVEN UP LOOKING FOR THOSE JOBS BECAUSE WAGES 09:50:17 HAVE BEEN DEPRESSED AND JOB OPPORTUNITIES ELIMINATED BY LOW 09:50:20 SKILLED AND VERY MOBILE IMMIGRATION. 09:50:22 THE PERCENT OF TEENAGERS WHO WORK HAS NEVER BEEN LOWER. 09:50:26 PROFESSOR CAROL SWAIN WILL TESTIFY TODAY ABOUT THE TOLL 09:50:29 MASS IMMIGRATION HAS TAKEN ON MINORITY COMMUNITIES. 09:50:32 WHAT'S IMPORTANT TO POINT OUT IS THAT ALL OF THIS STARTED LAPPING 09:50:35 WELL BEFORE THE RECESSION. PROFESSOR GEORGE BORHAUS DID 09:50:41 GROUNDBREAKING RESEARCH ON THE IMPACT OF IMMIGRATION IN THE 09:50:44 1980s AND '90s ON LOW SKILLED AMERICAN WORKERS. 09:50:48 PROFESSORS ANDREW SUM AND PAUL HARRINGTON AND OTHER RESEARCHERS 09:50:51 AT THE LABOR MARKET STUDIES AT NORTHEASTERN FOUND IN 2005 THAT 09:50:55 GIVEN AND I QUOTE GIVEN LARGE JOB LOSSES AMONG THE NATION'S 09:51:00 TEENS, 20 TO 24-YEAR-OLDS WITH NO FOUR-YEAR DEGREES AND NATIVE 09:51:05 BORN MEN IT IS CLEAR THAT NATIVE BORN WORKERS HAVE BEEN DISPLACED 09:51:09 IN RECENT YEARS BECAUSE OF IMMIGRATION." 09:51:12 IT'S AMAZING TO ME THAT AMNESTY ADVOCATES SIMPLY IGNORE THE 80 09:51:17 MILLION LABOR POOL. WE CAN EITHER FEED, CHOET AND 09:51:20 HOUSE THEM OR PUT THEM TO WORK TO FEED AND CLOTHE THE WORLD. 09:51:24 THE CURRENT ECONOMIC CRISIS ONLY MAGNIFIES THE IMPACT ON AMERICAN 09:51:28 FAMILIES BUT UNLESS OUR POLICIES ARE CHANGED AMERICAN WORKERS AND 09:51:31 FAMILIES WILL CONTINUE TO BE UNDERMINED EVEN AFTER THE 09:51:34 ECONOMY TURNS THE CORNER. THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION FOUND 09:51:38 THAT THE AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD HEADED BY AN IMMIGRANT HOUSEHOLD 09:51:42 WITHOUT A HIGH SCHOOL DEGREE RECEIVES OVER $19,000 IN TOTAL 09:51:46 GOVERNMENT BENEFITS MORE THAN THEY PAY IN TAXES FROM FEDERAL, 09:51:49 STATE AND LOCAL. CHEAP LABOR? 09:51:52 AND I THINK ABOUT THE DAY THAT I HAD TO SWIM OUT INTO A SEWER 09:51:57 LAGOON AND DIVE INTO NINE FEET OF FLUID TO RETRIEVE A PUMP AND 09:52:01 WHEN I THINK ABOUT THE DAY THAT IT WAS 20 BELOW AND I'M IN THE 09:52:04 WATER FIXING A WATER LINE IN THE WARMEST PLACE THERE WAS IN THE 09:52:09 WATER, THE WORK THAT I'VE DONE IN MY LIFE IN THE CONSTRUCTION 09:52:12 BUSINESS AND WORK WE'VE PUT OUR WORKERS THROUGH IN THE PRIDE 09:52:15 WITH WHICH THEY TAKE, IT MEANS THAT IT'S AN INSULT TO ME TO 09:52:18 HEAR THAT AMERICANS WON'T DO THIS WORK. 09:52:19 I CAN'T THINK OF A JOB THAT I HAVE NOT BEEN WILLING TO DO AND 09:52:22 I CAN'T THINK OF AN EMPLOYEE THAT I'VE HAD OVER THE 28 YEARS 09:52:25 IN THE CONSTRUCTION BUSINESS THAT REFUSED TO DO THE WORK THAT 09:52:28 WAS NECESSARY. AMERICANS WILL DO THAT WORK BUT 09:52:30 THEY WANT TO BE PAID A RESPECTABLE WAGE FOR IT. 09:52:32 I LOOK FORWARD TO THE TESTIMONY, MADAM CHAIR AND YIELD BACK THE 09:52:36 BALANCE OF MY TIME. WITH THE AGREEMENT OF THE 09:52:43 MINORITY, WE ARE RECOGNIZING THE AUTHOR OF THE AG JOBS BILL, 09:52:47 MR. BERMAN FOR HIS STATEMENT AND THEN MR. SMITH AND MR. CONNERS 09:52:52 WILL GIVE THEIR OPENING STATEMENTS. 09:52:54 MR. BERMAN. THANK YOU VERY MUCH, MADAM 09:52:57 CHAIR AND THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR HOLDING A HEARING WHICH 09:53:01 PERHAPS LIKE FEW OTHERS WILL HIGHLIGHT THE CONDITIONS OF 09:53:07 MIGRANT FARM WORKERS IN THIS COUNTRY AND TURN ATTENTION TO 09:53:12 THIS CRITICAL ISSUE. I THANK BOTH THE CHAIR AND 09:53:16 RANKING MEMBER AND FULL COMMITTEE FOR ALLOWING TO GO. 09:53:19 THIS IS AN ISSUE THAT I HAVE BEEN FOCUSED ON FOR 40 YEARS AND 09:53:27 IN THE LAST 10 YEARS HAVE EACH SESSION INTRODUCED BIPARTISAN 09:53:32 LEGISLATION TO TRY AND DEAL WITH THIS ISSUE. 09:53:38 UNFORTUNATELY, BECAUSE I CHAIR ANOTHER COMMITTEE, I HAVE A 09:53:41 HEARING AT 10:00 AND SO I APPRECIATE THE COURTESIES 09:53:46 EXTENDED TO LET ME JUMP IN LINE HERE. 09:53:49 I'M GOING TO FORGO MY PREPARED OPENING STATEMENT BUT I SIMPLY 09:53:55 MUST RESPOND TO THE COMMENTS OF THE RANKING MEMBER, MY FRIEND 09:53:59 THE RANKING MEMBER ON THIS PARTICULAR ISSUE. 09:54:04 THERE IS NOTHING THAT THE CHAIR SAID -- THERE IS NOTHING 09:54:08 IMPLICIT IN THE TAKE OUR JOBS CAMPAIGN EXPLICIT OR IMPLICIT 09:54:14 THAT SAID AMERICANS AREN'T DOING HARD WORK AND IF THE GENTLEMAN 09:54:20 FROM IOWA WERE DEEPLY CONCERNED ABOUT THE CONDITIONS ON THE 09:54:28 FARMS AND THE WAGES, I WOULD HAVE NOTICED MORE ACTIVITY TO 09:54:33 ENSURE THAT A NUMBER OF THE LAWS THAT APPLY TO ALL OTHER WORKERS 09:54:36 IN AMERICA APPLY WITH EQUAL FORCE TO THE PEOPLE WHO PICK OUR 09:54:42 FRUITS AND VEGETABLES IN THIS COUNTRY. 09:54:44 I WOULD SEE AN EFFORT TO PUSH GREATER APPROPRIATIONS AND 09:54:48 GREATER FUNDING FOR PEOPLE TO MONITOR THE WORKING CONDITIONS 09:54:51 ON OUR FARMS. I'D SEE AN EFFORT TO TRY AND GET 09:54:54 THE RIGHTS THAT ALL OTHER WORKERS HAVE TO COLLECTIVE 09:54:58 BARGAINING EXTENDED TO FARM WORKERS WHO ARE EXCLUDED FROM 09:55:01 OUR NATIONAL COLLECTIVE BARGAINING LEGISLATION. 09:55:04 THE FACT IS THAT WHILE AMERICANS OVER AND OVER AGAIN HAVE 09:55:10 PRODUCED BOTH THEIR -- HAVE SHOWN BOTH THEIR COURAGE AND 09:55:13 THEIR WILLINGNESS TO UNDERTAKE TERRIBLY DIFFICULT JOBS, JOBS 09:55:17 THAT I WOULD DARE TO SAY THE PEOPLE ON THIS PODIUM INCLUDING 09:55:22 MYSELF WOULD BE VERY RELUCTANT TO TAKE STUDY AFTER STUDY 09:55:28 INCLUDING STUDIES AT THE TIME OF WELFARE REFORM WHERE HUGE 09:55:32 NUMBERS OF PEOPLE WERE GOING TO BE FORCED OFF OF THE WELFARE 09:55:37 R ROLLS AND COUNTIES WHERE 09:55:39 UNEMPLOYMENT WAS TWO OR THREE TIMES THE AVERAGE OF THE COUNTRY 09:55:46 GENERALLY, PEOPLE WOULD RATHER HAVE NO INCOME AND NO WELFARE 09:55:51 THAN TAKE THE BACK-BREAKING JOBS THAT THE MIGRANT FARM WORKER HAS 09:55:58 TO DO EVERY SINGLE DAY. THERE IS A PROBLEM HERE. 09:56:02 YOU CAN TRY AND CHEAP SEAT IT ALL YOU WANT, BUT WE KNOW THAT 09:56:08 WERE IT NOT FOR IMMIGRANT FARM WORKERS IN THIS COUNTRY THERE 09:56:14 WOULD BE NO SEASONAL FRESH FRUIT AND VEGETABLE INDUSTRY AND I 09:56:19 JOIN THE GENTLEMAN WANTING BETTER WAGES AND BETTER WORKING 09:56:23 CONDITIONS AND WE SHOULD DO EVERYTHING WE CAN TO TRY AND 09:56:26 IMPROVE THOSE CONDITIONS, BUT THE FACTS ARE THE FACTS, STUDY 09:56:29 AFTER STUDY HAS DEMONSTRATED THAT THESE JOBS ARE NOT TAKEN BY 09:56:35 U.S. WORKERS EVEN WHEN UNEMPLOYED, EVEN WHEN HAVING NO 09:56:39 OTHER SIGNIFICANT MEANS OF SUPPORT. 09:56:41 AND NOTHING THAT -- NO RHETORICAL FLOURISHES CAN HIDE 09:56:46 THAT FACT. I COMMEND THE GENTLE LADY FOR 09:56:50 HOLDING THIS HEARING. I WANT TO PAY A SPECIAL 09:56:52 RECOGNITION FOR MY DEAR FRIEND, THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED FARM 09:56:56 WORKERS UNION, ARTURO RODRIGUEZ AND THE OTHER WITNESSES, AS WELL 09:57:00 AND APOLOGIZE FOR -- I HOPE TO COME BACK WHEN MY HEARING IS 09:57:04 OVER BUT NOT TO BE HERE FOR THE ENTIRE HEARING. 09:57:07 I YIELD BACK. THANK YOU, MR. BERMAN. 09:57:09 WE WOULD NOW RECOGNIZE THE RANKING MEMBER OF THE FULL 09:57:11 COMMITTEE MR. SMITH FOR HIS OPENING STATEMENT AND HE WILL BE 09:57:16 FOLLOWED BY MR. CONYERS AND THEN JUST TO KEEP IT EVEN WE'LL 09:57:21 INVITE MR. LUNDGREN TO HAVE AN OPENING STATEMENT AND OTHERS 09:57:25 WILL BE INVITED TO SUBMIT OPENING STATEMENTS. 09:57:28 THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. AMERICAN WORKERS FACE TOUGH 09:57:32 ECONOMIC TIMES. WITH UNEMPLOYMENT ALMOST 10% FOR 09:57:35 THE FIRST TIME IN A GENERATION, JOBS HAVE BECOME SCARCE AND 09:57:39 MILLIONS OF FAMILIES ARE HURTING. 09:57:42 THE PEW HISPANIC CENTER ESTIMATES THERE ARE MORE THAN 7 09:57:46 MILLION ILLEGAL WORKERS IN THE UNITED STATES. 09:57:50 ALEXANDER ALANAKOFF, I.N.S. OFFICIAL AND HIGH COMMISSIONER 09:57:55 FOR REFUGEES CALLS IT A MYTH THAT THERE ARE LITTLE OR NO 09:58:00 COMPETITION BETWEEN UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS AND AMERICAN WORKERS. 09:58:04 THIS COMPETITION HAS HAD DEVASTATING EFFECTS ON THE MOST 09:58:07 VULNERABLE OF AMERICANS. OVER 32% OF NATIVE-BORN WORKERS 09:58:12 WITHOUT A HIGH SCHOOL DEGREE ARE EITHER UNEMPLOYED, FORCED TO 09:58:15 WORK PART TIME OR TOO DISCOURAGED TO EVEN LOOK FOR 09:58:19 WORK. FOR NATIVE BORN HISPANICS 09:58:21 WITHOUT A HIGH SCHOOL DEGREE, THE RATE IS 35%. 09:58:25 FOR NATIVE BORN AFRICAN-AMERICANS WITHOUT A HIGH 09:58:27 SCHOOL DEGREE, THE RATE IS 43%. WE COULD MAKE MILLIONS OF JOBS 09:58:34 AVAILABLE TO AMERICAN CITIZENS AND LEGAL IMMIGRANTS IF THE 09:58:37 FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SIMPLY ENFORCED OUR IMMIGRATION LAWS. 09:58:41 ABOUT HALF OF AGRICULTURE WORKERS ARE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. 09:58:46 SO THAT MEANS THAT A SUBSTANTIAL NUMBER OF LEGAL WORKERS, LABOR 09:58:51 IN THE FIELDS, PERHAPS AS MANY AS HALF. 09:58:54 CERTAINLY EVEN MORE WOULD TAKE THESE JOBS IF THE WAGES AND 09:58:57 WORKING CONDITIONS WERE BETTER. THE MOST EFFECTIVE MEANS WE HAVE 09:59:01 TO SAVE JOBS FOR AMERICANS ARE

<p><b>--SUPERS</b>--</p>\n<p>Friday </p>\n<p>Laveen, AZ </p>\n<p></p>\n<p>President Joe Biden [no font needed]</p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>--LEAD IN--</b></p>\n<p>PRESIDENT BIDEN APOLOGIZED FRIDAY TO THE NATIVE AMERICAN COMMUNITY FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S ROLE IN THE ABUSIVE INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOLS THAT FORCED NATIVE CHILDREN TO ASSIMILATE.</p>\n<p>HE CALLED IT A “HORRIFIC” CHAPTER IN U-S HISTORY. </p>\n<p>AT LEAST 18-THOUSAND KIDS WERE TAKEN FROM THEIR FAMILIES AND FORCED TO ATTEND MORE THAN 400 INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOLS ACROSS 37 STATES OR THEN-TERRITORIES BETWEEN 18-19 AND 19-69.</p>\n<p>BIDEN MADE THE APOLOGY DURING A VISIT TO THE GILA RIVER INDIAN COMMUNITY.</p>\n<p>IT MARKS HIS FIRST TRIP TO INDIAN COUNTRY WHILE IN OFFICE.</p>\n<p><b>--SOT</b>--</p>\n<p>Pres. Biden:</p>\n<p>"After 150 years, the United States government eventually stopped the program. But, the federal government has never, never formally apologized for what happened, until today. I formally apologize!"</p>\n<p><b>--TAG--</b></p>\n<p>THE INTERIOR DEPARTMENT ISSUED A REPORT THIS SUMMER CONFIRMING NEARLY A THOUSAND NATIVE AMERICAN KIDS DIED WHILE ATTENDING FEDERAL BOARDING SCHOOLS.</p>\n<p>AT LEAST 74 MARKED AND UNMARKED BURIAL SITES WERE FOUND AT 65 DIFFERENT SCHOOLS.</p>\n<p><b>-----END-----CNN.SCRIPT-----</b></p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>--KEYWORD TAGS--</b></p>\n<p>POLITICS WASHINGTON ARIZONA</p>\n<p></p>

Indigenous Navajo students in an elementary school classroom.

THE SENATE Morning business followed by general debate on the Thomas Griffith nomination to the US court of appeals in the district - vote on Tuesday --- senate expected to debate resolution that apologize to the families of victims of lynchings 19:00:15.0 concept -- that it's important to remind the american people about the evil chapters in our history. it is the reason we construct museums in washington and beyond, to hold up for all to see how capable we are of descending into the heart of darkness. it is important for us 19:00:31.5 to look back into the past so that we can pledge, pledge never again to allow racial hatred to consume our ideals or humanity. president bush in his second inaugural address -- and i quote from janet's letter -- "our 19:00:48.4 country must abandon all habits of racism because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time." 19:00:58.1 she concludes with these statements, "an apology, i concede, will do nothing for the thousands of people who have perished during what has been called "the black holocaust." it cannot repair the battered souls of their 19:01:12.3 survivors. it is, after all, only a symbolic act. our symbol, however, the eagle, old glory, lady liberty, to mention but a few, are but shortian narratives of who we are as americans. 19:01:27.5 it is through the acknowledgement of the senate's abdication of its duty to protect and defend the rights of all american citizens that perhaps we can begin to understand the pain and anger that still lingers in the hearts and minds of so many who have been deprived of the equality 19:01:45.3 promised in our constitution."ñ my friend and mentor writes "there martin luther king, jr. once said that -- quote -- "the arrest, of history bends toward justice. 19:02:03.7 " today as the senate members cast their historic votes that ark dips closer to its destination" signed janet lange therehart cohen. mr. president, i ask that this 19:02:18.1 full letter be made a part of the record of this debate on the resolution. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. allen: mr. president, i'm proud that this resolution will pass tonight. the senate is going to be on record condemning the brutal atrocities that plagued our 19:02:33.9 great nation for over a century. ly close with the words of the resolution "whereas an apology offered in the spirit of true repentance moves the united states towards reconciliation and may become central to a in 19:02:49.6 new understanding on which improved racial relations could be forged now thereforebe it resolved that the senate apologizes to the victims of lynching. 19:03:03.5 it 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 constitutional 19:03:19.8 protections accorded all citizens of the united states. and we remember the history of lynching to ensure that these tragedies will neither be forgotten nor repeated. my colleagues, i ask you to join all of us in examining our 19:03:36.3 history. learn from history. never again sit quietly. never again turn ones head away when the ugly specter of racism, antisemitism, hate and intolerance rises again. 19:03:50.9 it is our responsibility to stand strong for freedom and justice. in the future, mr. president, i am confident that this senate will perform better than it has in the past. we will protect the god-given blessings of all people to life 19:04:08.4 and liberty to all people regardless of their race, their ethnicity or their religious beliefs. the senate can do better. we have done better tonight. 19:04:23.6 but the real lesson is when we have learned that when such acts happen in the future will this senate stand and rise to condemn it to protect those god-given liberties. i know senator landrieu and i believe the senate will rise 19:04:41.2 aappropriately. mr. president, with that i ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the previous agreement, the senate now proceed to the vote on the pending resolution. i further ask consent that notwithstanding the adoption of 19:04:55.1 the resolution, the remaining time under the previous agreement remain available for senators who wish to make statements, provided that any statements relating to the resolution appear tryer -- prior to its adoption in the congressional record. 19:05:12.2 the presiding officer: without objection it is so ordered. the question is now on the resolution. all those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the resolution is adopted. the preamble is agreed to. ms. landrieu: mr. president? 19:05:31.6 the presiding officer: who yields time? the senator from louisiana. a senator: mr. president, what is the status of time? mr. kerry: is it under control or is it just open? the presiding officer: the 19:05:44.4 senators from virginia and louisiana control the time. mr. kerry: i understand. ms. landrieu: mr. president, i'm happy to yield to the senator from massachusetts in just one moment because he has been very 19:05:56.2 patient to speak. and as a cosponsor of this resolution that just passed, it's really a privilege and appropriate for senator kerry to be one of the first senators to speak upon its passage, but i would like to mention very 19:06:12.6 briefly because i'm not sure he is going to be able to stay with us much longer, mr. james cameron has been with us all day here in the senate. mr. cameron is 91 years old. he lives in marion, indiana n.1930 when he was 16 years old, 19:06:29.4 a mob dragged him from a cell at grant county jail, put a rope around his neck. he was accused of a murder and a rape that he was nowhere around when they occurred. his associates were both lynched that night. 19:06:44.3 a man in the crowd spared him by proclaiming that he in fact was innocent and should be let go. he then went on to live an extraordinary life without bitterness, with a lot of love. he is married 67 years. 19:07:01.1 his four children, multiple grandchildren. senator evan bayh that serves in this body when he was governor of indiana pardoned mr. cameron for anything. he is really the one that has forgiven us and for what was 19:07:19.5 done to him. i wanted to mention him. i yield the floor to senator kerry. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. mr. kerry: mr. president, thank you. i want to start by thanking both senator landrieu and senator allen for their leadership on this effort, and for all those 19:07:36.0 descendants of families who have been absolutely extraordinary in the way in which we have relived their pain, brought it to the public view, kind of laid their hearts out on the table in a very real and emotional way. and i think that's been a 19:07:53.3 wonderful part of this process, the way in which this book that jimmy allen put together has helped to sort of really unleash a pain that was never lost, 19:08:14.5 never forgotten by anybody, but never quite had a place to play itself out until this public effort is being made by the united states senate. there's no small irony, i 19:08:29.1 suspect, in the fact that the senate is here sort of making good on what the senate failed to do. and i personally am struck by even at this significant moment 19:08:47.3 the undeniable and inescapable reality that there aren't 100 senators as cosponsors. maybe by the end of the evening there will be, but as we stand 19:09:00.1 here with this resolution now passed by voice vote there aren't. moreover, all the people in the senate and the press understand how we work here. and i think it's critical that we take the step we're taking 19:09:17.7 and have taken, but at the same time, wouldn't it have been just that much more extraordinary and significant if we were having a recorded vote with all 100 senators recording their votes? we're not. 19:09:32.9 and so even today as we take this gigantic step, we're also saying to american -- america, there's a journey still to travel. i don't want to diminish one eye kwroeta, and i don't mean to, 19:09:49.8 because i think what is happening here today is so significant, but at the same time, it has to give all of us a kind of kick in the era -- rear-end to get us out there to do the other things that are 19:10:04.7 necessary, that give fuller meaning to the words that are going to be expressed here and have been expressed here, most importantly to give fuller meaning for the emotions laid bare by the families who have 19:10:21.8 come here to share this with us. i want to join not just in thanking mr. cameron and others but january the langhart cohen who is here and bill cohen who 19:10:38.6 is up in the gallery. we certainly appreciate her commitment to this effort and the meaning of this to her and all of the families that have come here together. mr. president, it's pretty incredible to think about it. lynchings really replaced 19:10:58.1 slavery. they came in the aftermath of the slavery around 1880's, and between the 1880's and 1968, i have to pause when i think about that, because i was already a 19:11:13.3 young officer in the military. i had left college. i remember the early part of the 1960's devoted to the civil rights movement, the mississippi voter registration drive. we were still recording lynchings during that period of 19:11:29.9 time but i didn't know it. not that in sense i know it today. i thought i knew history pretty well, but i'll tell you, until i saw this array of photographs which then sparked my curiosity to read more about it, i had 19:11:48.6 always thought like most american that's a lynching was just sling the rope over the branch of the tree and that's it. the story is so much more gruesome than that, so much more dark and horrendous, as a moment 19:12:08.2 in american history that it's really hard to believe that it happened at all in our country. which is another reason that it's so important we're taking this step to remember. we've seen revisionism on almost 19:12:22.6 every part of history including the holocaust. so it is good that we take this step today and it is good that we have these photographs brought together as a compilation of history, and it is good that the senate is taking this effort tonight. it is extraordinary to think 19:12:37.8 that 99% of the perpetrators of lynchings escaped any reach of the law whatsoever. it's incredible to think that almost 5,000 people are recording as incidents and how 19:12:55.2 many are not recorded, how many went without the local authorities in each of those communities who are already complicitious in what happened standing by, per missive, turning away from basic human 19:13:13.5 rights. how of those incidents were not recorded? a lot of us have read a lot about world war ii and the holocaust and other moments of history where there's a knock on the door and life changes. 19:13:28.4 but you have to stop and really think what it was like in all but four states in our country. not just for african-americans but for new people, for folks who had come here from other 19:13:46.2 places to live the american dream. in some cases they weren't knocks. they were just angry mobs screaming and yelling with torches and running rampant through households dragging people out screaming. in other cases, there was a 19:14:03.5 pretext, more polite, but it was never polite in what it ended up as. lynchings were not just lynchings, they were organized torture. they were incidents of kinds of torture that defy the 19:14:20.7 imagination that you don't even want to talk about. the kinds of things that any descent society ought to stand up against. people were literally tortured for sport in front of people, and crowds would cheer, bedlam, 19:14:37.9 children brought to be spectators. some of these photographs show kids standing there with their eyes wide open and adults standing beside them, who were supposed to be more responsible, 19:14:51.2 glued to the horror that they were witnessing. in the first half of the last century alone, in the 20th century, over 200 antilynching bills were introduced to the 19:15:06.3 united states congress -- 200. and three times the house of representatives passed antilynching legislation. seven presidents asked for this legislation to be passed. the united states senate said no 19:15:26.8 so it is important that we're here today to apologize. some people wonder what the effect of an apology is, and we 19:15:38.9 can understand that question being asked. but this is sort of a day of reckoning for us as a country. it's a moment for the conscience of our country to be listened to by everybody. it's an embarrassingly and unforgiveibly late moment in 19:15:54.1 coming but we're addressing a stain on our history, and we are working to heal wounds across generations. i think that that is important. some people might try to diminish that. but i think the very lack of unity that i phepbsed earlier, 19:16:11.7 in fact, goes to show why this apology is so important and why we all have to keep moving in this direction.ñ mr. president, no words, obviously, are going to undo the horror of those 5,000 americans 19:16:27.0 losing their lives. no apology is going to just wipe away the memories of mr. cameron and others, though they've shown a greater graciousness of understanding than others even at this moment. and the fact is that this 19:16:45.2 resolution can be one more step in the effort for all of us to try to get over the divide that still exists between race -- races and as a result of jim crow in this country. 19:16:59.8 but only if you face the truth. it is the piebl that reminds us that it's the truth that sets us free. so we have to embrace it, commit ourselves to put our hearts and our actions where our words have now preceded us. this should be an important step 19:17:16.8 forward. but frankly, it will only do that if we don't step here. the truth is, mr. president, that it's not enough to face the who are he of lynchings if we then just walk out of here and 19:17:33.1 consciously turn away from legally separate and unequal schools in america. it's not enough to decry decades of refusing to use the use of law against lynching if today we 19:17:48.5 reuse it to use the force of law to tear down the barriers that prevent people from voting, barriers in the economy, divisions in the health care system that works for too few of those who are in the minority in 19:18:04.0 america. it's only by reconciling the past that you can understand where you have to go in the few of and how to get there. i ask my colleagues just to remember the words of julian bond when he dedicated that beautiful, simple memorial in 19:18:21.1 montgomery, alabama, to those who gave their lives for civil rights. and he said that it was erected as much to remember the dead as it was for those young people who cannot remember the period when the sacrifices began. with its small crueltyties and 19:18:36.6 monstrous injustices, its petty indignities and its deft-dealing inequities. there are too many young to remember that from that seeming hopelessness there arose a mighty movement, simple in its tactics, over whelming in its 19:18:56.1 impact. that is why we have to remember the period of the lynchings. that's why this resolution is important. for the young people who don't know what it to wake up in the middle of the night to hear that 19:19:10.8 knock, or young people who need to commit to help our country to complete the journey in order guarantee that we make it that you will it promises to be and can be, we will never erase what mr. cameron or mr. wright and too many others went through, but we certainly can honor the 19:19:31.5 legacy of these civil rights heroes and the martyrs who came before us by doing right by them and by the country, and i 0 hope this resolution will help us do that. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: who 19:19:53.4 yields time? mr. kerry: mr. president, i yield such time as the senator from illinois wishes. the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. obama: thank you, 19:20:08.8 mr. president. i'd like to rise in strong support of this resolution. before i make any further remarks, i'd like to recognize doria d. johnson and thank her for coming. sheels ea from evanston, illinois. ms. johnston is the great-great-granddaughter of 19:20:26.7 anthony crawford, a south carolina farmer who was lynched nearly 100 years ago for the crime of being a successful black farmer. i'm sure this day has special meaning for her and the other family members of those who were impacted by these great 19:20:41.5 tragedies of the past, and i want to thank her and others for being here today. since america's darkest days of 19:20:53.8 jim crow, separate but equal, fire hoses, church bombings, cross burnings and lynchings, the people of this great nation have found the courage, on 19:21:08.5 occasion, to speak up and speak out so that we can right this country's wrongs. so that together we can walk down that long road of transformation that continues to perfect our union. 19:21:26.2 it's a transformation that brought us the civil rights act and the voting rights act, a transformation that led to the first black member of congress and the first black and white children holding hands in the 19:21:41.2 same playground in the same school. a transformation without which i would not be standing here speaking to you today. but i am. and i'm proud because thanks to this resolution, we're taking 19:21:56.0 another step in acknowledging a dark corner of 0 our history. we're taking a step that allows us, after looking at 4,700 deaths from lynchings and hate 19:22:12.2 that lied behind those deaths, and this chamber's refusal to try and stop those deaths that we are finally saying that we were wrong. there is a power in 19:22:28.4 acknowledging error and mistakes. it is a power that potentially transforms not only those who were impacted directly by the lynchings but also those who are 19:22:44.2 the progeny of those who perpetrated them. i think it's been mentioned that there's an exhibit in chicago right now. its a ea powerful photographic-- --it's a powerful photographic exhibit of some of the lynchings 19:22:58.3 that occurred across the country, and as has already been remarked, what often is most powerful is not the gruesome aspects of the lynching itself. it's not the terrible rending of 19:23:16.7 the body that took place. what's most horrific, what's most disturbing to the soul is photographs in which you see young little white girls or 19:23:32.4 young little white boys with their parents out on an outing loorksing at the degradation of 0 another human being. you wonder not only what the 19:23:49.4 lynching did to the family member of those who were lynched but also what it did to the sensibilities of those young people. 0 now that we're finally 19:24:05.7 acknowledging this injustice, it gives us an opportunity to reflect on the cruelties that can happen to all of us. and then hopefully we can take 19:24:19.7 the time to teach our children to treat people who are differently -- who look different than we do with the same respect that we would expect. and so it's fitting, it's proper, and it's right that 19:24:33.9 we're doing what we're doing here today. i do hope that, as we commemorate this past injustice, that this chamber also spends some time, however, doing something concrete and tangible 19:24:54.2 to heal the long shadow of slavery and the legacy of racial discrimination so that 100 years from now we can look back and be proud and not have to apologize once again. 19:25:10.4 that means completing the unfinished work of the civil rights movement, that means closing the gap that still exists in health care and education and income. there are more ways to 19:25:24.7 perpetrate violence than simply a lynching. there is eight violence that-- --there's the violence that we subject young children to when they don't have any opportunity and they have no hope and they stand on street corners not thinking much of themselves, not 19:25:42.8 thinking that their lives are worth living. that's a form of violence that this chamber could do something 19:25:51.9 about. it means just as we're spending time apologizing today for these past failures of the senate to act, we should spend some time debating the extension of the voting rights act, the best ways to cover the 45 million 19:26:07.9 uninsured americans, how we can make young african-american children, the great-great grandchildren or the great-great-great-grandchildren 19:26:23.9 of those who have been harmed, how can we make sure college is affordable to them? these are the ways we can final ensure that the blessings of opportunity finally reach every american, that we can finally claim a victory in the long struggle for civil rights. today is a step in the right direction. 19:26:41.0 today gives us an opportunity to heal and to move forward. and for those who still harbor ainger in their hearts, who still wonder, how do you #u move on from such terrible violence, it's worth us reflecting for a moment on mamie till mobley. 19:27:03.3 her boy was only 14 years old when they found him in the mississippi river, beaten and blood did ied beyond recognition-- --beaten and bloodied beyond recognition. 19:27:18.5 emmet till was only 14 years old. when his mother saw her child, her baby, unrecognize rbl, his face so badly beaten, it barely looked human and it was suggested that she should have a 19:27:33.7 closed casket, she said, no, we're going to have an open casket, and everybody is going to witness what they did to my child. and as a consequence of that courage displayed by a mother, 19:27:50.8 it galvanized the civil rights movement in the north and in the south, and yet despite that, manie till mobley has repeatedly said, i never wasted a day 19:28:08.3 hating. imagine that. i never wasted a day hating. not one day. i rise today thanking god that the united states senate, the representatives of the american 19:28:21.3 people, and our highest ideals will not waste one more day without issues the apology that will continue to march us down the path of transformation that mamie till mobley has been on 19:28:43.0 her whole life. i am grateful and i am looking forward to joining hands with my colleagues and the american people to make sure that when our children and grandchildren look back at our actions in this chamber that we don't have 19:28:57.2 something to apologize about. i yield the time. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from arkansas. mr. pryor: thank you, mr. president. i join my colleagues today to talk about one of our nation's 19:29:13.8 darkest periods, a stain in history we'd rather forget but that we cannot ignore. the white mobs committed 4,742 hangings, flaggings and burnings 19:29:30.5 of-- --floggings and burnings of african-americans. yet the u.s. senate watched indifferently failing to pass any 26900 separate bills before it to make lynching a federal crime. senate resolution 39 expressing the senate's apology for failing 19:29:47.5 to adopt antilynching legislation is long overdue. i would like to express my sincere apologies and regret to the families in arkansas and the nation, especially to the 19:30:02.9 victims and the their decendants that this body failed to help at a time when they needed it most. i hope that acknowledging these grave injustices of the past will help again to heal the wounds that exist today. 19:30:19.6 even more so, this acknowledgment should serve as a lesson that government must step in to foster racial reconciliation, ensure the mob mentality never returns, and protect those who are most 19:30:36.2 vulnerable. the senate can start by continuing to advance civil rights and equality and work to close the divide that continues in our neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. i'm afraid that if we don't 19:30:52.5 start truly addressing inequities, we will look back once again at the senate's inaction with disdain and remorse. most of the worst offenses of lynching occurred in the south, 19:31:06.6 and arkansas is no different. between the years 1860 and 1936, 318 lynchings occurred in arkansas. of this number, 230 of the victims were black, including 19:31:25.2 six females. that's about three-quarters of the lynchings in our state that are recorded were against african-americans. mr. president, of course the statistics don't have a face. they don't feel pain. 19:31:39.5 nor do they hold memories. but people and families all over arkansas do, and they remember these crimes and the senate's inaction to protect them.÷ in march of 1892, a reporter 19:31:55.7 from the "christian recorder" reported the chaos and hopelessness occurring throughout my state. there is much uneasiness and unrest all over this state -- this is a quote -- "there is much uneasiness and unrest all over this state among our people 19:32:12.7 alluding to the fact that the people all over the state are being lynched upon the slightest provocation. some being strung up to telegraph poles, others burnt at the stake, and still others 19:32:26.8 being shot like dogs. in the last 30 days, there have been not less than eight colored persons lynched in this state. at texarcana a few days ago, a man was burnt at the stake." 19:32:43.2 as i continue the quote, it says, "in pine bluff a few days later, two men were strung up and shot. and this too by the brilliant glare of the electric lights at srarpber, george harris was taken from jail and shot for 19:32:58.0 killing a white man for poisoning his domestic happiness. at wilmar, a boy was induced to confess to the commission of an outrage upon promise of his liberty. and when he had confessed, he 19:33:13.0 was strung up and shot. over in lone oak county, a whole family, consisting of husband, wife and child, were shot down like dogs. the situation is alarming in the extreme." 19:33:27.2 this is a quote from an article that appeared in 1892. mr. president, there are -- there were few honest press accounts of such lynchings, a problem that continues to trouble historians today as they put together the pieces of this 19:33:44.6 period. most arkansas press accounts were no different. lynchers were considered heroes. officers, conniving. the accused, guilty. a case in point. in 1919, arkansas would be home 19:34:02.8 of a terrible racial injustice, the so-called elaine race riot. according to sketchy accounts that have been pieced together by historians, in september 1919, black sharecroppers met to 19:34:18.2 protest unfair settlements for their cotton crops from white plantation owners. local law enforcement broke up the union's meeting. the next day, a thousand white men and troops of the u.s. army converged on phillips county to 19:34:35.1 put an end to the black sharecroppers' so-called insurrection. the number of african-american deaths from this lynching is disputed, ranging from 20 at the low end all the way up to 856 men and women on the high end. 19:34:52.2 the details of the elaine race riot of 1919 have never been formally written down. but mayor robert miller of helena, arkansas, remembers them vividly. at the time, mayor miller's four uncles were preparing for a 19:35:08.7 hunting trip. three of them had traveled to a town near elaine, helena, arkansas, for this special occasion which turned tragic when a mob saw the brothers with guns in hand and assuming they were part of the insurrection, 19:35:25.1 all four were immediately killed. of the antilynching legislation we are considering today, mayor miller says, "it won't change what happened but at least it's a good thing, a movement in the 19:35:39.8 right direction." mr. president, in 2000, the "arkansas times" newspaper wrote 19:35:50.2 an article about one of arkansas's most high-profile lynchings and the lasting impact it had on families in arkansas today. in may 1927, a mentally retarded black man named john carter was accused of attacking a white 19:36:08.0 mother and daughter. upon his capture near little rock, a mob of 100 quickly gathered and prevented police from taking him to little rock, where the police would have protected him from being lynched. 19:36:22.8 after hanging him from a utility pole, the mob dragged john carter's body through the city of little rock and burned him in the downtown -- in downtown little rock at 9th and broadway. 19:36:38.7 the "arkansas times" recall recounts a conversation that occurred 30 years later, in september of 1957, of a mother talking to civil rights pioneer daze -- daisy baits about the john carter lynching. 19:36:56.4 the mother had to say -- and i quote -- "i'm frightened, miss baits, not for myself but for my children. when i was a little girl, my mother and i saw a lynch mob dragging a body of a negro man through the streets of little 19:37:11.0 rock. we were told to get off the streets. we ran. and by cutting through side streets and alleys, we managed to make it to the home of a friend. but we were close enough to hear 19:37:26.6 the screams of the mob, close enough to smell the sickening odor of burning flesh. and miss bates, they took the pews from bethel church to make the fire. 19:37:42.2 they burned the body of this negro man right at the edge of the negro business section." the woman speaking to daisy bates was named birdie eckfort. her daughter elizabeth, one of 19:37:59.3 the little rock nine, would walk through an angry, threatening crowd the following day to claim her right to an equal education at little rock central high school. mr. president, little rock 19:38:15.1 central high school today reminds us of some of the darkest days during the civil rights movement. as a former student, however, i can tell you that it also represents hope and achievement. 2007 will mark the 50th 19:38:34.3 anniversary of desegregation process at little rock central high school. last friday, i spoke with seven members of the little rock nine to tell them that we're closer to funding an adequate visitor's center and museum for this 19:38:50.7 landmark anniversary. minni jean brown trickie, one of the little rock nine, said this visitor's center will serve many purposes, but what struck me was her assurance that the center is 19:39:07.5 an opportunity for healing. today's resolution offers similar opportunities. it allows us to remember the past, begin healing from the past, look at how far our nation 19:39:22.2 has come to address equality and discrimination and rededicate ourselves to acknowledging how much further we must go from here. mr. president, i yield the floor. 19:39:46.0 a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr.al czar: thank you very much -- mr. salazar: thank you very much, mr. president. i rise this evening to speak in support of senate resolution 39, apologizing for the senate's 19:39:59.9 failure to enact antilynching legislation. i think that it's important for us to reflect on the statements that have been made by my colleagues, including the distinguished senator from louisiana and the distinguished senator from virginia so that we 19:40:16.8 can remember the history of this country and how america has been an america in progress. the past can be painted in statistics or it can be painted in the stories of people who have suffered from the unjust 19:40:34.0 result of the absence of an antilynching law. the past we can speak about the time between 1882-1968, when there were nearly 5,000 lynchings that occurred. 19:40:46.6 and these lynchings that occurred were not lynchings that 19:40:50.6 occurred just in the southern part of the united states of america but happened throughout most of the states of our country, including in my own home state of colorado, where a historian has, in his own research, concluded that there were about 175 lynchings that 19:41:06.7 occurred in colorado between 1859-1919. so it is appropriate and fitting that today we apologize for the absence of those laws, that we recognize that people like james 19:41:24.6 cameron, who became a survivor of the lynchings of that time period, recognize that this united states senate body today says we apologize for that past. i also believe that it is 19:41:41.3 perhaps even more important for us to look to the future of america and to look at the kinds of racial issues and the challenges that we face as a nation to create an america that truly is an america of 19:41:57.6 inclusion. it is one thing for us to stand here and -- in the chambers of the united states senate today to look at our history and to learn from that painful history. but it is equally as important for us to look to the future and to recognize that the challenges that we face in this america 19:42:13.5 today, in the decade ahead, in the hundred years ahead require us to learn from those very painful lessons of the past. and when one looks at those very painful lessons of the past, we have to recognize that for the first 250 years of the beginnings of this nation, we 19:42:30.2 had a system of law that recognized that it was okay for one group of people to own another group of people under our system of slavery just because of the color of their skins. and it is important for us also 19:42:45.0 to recognize that it took the bloodiest war of these united states during the civil war, where over half a million people were killed on our own soils here in america to bring about an end to the system of slavery and to usher in the 13th and 19:43:02.3 14th and 15th amendments, which are the bedrock of the constitutional liberties which we now endow upon all people of america. but notwithstanding the fact that in that time period of the civil war, we saw the blood and 19:43:19.2 life of so many americans laid down in this country, we still continued through another period of almost a hundred years where we divided our nation according to groups. it was over a hundred years ago when justice harlan, writing for 19:43:36.0 the dissent in the now famous case of policy v. -- of fplecy v. ferguson made the decision. justice harlan disagreeing with 19:43:52.2 the segregation system that was ushered under that decision, he said, "the destinies of the races in this country are insolubly linked together and the interests of both require that the common government law shall not permit the seeds of 19:44:08.5 race hate to be planted under the sanction of law." that was over a hundred years ago, and yet it took another almost half a century, in fact, more than half a century, until 1954 in the decisions of brown vs. the board of education, 19:44:24.4 mr. president, for the u.s. supreme court, under the leadership of justice warren, to say that in these united states, separate but equal was unconstitutional under the 14th amendment. it took another more than half a century for the united states 19:44:41.0 supreme court to make that statement. and so when we look to the future of america, when we look to the diversity that defines our country, it is my belief that this next century will be defined by how we as an american 19:44:57.3 society embrace the concept of an inclusive america. and when we embrace a concept of an inclusive america, we talk about including people of all backgrounds, be they anglo-americans, french 19:45:14.0 americans, african-americans, latinos, native americans, women, that we as an american society will be challenged in the century ahead by how we deal with the issue of inclusion and the greatness of this country will be defined by 19:45:30.3 how successful we are in making sure that we are inclusive of all people. and there are some who have recognized this. just as sandra -- justice sandra day o'connor, in writing for the united states supreme court in the now famous 19:45:45.9 decision of the university of michigan from just several years ago, made the following comment 19:45:51.0 about the importance of diversity in higher education. justice o'connor, in the majority opinion, said the following -- and i quote -- "these benefits" -- talking about the benefits of higher 19:46:04.9 education and diversity in higher education, said -- "these benefits are not theoretical but real, as major american businesses have made clear that the skills needed in today's increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse 19:46:20.8 people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints." that was from the brief she cited submitted by general motors. she went on to say, "what is more, high-ranking retired officers and civilian leaders of the united states military 19:46:37.9 assert" -- and she quotes from the brief of the former joint chiefs of staff, she says -- "based on their decades of experience, a highly-qualified, racially diverse officer corps is essential to the military's ability to fulfill its principal 19:46:53.9 mission: to provide national security."ñ i believe it was in that articulation by justice day o'connor where she articulated the challenge and the opportunity that we have as an american society 19:47:08.4 as the 21st century unfolds in front of us. in my estimation, the greatness of this country depends on our learning and not forgetting the painful lessons of the past, including the lynchings that occurred across america, and also 19:47:23.2 looking forward to the challenge of including people of all backgrounds and all races in all of the business affairs and civic affairs of this nation. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the 19:47:41.1 senator from florida. mr. nelson: mr. president, i'm very glad that we're doing this. there have been attempts in the past by other members of congress, my 19:47:59.0 good friend, the former congressman tony hall of ohio, who had tried back several years before to get a resolution of apology with regard to slavery, and they never 19:48:12.7 could work out all the details in that. and so i'm very glad that the senate has come to this point, that the senate could critique itself for this legislative body's 19:48:30.2 failure to enact antilynching laws back at a time when it would have been so important to stop this kind of mayhem and murderous rampages that mobs would 19:48:48.0 take supposedly justice into their own hands, and thank goodness that we've come to a point at which we can admit our mistakes, even though this is several generations later, and 19:49:06.2 pass a resolution like this as we will do tonight. interestingly, one of my political heroes is a person that americans rarely hear about. 19:49:21.7 he was a british parliamentarian in the late 1700's and the early 1800's named william wilburforce. wilburforce was elected to the parliament at the 19:49:35.0 age of 21 along with one of his best friends, william pitt the younger, and in three years at age 24, pitt was elected prime minister. and, of course, wilburforce could have 19:49:51.7 been in his cabinet. but at that point, wilburforce had recognized the great evil of the day and dedicated his life to the elimination of the economic order of the day, which was the english slave trade, 19:50:09.7 where the captains would take the boats down off the coast of africa under the guise of friendship, round up native after carngs put 19:50:23.6 them in the holds of those slave ship, take them to the new world and sell them. and wilburforce is a hero to me because as a government official, a member of parliament, he would not even join william pitt the 19:50:39.5 younger's cabinet. he wanted to devote his life to the elimination of the slave trade, and it took him 20 years to 19:50:48.9 do it. and time after time he was beat back, but he persevered and he finally won. 20 years later. and then before wilbur 19:51:05.3 forecast died, he saw that parliament actually bollished slavery. that was some 30 years before slavery was abolished here in america. so it is a privilege for me to be here at long 19:51:24.1 last to join our colleagues to apologize for the senate's failure in the 1930's to pass legislation outlawing the barbaric practice of 19:51:39.4 lynching. for more than a century, this country presented two realities to its citizens, enshrines in 19:51:52.0 our constitution is a government and a legal system designed to protect the rights of all americans so that our freedom cannot be taken away or infringed upon without due process of law, but for many decades, however, this 19:52:06.9 system of justice and respect for the rule of law didn't apply to all of the citizens of this country. in 1857, in the dred scott supreme court decision, that guarantee 19:52:21.7 in the u.s. constitution, all men are created equal, was not intended to include blacks by that decision. and if more years black americans found few protections in the 19:52:38.3 constitutional guarantees of liberty and freedom and equal protection of the laws. a black man accused of a crime against a white person found that he had no access to the courts 19:52:53.1 to move -- prove his innocence. he had no access to a fair and impartial jury of his peers. all too often the white citizens armed with guns and feelings of 19:53:10.3 righteousness would take the accused as law enforcement officers stood by and would brutalize them and hang them in a public setting 19:53:26.1 for other members of the can community to view and feel avenged. how horrible would that be? a public spectacle. that was supposed to intimidate. 19:53:40.5 that was supposed to strike fear. did it? you bet it did. it was meant to send a message to the members of the black community that they better remain in their place to remember that the guarantees of freedom 19:53:55.9 and fairness in the constitution did not include them. in my state of florida, there were 61 lynchings of black americans between 1921 and 1946, which, of course, 19:54:15.2 represents only a fraction of the total number that were committed in my state. and there's no justification or explanation for these horrible acts of violence. as a nation that we respect the rule of law, 19:54:34.0 of court-proscribed justice, what happened was it was vigilantism and mob rule. that's what determined justice, and that is 19:54:51.5 never justifiable. there is a place in florida called rosewood, rosewood, florida. it was the site in the 1920's of what many describe as a massacre. that black community was 19:55:09.9 destroyed by whites, and no arrests were ever made in as many as 27 racial killings in that location. and as florida finally 19:55:24.9 passed the nation's first compensation for blacks who suffered from those past racial injustices, it was all directed back to the massacres that occurred at rosewood, florida. 19:55:42.3 the 94 florida legislature passed the 19:55:47.5 rosewood claims bill to compensate victims for the loss of property as a result of the failure to prosecute those individuals responsible. i felt as a floridian that this acknowledgement was long 19:56:04.2 overdue, and it made me proud to see at long last that we addressed the tragedy of rosewood. now, as a member of the u.s. senate, i feel that this resolution that 19:56:18.0 we're passing tonight is long overdue, and in being proud of this, i am also humbled, mr. president, to stand up as a member of the senate and to personally apologize for the 19:56:37.3 senate's failure to act. a failure to outlaw barbaric acts such as lynchings and racial 19:56:51.6 massacres. i'm proud too that we can today reaffirm that we are a nation of laws designed to protect the freedom and liberty of 19:57:04.2 all americans -- all americans -- regardless of race. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator yields the floor. the senator from arkansas. a senator: mr. president, i know 19:57:18.5 we have other senators on the way to the chamber to speak. and i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: mr. bennett: mr. president. 19:57:51.4 the presiding officer: the senator from you tawsm. mr. bennett: mr. president, i will v listened with -- the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. the senator is recognized. mr. bennett: mr. president, i have listened with great interest to the presentations 19:58:07.6 made on the floor and wish to be associated with the sentiments involved here. i come from a state that does not have a history of lynchings, but that does not mean that i should be absolved from the concern that all americans should have over the lynchings that occurred. 19:58:23.8 and i note that it was the filibuster that made it possible for the senate to be the one, the body that blocked this legislation in the past. and i would hope that in the future we would all realize that the filibuster should be 19:58:40.2 used for more beneficial purposes than that. i do ask unanimous consent now that there be a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that the senate now proceed to the consideration of 19:58:55.3 senate resolution 170, which was submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the title. the clerk: senate resolution 170, relative to the death of jay james exon, former writes senator for the state of nebraska. the presiding officer: without 19:59:11.4 objection. the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the programmable -- preamble be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table. the presiding officer: is there objection? hearing none so ordered. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous 19:59:26.5 consent that the senate immediately proceed to executive session to consider calendar number 150, the nomination of bryant montgomery to be assistant secretary of housing and urban development. i further ask unanimous consent that the nomination be confirmed. the motion to reconsider 19:59:42.8 be laid upon the table, the president be immediately notified of the senate's action and the senate then return to legislative session. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennett: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, the senate stand 19:59:57.3 in adjournment until 9:45 a.m. on tuesday, june 14. i further ask that following the prayer and the pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved and that the

<p><pi><b>This package/segment contains third party material. Unless otherwise noted, this material may only be used within this package/segment.</b></pi></p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>URL: </b> https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2024/06/19/sen-murkowski-native-communities-react-catholic-churchs-apology-involvement-indian-boarding-schools/</p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>Story Description: </b></p>\n<p>Elements:</p>\n<p>file vo of boarding schools (Library and Archive Canada), photos of boarding school classes (Alaska State Library/Alaska State Archives), sot from Benjamin Jacuk/Alaska Native Heritage Center, sot from Sen. Lisa Murkowski/(R), Alaska, photo of school (The Wrangell Museum), sot of Murkowski at work (Sen. Murkowski's Office)</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>Wire/StoryDescription:</p>\n<p>ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently issued a formal apology to Indigenous people for the churchs involvement with Indian boarding schools and the trauma inflicted.</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>According to the Associated Press, a first-of-its-kind federal study of Native American boarding schools identified more than 500 student deaths at the institutions but expected to grow as research continues.</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>On Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski along with a member of the Alaska Native Heritage Center, said the Catholic Churchs apology is a good first step, but more may be needed.</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>Ben Jacuk of the Alaska Native Heritage Center says his grandfather attended an Indian boarding school, and he does not like to talk about what he experienced at the school.</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>Thats a very common thing. Because there is that fear of passing things on to the next generation, Jacuk said.</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>In Indian boarding schools, assimilation was forced upon Indigenous children forcing them to abandon their traditional languages, dress and customs, Jacuk said.</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>Taking that into context, he says he appreciates the apology, but says repentance in action is the next step.</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>Giving land back to these communities that had been taken for things like resource extraction throughout the entirety of the boarding school era, Jacuk said.</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>On Tuesday, Murkowski also commended the Catholic Church for issuing a formal apology.</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>While it may not be the end all and be all, in terms of how those who have suffered greatly over the years, it is the beginning of a path towards healing, Murkowski said.</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>As far as healing, Murkowski says the Indian Affairs Committee in the Senate is working to advance legislation that would provide for a truth and healing commission on Indian boarding schools.</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>Address some of the abuses and some of the wrongs that had historically been directed towards Indigenous peoples, Murkowski said.</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>Murkowski didnt go into detail if reparations would be considered by the committee, but Jacuk agrees with the senator that healing is needed. At the Native Heritage Center, he is putting together a research project on Indian boarding schools in Alaska.</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>Something my grandfather always said is the only way that you can be able to know what healing looks like and to eventually heal is to know what you need healing from, Jacuk said.</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>In opposition to the apology, Lauren Peters, who is an enrolled member of the Aleut Community of Saint Paul Island, said in an email her first reaction is that the language in the apology is too soft, and there is no talk of restitution.</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>Station Notes/Scripts:</p>\n<p>IT'S AN APOLOGY... BUT IS IT ENOUGH AFTER ALL THE PAIN THAT WAS CAUSED? RECENTLY, THE U-S CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS ISSUED A FORMAL APOLOGY TO INDIGENOUS PEOPLE FOR THE CHURCH'S INVOLVEMENT WITH INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOLS. A FEDERAL STUDY OF NATIVE AMERICAN BOARDING SCHOOLS REVEALED MORE THAN 500 STUDENT DEATHS AT THE INSTITUTIONS, AND IS EXPECTED TO GROW AS RESEARCH CONTINUES. SENATOR LISA MURKOWSKI AND A MEMBER OF THE ALASKA NATIVE HERITAGE CENTER SAY THE APOLOGY BY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS A GOOD FIRST STEP.... BUT THERE'S MUCH MORE TO BE DONE. </p>\n<p></p>\n<p>{***PKG***} </p>\n<p></p>\n<p>BEN JACUK OF THE ALASKA NATIVE HERITAGE CENTER SAYS HIS GRANDFATHER ATTENDED AN INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOL, AND IT IS SOMETHING HIS GRANDFATHER DOES NOT LIKE TO TALK ABOUT. </p>\n<p></p>\n<p>"That's a very common thing. Because there is that fear of passing things on to the next generation" 9.21 </p>\n<p></p>\n<p>IN THESE INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOLS, CULTURAL ASSIMILATION WAS IMPOSED UPON INDIGENOUS CHILDREN, FORCING TO ABANDON THEIR TRADITIONAL LANGUAGES, DRESS, AND CUSTOMS, JACUK SAID. </p>\n<p></p>\n<p>HE SAID THE APOLOGY IS A GOOD FIRST STEP, BUT "REPENTANCE IN ACTION," HE SAYS, IS THE NEXT STEP. </p>\n<p></p>\n<p>(FONT: BEN JACUK, ALASKA NATIVE HERITAGE CENTER :34-:42) </p>\n<p>"giving land back to these communities that had been taken for things like resource extraction throughout the entirety of the boarding school era." </p>\n<p></p>\n<p>(FONT: SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI | (R) ALASKA :45-:50) </p>\n<p>"Their names were, were literally taken from them." </p>\n<p></p>\n<p>SENATOR LISA MURKOWSKI COMMENDED THE CATHOLIC CHURCH FOR ISSUING A FORMAL APOLOGY. </p>\n<p></p>\n<p>"it is the beginning of a path towards healing." </p>\n<p></p>\n<p>AS FAR AS HEALING MURKOWSKI SAYS THE SENATE INDIAN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE IS TO TRYING TO ADVANCE LEGISLATION THAT WOULD PROVIDE FOR A TRUTH AND HEALING COMMISSION ON BOARDING SCHOOLS. </p>\n<p></p>\n<p>"address some of the abuses and some of the wrongs that had historically been directed towards indigenous peoples." </p>\n<p></p>\n<p>MURKOWSKI DIDN'T GO INTO DETAIL IF REPARATIONS WOULD BE CONSIDERED BY THE COMMITTEE, BUT JACUK AGREES WITH THE SENATOR THAT HEALING IS NEEDED, AND AT THE NATIVE HERITAGE CENTER, HE IS PUTTING TOGETHER A RESEARCH PROJECT ON INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOLS IN ALASKA. </p>\n<p></p>\n<p>"Something my grandfather always said, is the only way that you can be able to know what healing looks like, and to eventually heal, is to know what you need healing from"</p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>--SUPERS</b>--</p>\n<p>Wednesday</p>\n<p>Anchorage, AK. </p>\n<p></p>\n<p>Steve Kirch, Reporter</p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>--VIDEO SHOWS</b>--</p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>--VO SCRIPT</b>--</p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>--LEAD IN</b>--</p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>--SOT</b>--</p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>--TAG</b>--</p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>--REPORTER PKG-AS FOLLOWS</b>--</p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>-----END-----CNN.SCRIPT-----</b></p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>--KEYWORD TAGS--</b></p>\n<p></p>

An Indigenous Navajo high school teacher with a group of students in a school classroom.

Indigenous Navajo students in an elementary school classroom.

<p><pi><b> **This package/segment contains third party material. Unless otherwise noted, this material may only be used within this package/segment.**</b></pi></p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>**EDITORIAL INFO PROVIDED BY KING 10/25/2024** </b></p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>--SUPERS</b>--</p>\n<p>Friday </p>\n<p>Olympia, WA </p>\n<p></p>\n<p>:15-:22</p>\n<p>President Joe Biden </p>\n<p>No font needed</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>:28-:30 </p>\n<p>Voice of: Brenda Lovin</p>\n<p>Vice Principal</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>1:08-1:13</p>\n<p>Misty Kalama</p>\n<p>Teacher at the Wa He Lut Indian School</p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>--REPORTER PKG-AS FOLLOWS</b>--</p>\n<p>Nats: "I'm a dragon queen..." </p>\n<p>STUDENTS AT WA HE LUT INDIAN SCHOOL ARE CELEBRATING HALLOWEEN A LITTLE EARLY.</p>\n<p>Nats: "Here's a treat for you..." </p>\n<p>President Joe Biden: "Lost generations culture and language" </p>\n<p>BUT THE STAFF IS CELEBRATING SOMETHING HISTORIC.</p>\n<p>President Joe Biden: "The federal government has never never formally apologized for what happened, until today I formally apologize!" </p>\n<p>VICE PRINCIPAL BRENDA LOVIN ATTENDED A BOARDING SCHOOL IN OKLAHOMA.</p>\n<p>Brenda Lovin/Vice Principal at the Wa He Lut Indian School: "Somebody physically put their hands on me. My own parents didn't do that to me." </p>\n<p>President Joe Biden: "It's long long long long overdue quite frankly there's no excuse that this apology took 50 years to make."</p>\n<p>"Wow oh my gosh it's awesome." </p>\n<p>MISTY KALAMA IS THE SCHOOL'S LANGUAGE KEEPER.</p>\n<p>Misty Kalama/Teacher at the Wa He Lut Indian School: "Kobo kob. Kobo kob. Be good be kind." </p>\n<p>SHE TEACHES ALL THE STUDENTS AT THIS PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDED BY FEDERAL AND STATE DOLLARS THE TRADITIONAL LANGUAGE OF THE NISQUALLY.</p>\n<p>SOMETHING A HUNDRED YEARS AGO WAS FORBIDDEN. </p>\n<p>Misty Kalama/Teacher at the Wa He Lut Indian School: "They were actually forced to go to boarding schools and made to assimilate or else." </p>\n<p>WASHINGTON STATE HAD 15 BOARDING SCHOOLS MOST IN THE WESTERN U-S </p>\n<p>VOLUNTEERS FROM THE YAKAMA NATION HAVE BEEN SEARCHING THE GROUNDS OF A SCHOOL IN CENTRAL WASHINGTON FOR STUDENTS WHO DIED AND WERE BURIED IN UNMARKED GRAVES. </p>\n<p>Misty Kalama/Teacher at the Wa He Lut Indian School: "You are the dreams of our ancestors come true." </p>\n<p>MISTY HOPES BY SAYING SORRY THE SAME GOVERNMENT THAT CAUSED TRAUMA STILL FELT TODAY CAN HELP START THE HEALING PROCESS. </p>\n<p>Misty Kalama/Teacher at the Wa He Lut Indian School: "Finally our government is building this bridge in the form of this apology, something that we can both join together and meet on that bridge. The government and our native people."</p>\n<p><b>-----END-----CNN.SCRIPT-----</b></p>\n<p></p>\n<p><b>--KEYWORD TAGS--</b></p>\n<p>WASHINGTON BOARDING SCHOOL NATIVE AMERICAN CONVERSION SOCIAL ASSIMILATION</p>\n<p></p>

THE SENATE Morning business followed by general debate on the Thomas Griffith nomination to the US court of appeals in the district - vote on Tuesday --- senate expected to debate resolution that apologize to the families of victims of lynchings 19:00:15.0 concept -- that it's important to remind the american people about the evil chapters in our history. it is the reason we construct museums in washington and beyond, to hold up for all to see how capable we are of descending into the heart of darkness. it is important for us 19:00:31.5 to look back into the past so that we can pledge, pledge never again to allow racial hatred to consume our ideals or humanity. president bush in his second inaugural address -- and i quote from janet's letter -- "our 19:00:48.4 country must abandon all habits of racism because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time." 19:00:58.1 she concludes with these statements, "an apology, i concede, will do nothing for the thousands of people who have perished during what has been called "the black holocaust." it cannot repair the battered souls of their 19:01:12.3 survivors. it is, after all, only a symbolic act. our symbol, however, the eagle, old glory, lady liberty, to mention but a few, are but shortian narratives of who we are as americans. 19:01:27.5 it is through the acknowledgement of the senate's abdication of its duty to protect and defend the rights of all american citizens that perhaps we can begin to understand the pain and anger that still lingers in the hearts and minds of so many who have been deprived of the equality 19:01:45.3 promised in our constitution."ñ my friend and mentor writes "there martin luther king, jr. once said that -- quote -- "the arrest, of history bends toward justice. 19:02:03.7 " today as the senate members cast their historic votes that ark dips closer to its destination" signed janet lange therehart cohen. mr. president, i ask that this 19:02:18.1 full letter be made a part of the record of this debate on the resolution. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. allen: mr. president, i'm proud that this resolution will pass tonight. the senate is going to be on record condemning the brutal atrocities that plagued our 19:02:33.9 great nation for over a century. ly close with the words of the resolution "whereas an apology offered in the spirit of true repentance moves the united states towards reconciliation and may become central to a in 19:02:49.6 new understanding on which improved racial relations could be forged now thereforebe it resolved that the senate apologizes to the victims of lynching. 19:03:03.5 it 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 constitutional 19:03:19.8 protections accorded all citizens of the united states. and we remember the history of lynching to ensure that these tragedies will neither be forgotten nor repeated. my colleagues, i ask you to join all of us in examining our 19:03:36.3 history. learn from history. never again sit quietly. never again turn ones head away when the ugly specter of racism, antisemitism, hate and intolerance rises again. 19:03:50.9 it is our responsibility to stand strong for freedom and justice. in the future, mr. president, i am confident that this senate will perform better than it has in the past. we will protect the god-given blessings of all people to life 19:04:08.4 and liberty to all people regardless of their race, their ethnicity or their religious beliefs. the senate can do better. we have done better tonight. 19:04:23.6 but the real lesson is when we have learned that when such acts happen in the future will this senate stand and rise to condemn it to protect those god-given liberties. i know senator landrieu and i believe the senate will rise 19:04:41.2 aappropriately. mr. president, with that i ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the previous agreement, the senate now proceed to the vote on the pending resolution. i further ask consent that notwithstanding the adoption of 19:04:55.1 the resolution, the remaining time under the previous agreement remain available for senators who wish to make statements, provided that any statements relating to the resolution appear tryer -- prior to its adoption in the congressional record. 19:05:12.2 the presiding officer: without objection it is so ordered. the question is now on the resolution. all those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the resolution is adopted. the preamble is agreed to. ms. landrieu: mr. president? 19:05:31.6 the presiding officer: who yields time? the senator from louisiana. a senator: mr. president, what is the status of time? mr. kerry: is it under control or is it just open? the presiding officer: the 19:05:44.4 senators from virginia and louisiana control the time. mr. kerry: i understand. ms. landrieu: mr. president, i'm happy to yield to the senator from massachusetts in just one moment because he has been very 19:05:56.2 patient to speak. and as a cosponsor of this resolution that just passed, it's really a privilege and appropriate for senator kerry to be one of the first senators to speak upon its passage, but i would like to mention very 19:06:12.6 briefly because i'm not sure he is going to be able to stay with us much longer, mr. james cameron has been with us all day here in the senate. mr. cameron is 91 years old. he lives in marion, indiana n.1930 when he was 16 years old, 19:06:29.4 a mob dragged him from a cell at grant county jail, put a rope around his neck. he was accused of a murder and a rape that he was nowhere around when they occurred. his associates were both lynched that night. 19:06:44.3 a man in the crowd spared him by proclaiming that he in fact was innocent and should be let go. he then went on to live an extraordinary life without bitterness, with a lot of love. he is married 67 years. 19:07:01.1 his four children, multiple grandchildren. senator evan bayh that serves in this body when he was governor of indiana pardoned mr. cameron for anything. he is really the one that has forgiven us and for what was 19:07:19.5 done to him. i wanted to mention him. i yield the floor to senator kerry. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. mr. kerry: mr. president, thank you. i want to start by thanking both senator landrieu and senator allen for their leadership on this effort, and for all those 19:07:36.0 descendants of families who have been absolutely extraordinary in the way in which we have relived their pain, brought it to the public view, kind of laid their hearts out on the table in a very real and emotional way. and i think that's been a 19:07:53.3 wonderful part of this process, the way in which this book that jimmy allen put together has helped to sort of really unleash a pain that was never lost, 19:08:14.5 never forgotten by anybody, but never quite had a place to play itself out until this public effort is being made by the united states senate. there's no small irony, i 19:08:29.1 suspect, in the fact that the senate is here sort of making good on what the senate failed to do. and i personally am struck by even at this significant moment 19:08:47.3 the undeniable and inescapable reality that there aren't 100 senators as cosponsors. maybe by the end of the evening there will be, but as we stand 19:09:00.1 here with this resolution now passed by voice vote there aren't. moreover, all the people in the senate and the press understand how we work here. and i think it's critical that we take the step we're taking 19:09:17.7 and have taken, but at the same time, wouldn't it have been just that much more extraordinary and significant if we were having a recorded vote with all 100 senators recording their votes? we're not. 19:09:32.9 and so even today as we take this gigantic step, we're also saying to american -- america, there's a journey still to travel. i don't want to diminish one eye kwroeta, and i don't mean to, 19:09:49.8 because i think what is happening here today is so significant, but at the same time, it has to give all of us a kind of kick in the era -- rear-end to get us out there to do the other things that are 19:10:04.7 necessary, that give fuller meaning to the words that are going to be expressed here and have been expressed here, most importantly to give fuller meaning for the emotions laid bare by the families who have 19:10:21.8 come here to share this with us. i want to join not just in thanking mr. cameron and others but january the langhart cohen who is here and bill cohen who 19:10:38.6 is up in the gallery. we certainly appreciate her commitment to this effort and the meaning of this to her and all of the families that have come here together. mr. president, it's pretty incredible to think about it. lynchings really replaced 19:10:58.1 slavery. they came in the aftermath of the slavery around 1880's, and between the 1880's and 1968, i have to pause when i think about that, because i was already a 19:11:13.3 young officer in the military. i had left college. i remember the early part of the 1960's devoted to the civil rights movement, the mississippi voter registration drive. we were still recording lynchings during that period of 19:11:29.9 time but i didn't know it. not that in sense i know it today. i thought i knew history pretty well, but i'll tell you, until i saw this array of photographs which then sparked my curiosity to read more about it, i had 19:11:48.6 always thought like most american that's a lynching was just sling the rope over the branch of the tree and that's it. the story is so much more gruesome than that, so much more dark and horrendous, as a moment 19:12:08.2 in american history that it's really hard to believe that it happened at all in our country. which is another reason that it's so important we're taking this step to remember. we've seen revisionism on almost 19:12:22.6 every part of history including the holocaust. so it is good that we take this step today and it is good that we have these photographs brought together as a compilation of history, and it is good that the senate is taking this effort tonight. it is extraordinary to think 19:12:37.8 that 99% of the perpetrators of lynchings escaped any reach of the law whatsoever. it's incredible to think that almost 5,000 people are recording as incidents and how 19:12:55.2 many are not recorded, how many went without the local authorities in each of those communities who are already complicitious in what happened standing by, per missive, turning away from basic human 19:13:13.5 rights. how of those incidents were not recorded? a lot of us have read a lot about world war ii and the holocaust and other moments of history where there's a knock on the door and life changes. 19:13:28.4 but you have to stop and really think what it was like in all but four states in our country. not just for african-americans but for new people, for folks who had come here from other 19:13:46.2 places to live the american dream. in some cases they weren't knocks. they were just angry mobs screaming and yelling with torches and running rampant through households dragging people out screaming. in other cases, there was a 19:14:03.5 pretext, more polite, but it was never polite in what it ended up as. lynchings were not just lynchings, they were organized torture. they were incidents of kinds of torture that defy the 19:14:20.7 imagination that you don't even want to talk about. the kinds of things that any descent society ought to stand up against. people were literally tortured for sport in front of people, and crowds would cheer, bedlam, 19:14:37.9 children brought to be spectators. some of these photographs show kids standing there with their eyes wide open and adults standing beside them, who were supposed to be more responsible, 19:14:51.2 glued to the horror that they were witnessing. in the first half of the last century alone, in the 20th century, over 200 antilynching bills were introduced to the 19:15:06.3 united states congress -- 200. and three times the house of representatives passed antilynching legislation. seven presidents asked for this legislation to be passed. the united states senate said no 19:15:26.8 so it is important that we're here today to apologize. some people wonder what the effect of an apology is, and we 19:15:38.9 can understand that question being asked. but this is sort of a day of reckoning for us as a country. it's a moment for the conscience of our country to be listened to by everybody. it's an embarrassingly and unforgiveibly late moment in 19:15:54.1 coming but we're addressing a stain on our history, and we are working to heal wounds across generations. i think that that is important. some people might try to diminish that. but i think the very lack of unity that i phepbsed earlier, 19:16:11.7 in fact, goes to show why this apology is so important and why we all have to keep moving in this direction.ñ mr. president, no words, obviously, are going to undo the horror of those 5,000 americans 19:16:27.0 losing their lives. no apology is going to just wipe away the memories of mr. cameron and others, though they've shown a greater graciousness of understanding than others even at this moment. and the fact is that this 19:16:45.2 resolution can be one more step in the effort for all of us to try to get over the divide that still exists between race -- races and as a result of jim crow in this country. 19:16:59.8 but only if you face the truth. it is the piebl that reminds us that it's the truth that sets us free. so we have to embrace it, commit ourselves to put our hearts and our actions where our words have now preceded us. this should be an important step 19:17:16.8 forward. but frankly, it will only do that if we don't step here. the truth is, mr. president, that it's not enough to face the who are he of lynchings if we then just walk out of here and 19:17:33.1 consciously turn away from legally separate and unequal schools in america. it's not enough to decry decades of refusing to use the use of law against lynching if today we 19:17:48.5 reuse it to use the force of law to tear down the barriers that prevent people from voting, barriers in the economy, divisions in the health care system that works for too few of those who are in the minority in 19:18:04.0 america. it's only by reconciling the past that you can understand where you have to go in the few of and how to get there. i ask my colleagues just to remember the words of julian bond when he dedicated that beautiful, simple memorial in 19:18:21.1 montgomery, alabama, to those who gave their lives for civil rights. and he said that it was erected as much to remember the dead as it was for those young people who cannot remember the period when the sacrifices began. with its small crueltyties and 19:18:36.6 monstrous injustices, its petty indignities and its deft-dealing inequities. there are too many young to remember that from that seeming hopelessness there arose a mighty movement, simple in its tactics, over whelming in its 19:18:56.1 impact. that is why we have to remember the period of the lynchings. that's why this resolution is important. for the young people who don't know what it to wake up in the middle of the night to hear that 19:19:10.8 knock, or young people who need to commit to help our country to complete the journey in order guarantee that we make it that you will it promises to be and can be, we will never erase what mr. cameron or mr. wright and too many others went through, but we certainly can honor the 19:19:31.5 legacy of these civil rights heroes and the martyrs who came before us by doing right by them and by the country, and i 0 hope this resolution will help us do that. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: who 19:19:53.4 yields time? mr. kerry: mr. president, i yield such time as the senator from illinois wishes. the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. obama: thank you, 19:20:08.8 mr. president. i'd like to rise in strong support of this resolution. before i make any further remarks, i'd like to recognize doria d. johnson and thank her for coming. sheels ea from evanston, illinois. ms. johnston is the great-great-granddaughter of 19:20:26.7 anthony crawford, a south carolina farmer who was lynched nearly 100 years ago for the crime of being a successful black farmer. i'm sure this day has special meaning for her and the other family members of those who were impacted by these great 19:20:41.5 tragedies of the past, and i want to thank her and others for being here today. since america's darkest days of 19:20:53.8 jim crow, separate but equal, fire hoses, church bombings, cross burnings and lynchings, the people of this great nation have found the courage, on 19:21:08.5 occasion, to speak up and speak out so that we can right this country's wrongs. so that together we can walk down that long road of transformation that continues to perfect our union. 19:21:26.2 it's a transformation that brought us the civil rights act and the voting rights act, a transformation that led to the first black member of congress and the first black and white children holding hands in the 19:21:41.2 same playground in the same school. a transformation without which i would not be standing here speaking to you today. but i am. and i'm proud because thanks to this resolution, we're taking 19:21:56.0 another step in acknowledging a dark corner of 0 our history. we're taking a step that allows us, after looking at 4,700 deaths from lynchings and hate 19:22:12.2 that lied behind those deaths, and this chamber's refusal to try and stop those deaths that we are finally saying that we were wrong. there is a power in 19:22:28.4 acknowledging error and mistakes. it is a power that potentially transforms not only those who were impacted directly by the lynchings but also those who are 19:22:44.2 the progeny of those who perpetrated them. i think it's been mentioned that there's an exhibit in chicago right now. its a ea powerful photographic-- --it's a powerful photographic exhibit of some of the lynchings 19:22:58.3 that occurred across the country, and as has already been remarked, what often is most powerful is not the gruesome aspects of the lynching itself. it's not the terrible rending of 19:23:16.7 the body that took place. what's most horrific, what's most disturbing to the soul is photographs in which you see young little white girls or 19:23:32.4 young little white boys with their parents out on an outing loorksing at the degradation of 0 another human being. you wonder not only what the 19:23:49.4 lynching did to the family member of those who were lynched but also what it did to the sensibilities of those young people. 0 now that we're finally 19:24:05.7 acknowledging this injustice, it gives us an opportunity to reflect on the cruelties that can happen to all of us. and then hopefully we can take 19:24:19.7 the time to teach our children to treat people who are differently -- who look different than we do with the same respect that we would expect. and so it's fitting, it's proper, and it's right that 19:24:33.9 we're doing what we're doing here today. i do hope that, as we commemorate this past injustice, that this chamber also spends some time, however, doing something concrete and tangible 19:24:54.2 to heal the long shadow of slavery and the legacy of racial discrimination so that 100 years from now we can look back and be proud and not have to apologize once again. 19:25:10.4 that means completing the unfinished work of the civil rights movement, that means closing the gap that still exists in health care and education and income. there are more ways to 19:25:24.7 perpetrate violence than simply a lynching. there is eight violence that-- --there's the violence that we subject young children to when they don't have any opportunity and they have no hope and they stand on street corners not thinking much of themselves, not 19:25:42.8 thinking that their lives are worth living. that's a form of violence that this chamber could do something 19:25:51.9 about. it means just as we're spending time apologizing today for these past failures of the senate to act, we should spend some time debating the extension of the voting rights act, the best ways to cover the 45 million 19:26:07.9 uninsured americans, how we can make young african-american children, the great-great grandchildren or the great-great-great-grandchildren 19:26:23.9 of those who have been harmed, how can we make sure college is affordable to them? these are the ways we can final ensure that the blessings of opportunity finally reach every american, that we can finally claim a victory in the long struggle for civil rights. today is a step in the right direction. 19:26:41.0 today gives us an opportunity to heal and to move forward. and for those who still harbor ainger in their hearts, who still wonder, how do you #u move on from such terrible violence, it's worth us reflecting for a moment on mamie till mobley. 19:27:03.3 her boy was only 14 years old when they found him in the mississippi river, beaten and blood did ied beyond recognition-- --beaten and bloodied beyond recognition. 19:27:18.5 emmet till was only 14 years old. when his mother saw her child, her baby, unrecognize rbl, his face so badly beaten, it barely looked human and it was suggested that she should have a 19:27:33.7 closed casket, she said, no, we're going to have an open casket, and everybody is going to witness what they did to my child. and as a consequence of that courage displayed by a mother, 19:27:50.8 it galvanized the civil rights movement in the north and in the south, and yet despite that, manie till mobley has repeatedly said, i never wasted a day 19:28:08.3 hating. imagine that. i never wasted a day hating. not one day. i rise today thanking god that the united states senate, the representatives of the american 19:28:21.3 people, and our highest ideals will not waste one more day without issues the apology that will continue to march us down the path of transformation that mamie till mobley has been on 19:28:43.0 her whole life. i am grateful and i am looking forward to joining hands with my colleagues and the american people to make sure that when our children and grandchildren look back at our actions in this chamber that we don't have 19:28:57.2 something to apologize about. i yield the time. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from arkansas. mr. pryor: thank you, mr. president. i join my colleagues today to talk about one of our nation's 19:29:13.8 darkest periods, a stain in history we'd rather forget but that we cannot ignore. the white mobs committed 4,742 hangings, flaggings and burnings 19:29:30.5 of-- --floggings and burnings of african-americans. yet the u.s. senate watched indifferently failing to pass any 26900 separate bills before it to make lynching a federal crime. senate resolution 39 expressing the senate's apology for failing 19:29:47.5 to adopt antilynching legislation is long overdue. i would like to express my sincere apologies and regret to the families in arkansas and the nation, especially to the 19:30:02.9 victims and the their decendants that this body failed to help at a time when they needed it most. i hope that acknowledging these grave injustices of the past will help again to heal the wounds that exist today. 19:30:19.6 even more so, this acknowledgment should serve as a lesson that government must step in to foster racial reconciliation, ensure the mob mentality never returns, and protect those who are most 19:30:36.2 vulnerable. the senate can start by continuing to advance civil rights and equality and work to close the divide that continues in our neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. i'm afraid that if we don't 19:30:52.5 start truly addressing inequities, we will look back once again at the senate's inaction with disdain and remorse. most of the worst offenses of lynching occurred in the south, 19:31:06.6 and arkansas is no different. between the years 1860 and 1936, 318 lynchings occurred in arkansas. of this number, 230 of the victims were black, including 19:31:25.2 six females. that's about three-quarters of the lynchings in our state that are recorded were against african-americans. mr. president, of course the statistics don't have a face. they don't feel pain. 19:31:39.5 nor do they hold memories. but people and families all over arkansas do, and they remember these crimes and the senate's inaction to protect them.÷ in march of 1892, a reporter 19:31:55.7 from the "christian recorder" reported the chaos and hopelessness occurring throughout my state. there is much uneasiness and unrest all over this state -- this is a quote -- "there is much uneasiness and unrest all over this state among our people 19:32:12.7 alluding to the fact that the people all over the state are being lynched upon the slightest provocation. some being strung up to telegraph poles, others burnt at the stake, and still others 19:32:26.8 being shot like dogs. in the last 30 days, there have been not less than eight colored persons lynched in this state. at texarcana a few days ago, a man was burnt at the stake." 19:32:43.2 as i continue the quote, it says, "in pine bluff a few days later, two men were strung up and shot. and this too by the brilliant glare of the electric lights at srarpber, george harris was taken from jail and shot for 19:32:58.0 killing a white man for poisoning his domestic happiness. at wilmar, a boy was induced to confess to the commission of an outrage upon promise of his liberty. and when he had confessed, he 19:33:13.0 was strung up and shot. over in lone oak county, a whole family, consisting of husband, wife and child, were shot down like dogs. the situation is alarming in the extreme." 19:33:27.2 this is a quote from an article that appeared in 1892. mr. president, there are -- there were few honest press accounts of such lynchings, a problem that continues to trouble historians today as they put together the pieces of this 19:33:44.6 period. most arkansas press accounts were no different. lynchers were considered heroes. officers, conniving. the accused, guilty. a case in point. in 1919, arkansas would be home 19:34:02.8 of a terrible racial injustice, the so-called elaine race riot. according to sketchy accounts that have been pieced together by historians, in september 1919, black sharecroppers met to 19:34:18.2 protest unfair settlements for their cotton crops from white plantation owners. local law enforcement broke up the union's meeting. the next day, a thousand white men and troops of the u.s. army converged on phillips county to 19:34:35.1 put an end to the black sharecroppers' so-called insurrection. the number of african-american deaths from this lynching is disputed, ranging from 20 at the low end all the way up to 856 men and women on the high end. 19:34:52.2 the details of the elaine race riot of 1919 have never been formally written down. but mayor robert miller of helena, arkansas, remembers them vividly. at the time, mayor miller's four uncles were preparing for a 19:35:08.7 hunting trip. three of them had traveled to a town near elaine, helena, arkansas, for this special occasion which turned tragic when a mob saw the brothers with guns in hand and assuming they were part of the insurrection, 19:35:25.1 all four were immediately killed. of the antilynching legislation we are considering today, mayor miller says, "it won't change what happened but at least it's a good thing, a movement in the 19:35:39.8 right direction." mr. president, in 2000, the "arkansas times" newspaper wrote 19:35:50.2 an article about one of arkansas's most high-profile lynchings and the lasting impact it had on families in arkansas today. in may 1927, a mentally retarded black man named john carter was accused of attacking a white 19:36:08.0 mother and daughter. upon his capture near little rock, a mob of 100 quickly gathered and prevented police from taking him to little rock, where the police would have protected him from being lynched. 19:36:22.8 after hanging him from a utility pole, the mob dragged john carter's body through the city of little rock and burned him in the downtown -- in downtown little rock at 9th and broadway. 19:36:38.7 the "arkansas times" recall recounts a conversation that occurred 30 years later, in september of 1957, of a mother talking to civil rights pioneer daze -- daisy baits about the john carter lynching. 19:36:56.4 the mother had to say -- and i quote -- "i'm frightened, miss baits, not for myself but for my children. when i was a little girl, my mother and i saw a lynch mob dragging a body of a negro man through the streets of little 19:37:11.0 rock. we were told to get off the streets. we ran. and by cutting through side streets and alleys, we managed to make it to the home of a friend. but we were close enough to hear 19:37:26.6 the screams of the mob, close enough to smell the sickening odor of burning flesh. and miss bates, they took the pews from bethel church to make the fire. 19:37:42.2 they burned the body of this negro man right at the edge of the negro business section." the woman speaking to daisy bates was named birdie eckfort. her daughter elizabeth, one of 19:37:59.3 the little rock nine, would walk through an angry, threatening crowd the following day to claim her right to an equal education at little rock central high school. mr. president, little rock 19:38:15.1 central high school today reminds us of some of the darkest days during the civil rights movement. as a former student, however, i can tell you that it also represents hope and achievement. 2007 will mark the 50th 19:38:34.3 anniversary of desegregation process at little rock central high school. last friday, i spoke with seven members of the little rock nine to tell them that we're closer to funding an adequate visitor's center and museum for this 19:38:50.7 landmark anniversary. minni jean brown trickie, one of the little rock nine, said this visitor's center will serve many purposes, but what struck me was her assurance that the center is 19:39:07.5 an opportunity for healing. today's resolution offers similar opportunities. it allows us to remember the past, begin healing from the past, look at how far our nation 19:39:22.2 has come to address equality and discrimination and rededicate ourselves to acknowledging how much further we must go from here. mr. president, i yield the floor. 19:39:46.0 a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr.al czar: thank you very much -- mr. salazar: thank you very much, mr. president. i rise this evening to speak in support of senate resolution 39, apologizing for the senate's 19:39:59.9 failure to enact antilynching legislation. i think that it's important for us to reflect on the statements that have been made by my colleagues, including the distinguished senator from louisiana and the distinguished senator from virginia so that we 19:40:16.8 can remember the history of this country and how america has been an america in progress. the past can be painted in statistics or it can be painted in the stories of people who have suffered from the unjust 19:40:34.0 result of the absence of an antilynching law. the past we can speak about the time between 1882-1968, when there were nearly 5,000 lynchings that occurred. 19:40:46.6 and these lynchings that occurred were not lynchings that 19:40:50.6 occurred just in the southern part of the united states of america but happened throughout most of the states of our country, including in my own home state of colorado, where a historian has, in his own research, concluded that there were about 175 lynchings that 19:41:06.7 occurred in colorado between 1859-1919. so it is appropriate and fitting that today we apologize for the absence of those laws, that we recognize that people like james 19:41:24.6 cameron, who became a survivor of the lynchings of that time period, recognize that this united states senate body today says we apologize for that past. i also believe that it is 19:41:41.3 perhaps even more important for us to look to the future of america and to look at the kinds of racial issues and the challenges that we face as a nation to create an america that truly is an america of 19:41:57.6 inclusion. it is one thing for us to stand here and -- in the chambers of the united states senate today to look at our history and to learn from that painful history. but it is equally as important for us to look to the future and to recognize that the challenges that we face in this america 19:42:13.5 today, in the decade ahead, in the hundred years ahead require us to learn from those very painful lessons of the past. and when one looks at those very painful lessons of the past, we have to recognize that for the first 250 years of the beginnings of this nation, we 19:42:30.2 had a system of law that recognized that it was okay for one group of people to own another group of people under our system of slavery just because of the color of their skins. and it is important for us also 19:42:45.0 to recognize that it took the bloodiest war of these united states during the civil war, where over half a million people were killed on our own soils here in america to bring about an end to the system of slavery and to usher in the 13th and 19:43:02.3 14th and 15th amendments, which are the bedrock of the constitutional liberties which we now endow upon all people of america. but notwithstanding the fact that in that time period of the civil war, we saw the blood and 19:43:19.2 life of so many americans laid down in this country, we still continued through another period of almost a hundred years where we divided our nation according to groups. it was over a hundred years ago when justice harlan, writing for 19:43:36.0 the dissent in the now famous case of policy v. -- of fplecy v. ferguson made the decision. justice harlan disagreeing with 19:43:52.2 the segregation system that was ushered under that decision, he said, "the destinies of the races in this country are insolubly linked together and the interests of both require that the common government law shall not permit the seeds of 19:44:08.5 race hate to be planted under the sanction of law." that was over a hundred years ago, and yet it took another almost half a century, in fact, more than half a century, until 1954 in the decisions of brown vs. the board of education, 19:44:24.4 mr. president, for the u.s. supreme court, under the leadership of justice warren, to say that in these united states, separate but equal was unconstitutional under the 14th amendment. it took another more than half a century for the united states 19:44:41.0 supreme court to make that statement. and so when we look to the future of america, when we look to the diversity that defines our country, it is my belief that this next century will be defined by how we as an american 19:44:57.3 society embrace the concept of an inclusive america. and when we embrace a concept of an inclusive america, we talk about including people of all backgrounds, be they anglo-americans, french 19:45:14.0 americans, african-americans, latinos, native americans, women, that we as an american society will be challenged in the century ahead by how we deal with the issue of inclusion and the greatness of this country will be defined by 19:45:30.3 how successful we are in making sure that we are inclusive of all people. and there are some who have recognized this. just as sandra -- justice sandra day o'connor, in writing for the united states supreme court in the now famous 19:45:45.9 decision of the university of michigan from just several years ago, made the following comment 19:45:51.0 about the importance of diversity in higher education. justice o'connor, in the majority opinion, said the following -- and i quote -- "these benefits" -- talking about the benefits of higher 19:46:04.9 education and diversity in higher education, said -- "these benefits are not theoretical but real, as major american businesses have made clear that the skills needed in today's increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse 19:46:20.8 people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints." that was from the brief she cited submitted by general motors. she went on to say, "what is more, high-ranking retired officers and civilian leaders of the united states military 19:46:37.9 assert" -- and she quotes from the brief of the former joint chiefs of staff, she says -- "based on their decades of experience, a highly-qualified, racially diverse officer corps is essential to the military's ability to fulfill its principal 19:46:53.9 mission: to provide national security."ñ i believe it was in that articulation by justice day o'connor where she articulated the challenge and the opportunity that we have as an american society 19:47:08.4 as the 21st century unfolds in front of us. in my estimation, the greatness of this country depends on our learning and not forgetting the painful lessons of the past, including the lynchings that occurred across america, and also 19:47:23.2 looking forward to the challenge of including people of all backgrounds and all races in all of the business affairs and civic affairs of this nation. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the 19:47:41.1 senator from florida. mr. nelson: mr. president, i'm very glad that we're doing this. there have been attempts in the past by other members of congress, my 19:47:59.0 good friend, the former congressman tony hall of ohio, who had tried back several years before to get a resolution of apology with regard to slavery, and they never 19:48:12.7 could work out all the details in that. and so i'm very glad that the senate has come to this point, that the senate could critique itself for this legislative body's 19:48:30.2 failure to enact antilynching laws back at a time when it would have been so important to stop this kind of mayhem and murderous rampages that mobs would 19:48:48.0 take supposedly justice into their own hands, and thank goodness that we've come to a point at which we can admit our mistakes, even though this is several generations later, and 19:49:06.2 pass a resolution like this as we will do tonight. interestingly, one of my political heroes is a person that americans rarely hear about. 19:49:21.7 he was a british parliamentarian in the late 1700's and the early 1800's named william wilburforce. wilburforce was elected to the parliament at the 19:49:35.0 age of 21 along with one of his best friends, william pitt the younger, and in three years at age 24, pitt was elected prime minister. and, of course, wilburforce could have 19:49:51.7 been in his cabinet. but at that point, wilburforce had recognized the great evil of the day and dedicated his life to the elimination of the economic order of the day, which was the english slave trade, 19:50:09.7 where the captains would take the boats down off the coast of africa under the guise of friendship, round up native after carngs put 19:50:23.6 them in the holds of those slave ship, take them to the new world and sell them. and wilburforce is a hero to me because as a government official, a member of parliament, he would not even join william pitt the 19:50:39.5 younger's cabinet. he wanted to devote his life to the elimination of the slave trade, and it took him 20 years to 19:50:48.9 do it. and time after time he was beat back, but he persevered and he finally won. 20 years later. and then before wilbur 19:51:05.3 forecast died, he saw that parliament actually bollished slavery. that was some 30 years before slavery was abolished here in america. so it is a privilege for me to be here at long 19:51:24.1 last to join our colleagues to apologize for the senate's failure in the 1930's to pass legislation outlawing the barbaric practice of 19:51:39.4 lynching. for more than a century, this country presented two realities to its citizens, enshrines in 19:51:52.0 our constitution is a government and a legal system designed to protect the rights of all americans so that our freedom cannot be taken away or infringed upon without due process of law, but for many decades, however, this 19:52:06.9 system of justice and respect for the rule of law didn't apply to all of the citizens of this country. in 1857, in the dred scott supreme court decision, that guarantee 19:52:21.7 in the u.s. constitution, all men are created equal, was not intended to include blacks by that decision. and if more years black americans found few protections in the 19:52:38.3 constitutional guarantees of liberty and freedom and equal protection of the laws. a black man accused of a crime against a white person found that he had no access to the courts 19:52:53.1 to move -- prove his innocence. he had no access to a fair and impartial jury of his peers. all too often the white citizens armed with guns and feelings of 19:53:10.3 righteousness would take the accused as law enforcement officers stood by and would brutalize them and hang them in a public setting 19:53:26.1 for other members of the can community to view and feel avenged. how horrible would that be? a public spectacle. that was supposed to intimidate. 19:53:40.5 that was supposed to strike fear. did it? you bet it did. it was meant to send a message to the members of the black community that they better remain in their place to remember that the guarantees of freedom 19:53:55.9 and fairness in the constitution did not include them. in my state of florida, there were 61 lynchings of black americans between 1921 and 1946, which, of course, 19:54:15.2 represents only a fraction of the total number that were committed in my state. and there's no justification or explanation for these horrible acts of violence. as a nation that we respect the rule of law, 19:54:34.0 of court-proscribed justice, what happened was it was vigilantism and mob rule. that's what determined justice, and that is 19:54:51.5 never justifiable. there is a place in florida called rosewood, rosewood, florida. it was the site in the 1920's of what many describe as a massacre. that black community was 19:55:09.9 destroyed by whites, and no arrests were ever made in as many as 27 racial killings in that location. and as florida finally 19:55:24.9 passed the nation's first compensation for blacks who suffered from those past racial injustices, it was all directed back to the massacres that occurred at rosewood, florida. 19:55:42.3 the 94 florida legislature passed the 19:55:47.5 rosewood claims bill to compensate victims for the loss of property as a result of the failure to prosecute those individuals responsible. i felt as a floridian that this acknowledgement was long 19:56:04.2 overdue, and it made me proud to see at long last that we addressed the tragedy of rosewood. now, as a member of the u.s. senate, i feel that this resolution that 19:56:18.0 we're passing tonight is long overdue, and in being proud of this, i am also humbled, mr. president, to stand up as a member of the senate and to personally apologize for the 19:56:37.3 senate's failure to act. a failure to outlaw barbaric acts such as lynchings and racial 19:56:51.6 massacres. i'm proud too that we can today reaffirm that we are a nation of laws designed to protect the freedom and liberty of 19:57:04.2 all americans -- all americans -- regardless of race. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator yields the floor. the senator from arkansas. a senator: mr. president, i know 19:57:18.5 we have other senators on the way to the chamber to speak. and i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: mr. bennett: mr. president. 19:57:51.4 the presiding officer: the senator from you tawsm. mr. bennett: mr. president, i will v listened with -- the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. the senator is recognized. mr. bennett: mr. president, i have listened with great interest to the presentations 19:58:07.6 made on the floor and wish to be associated with the sentiments involved here. i come from a state that does not have a history of lynchings, but that does not mean that i should be absolved from the concern that all americans should have over the lynchings that occurred. 19:58:23.8 and i note that it was the filibuster that made it possible for the senate to be the one, the body that blocked this legislation in the past. and i would hope that in the future we would all realize that the filibuster should be 19:58:40.2 used for more beneficial purposes than that. i do ask unanimous consent now that there be a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that the senate now proceed to the consideration of 19:58:55.3 senate resolution 170, which was submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the title. the clerk: senate resolution 170, relative to the death of jay james exon, former writes senator for the state of nebraska. the presiding officer: without 19:59:11.4 objection. the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the programmable -- preamble be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table. the presiding officer: is there objection? hearing none so ordered. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous 19:59:26.5 consent that the senate immediately proceed to executive session to consider calendar number 150, the nomination of bryant montgomery to be assistant secretary of housing and urban development. i further ask unanimous consent that the nomination be confirmed. the motion to reconsider 19:59:42.8 be laid upon the table, the president be immediately notified of the senate's action and the senate then return to legislative session. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennett: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, the senate stand 19:59:57.3 in adjournment until 9:45 a.m. on tuesday, june 14. i further ask that following the prayer and the pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved and that the

THE SENATE Morning business followed by general debate on the Thomas Griffith nomination to the US court of appeals in the district - vote on Tuesday --- senate expected to debate resolution that apologize to the families of victims of lynchings 19:00:15.0 concept -- that it's important to remind the american people about the evil chapters in our history. it is the reason we construct museums in washington and beyond, to hold up for all to see how capable we are of descending into the heart of darkness. it is important for us 19:00:31.5 to look back into the past so that we can pledge, pledge never again to allow racial hatred to consume our ideals or humanity. president bush in his second inaugural address -- and i quote from janet's letter -- "our 19:00:48.4 country must abandon all habits of racism because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time." 19:00:58.1 she concludes with these statements, "an apology, i concede, will do nothing for the thousands of people who have perished during what has been called "the black holocaust." it cannot repair the battered souls of their 19:01:12.3 survivors. it is, after all, only a symbolic act. our symbol, however, the eagle, old glory, lady liberty, to mention but a few, are but shortian narratives of who we are as americans. 19:01:27.5 it is through the acknowledgement of the senate's abdication of its duty to protect and defend the rights of all american citizens that perhaps we can begin to understand the pain and anger that still lingers in the hearts and minds of so many who have been deprived of the equality 19:01:45.3 promised in our constitution."ñ my friend and mentor writes "there martin luther king, jr. once said that -- quote -- "the arrest, of history bends toward justice. 19:02:03.7 " today as the senate members cast their historic votes that ark dips closer to its destination" signed janet lange therehart cohen. mr. president, i ask that this 19:02:18.1 full letter be made a part of the record of this debate on the resolution. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. allen: mr. president, i'm proud that this resolution will pass tonight. the senate is going to be on record condemning the brutal atrocities that plagued our 19:02:33.9 great nation for over a century. ly close with the words of the resolution "whereas an apology offered in the spirit of true repentance moves the united states towards reconciliation and may become central to a in 19:02:49.6 new understanding on which improved racial relations could be forged now thereforebe it resolved that the senate apologizes to the victims of lynching. 19:03:03.5 it 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 constitutional 19:03:19.8 protections accorded all citizens of the united states. and we remember the history of lynching to ensure that these tragedies will neither be forgotten nor repeated. my colleagues, i ask you to join all of us in examining our 19:03:36.3 history. learn from history. never again sit quietly. never again turn ones head away when the ugly specter of racism, antisemitism, hate and intolerance rises again. 19:03:50.9 it is our responsibility to stand strong for freedom and justice. in the future, mr. president, i am confident that this senate will perform better than it has in the past. we will protect the god-given blessings of all people to life 19:04:08.4 and liberty to all people regardless of their race, their ethnicity or their religious beliefs. the senate can do better. we have done better tonight. 19:04:23.6 but the real lesson is when we have learned that when such acts happen in the future will this senate stand and rise to condemn it to protect those god-given liberties. i know senator landrieu and i believe the senate will rise 19:04:41.2 aappropriately. mr. president, with that i ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the previous agreement, the senate now proceed to the vote on the pending resolution. i further ask consent that notwithstanding the adoption of 19:04:55.1 the resolution, the remaining time under the previous agreement remain available for senators who wish to make statements, provided that any statements relating to the resolution appear tryer -- prior to its adoption in the congressional record. 19:05:12.2 the presiding officer: without objection it is so ordered. the question is now on the resolution. all those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the resolution is adopted. the preamble is agreed to. ms. landrieu: mr. president? 19:05:31.6 the presiding officer: who yields time? the senator from louisiana. a senator: mr. president, what is the status of time? mr. kerry: is it under control or is it just open? the presiding officer: the 19:05:44.4 senators from virginia and louisiana control the time. mr. kerry: i understand. ms. landrieu: mr. president, i'm happy to yield to the senator from massachusetts in just one moment because he has been very 19:05:56.2 patient to speak. and as a cosponsor of this resolution that just passed, it's really a privilege and appropriate for senator kerry to be one of the first senators to speak upon its passage, but i would like to mention very 19:06:12.6 briefly because i'm not sure he is going to be able to stay with us much longer, mr. james cameron has been with us all day here in the senate. mr. cameron is 91 years old. he lives in marion, indiana n.1930 when he was 16 years old, 19:06:29.4 a mob dragged him from a cell at grant county jail, put a rope around his neck. he was accused of a murder and a rape that he was nowhere around when they occurred. his associates were both lynched that night. 19:06:44.3 a man in the crowd spared him by proclaiming that he in fact was innocent and should be let go. he then went on to live an extraordinary life without bitterness, with a lot of love. he is married 67 years. 19:07:01.1 his four children, multiple grandchildren. senator evan bayh that serves in this body when he was governor of indiana pardoned mr. cameron for anything. he is really the one that has forgiven us and for what was 19:07:19.5 done to him. i wanted to mention him. i yield the floor to senator kerry. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. mr. kerry: mr. president, thank you. i want to start by thanking both senator landrieu and senator allen for their leadership on this effort, and for all those 19:07:36.0 descendants of families who have been absolutely extraordinary in the way in which we have relived their pain, brought it to the public view, kind of laid their hearts out on the table in a very real and emotional way. and i think that's been a 19:07:53.3 wonderful part of this process, the way in which this book that jimmy allen put together has helped to sort of really unleash a pain that was never lost, 19:08:14.5 never forgotten by anybody, but never quite had a place to play itself out until this public effort is being made by the united states senate. there's no small irony, i 19:08:29.1 suspect, in the fact that the senate is here sort of making good on what the senate failed to do. and i personally am struck by even at this significant moment 19:08:47.3 the undeniable and inescapable reality that there aren't 100 senators as cosponsors. maybe by the end of the evening there will be, but as we stand 19:09:00.1 here with this resolution now passed by voice vote there aren't. moreover, all the people in the senate and the press understand how we work here. and i think it's critical that we take the step we're taking 19:09:17.7 and have taken, but at the same time, wouldn't it have been just that much more extraordinary and significant if we were having a recorded vote with all 100 senators recording their votes? we're not. 19:09:32.9 and so even today as we take this gigantic step, we're also saying to american -- america, there's a journey still to travel. i don't want to diminish one eye kwroeta, and i don't mean to, 19:09:49.8 because i think what is happening here today is so significant, but at the same time, it has to give all of us a kind of kick in the era -- rear-end to get us out there to do the other things that are 19:10:04.7 necessary, that give fuller meaning to the words that are going to be expressed here and have been expressed here, most importantly to give fuller meaning for the emotions laid bare by the families who have 19:10:21.8 come here to share this with us. i want to join not just in thanking mr. cameron and others but january the langhart cohen who is here and bill cohen who 19:10:38.6 is up in the gallery. we certainly appreciate her commitment to this effort and the meaning of this to her and all of the families that have come here together. mr. president, it's pretty incredible to think about it. lynchings really replaced 19:10:58.1 slavery. they came in the aftermath of the slavery around 1880's, and between the 1880's and 1968, i have to pause when i think about that, because i was already a 19:11:13.3 young officer in the military. i had left college. i remember the early part of the 1960's devoted to the civil rights movement, the mississippi voter registration drive. we were still recording lynchings during that period of 19:11:29.9 time but i didn't know it. not that in sense i know it today. i thought i knew history pretty well, but i'll tell you, until i saw this array of photographs which then sparked my curiosity to read more about it, i had 19:11:48.6 always thought like most american that's a lynching was just sling the rope over the branch of the tree and that's it. the story is so much more gruesome than that, so much more dark and horrendous, as a moment 19:12:08.2 in american history that it's really hard to believe that it happened at all in our country. which is another reason that it's so important we're taking this step to remember. we've seen revisionism on almost 19:12:22.6 every part of history including the holocaust. so it is good that we take this step today and it is good that we have these photographs brought together as a compilation of history, and it is good that the senate is taking this effort tonight. it is extraordinary to think 19:12:37.8 that 99% of the perpetrators of lynchings escaped any reach of the law whatsoever. it's incredible to think that almost 5,000 people are recording as incidents and how 19:12:55.2 many are not recorded, how many went without the local authorities in each of those communities who are already complicitious in what happened standing by, per missive, turning away from basic human 19:13:13.5 rights. how of those incidents were not recorded? a lot of us have read a lot about world war ii and the holocaust and other moments of history where there's a knock on the door and life changes. 19:13:28.4 but you have to stop and really think what it was like in all but four states in our country. not just for african-americans but for new people, for folks who had come here from other 19:13:46.2 places to live the american dream. in some cases they weren't knocks. they were just angry mobs screaming and yelling with torches and running rampant through households dragging people out screaming. in other cases, there was a 19:14:03.5 pretext, more polite, but it was never polite in what it ended up as. lynchings were not just lynchings, they were organized torture. they were incidents of kinds of torture that defy the 19:14:20.7 imagination that you don't even want to talk about. the kinds of things that any descent society ought to stand up against. people were literally tortured for sport in front of people, and crowds would cheer, bedlam, 19:14:37.9 children brought to be spectators. some of these photographs show kids standing there with their eyes wide open and adults standing beside them, who were supposed to be more responsible, 19:14:51.2 glued to the horror that they were witnessing. in the first half of the last century alone, in the 20th century, over 200 antilynching bills were introduced to the 19:15:06.3 united states congress -- 200. and three times the house of representatives passed antilynching legislation. seven presidents asked for this legislation to be passed. the united states senate said no 19:15:26.8 so it is important that we're here today to apologize. some people wonder what the effect of an apology is, and we 19:15:38.9 can understand that question being asked. but this is sort of a day of reckoning for us as a country. it's a moment for the conscience of our country to be listened to by everybody. it's an embarrassingly and unforgiveibly late moment in 19:15:54.1 coming but we're addressing a stain on our history, and we are working to heal wounds across generations. i think that that is important. some people might try to diminish that. but i think the very lack of unity that i phepbsed earlier, 19:16:11.7 in fact, goes to show why this apology is so important and why we all have to keep moving in this direction.ñ mr. president, no words, obviously, are going to undo the horror of those 5,000 americans 19:16:27.0 losing their lives. no apology is going to just wipe away the memories of mr. cameron and others, though they've shown a greater graciousness of understanding than others even at this moment. and the fact is that this 19:16:45.2 resolution can be one more step in the effort for all of us to try to get over the divide that still exists between race -- races and as a result of jim crow in this country. 19:16:59.8 but only if you face the truth. it is the piebl that reminds us that it's the truth that sets us free. so we have to embrace it, commit ourselves to put our hearts and our actions where our words have now preceded us. this should be an important step 19:17:16.8 forward. but frankly, it will only do that if we don't step here. the truth is, mr. president, that it's not enough to face the who are he of lynchings if we then just walk out of here and 19:17:33.1 consciously turn away from legally separate and unequal schools in america. it's not enough to decry decades of refusing to use the use of law against lynching if today we 19:17:48.5 reuse it to use the force of law to tear down the barriers that prevent people from voting, barriers in the economy, divisions in the health care system that works for too few of those who are in the minority in 19:18:04.0 america. it's only by reconciling the past that you can understand where you have to go in the few of and how to get there. i ask my colleagues just to remember the words of julian bond when he dedicated that beautiful, simple memorial in 19:18:21.1 montgomery, alabama, to those who gave their lives for civil rights. and he said that it was erected as much to remember the dead as it was for those young people who cannot remember the period when the sacrifices began. with its small crueltyties and 19:18:36.6 monstrous injustices, its petty indignities and its deft-dealing inequities. there are too many young to remember that from that seeming hopelessness there arose a mighty movement, simple in its tactics, over whelming in its 19:18:56.1 impact. that is why we have to remember the period of the lynchings. that's why this resolution is important. for the young people who don't know what it to wake up in the middle of the night to hear that 19:19:10.8 knock, or young people who need to commit to help our country to complete the journey in order guarantee that we make it that you will it promises to be and can be, we will never erase what mr. cameron or mr. wright and too many others went through, but we certainly can honor the 19:19:31.5 legacy of these civil rights heroes and the martyrs who came before us by doing right by them and by the country, and i 0 hope this resolution will help us do that. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: who 19:19:53.4 yields time? mr. kerry: mr. president, i yield such time as the senator from illinois wishes. the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. obama: thank you, 19:20:08.8 mr. president. i'd like to rise in strong support of this resolution. before i make any further remarks, i'd like to recognize doria d. johnson and thank her for coming. sheels ea from evanston, illinois. ms. johnston is the great-great-granddaughter of 19:20:26.7 anthony crawford, a south carolina farmer who was lynched nearly 100 years ago for the crime of being a successful black farmer. i'm sure this day has special meaning for her and the other family members of those who were impacted by these great 19:20:41.5 tragedies of the past, and i want to thank her and others for being here today. since america's darkest days of 19:20:53.8 jim crow, separate but equal, fire hoses, church bombings, cross burnings and lynchings, the people of this great nation have found the courage, on 19:21:08.5 occasion, to speak up and speak out so that we can right this country's wrongs. so that together we can walk down that long road of transformation that continues to perfect our union. 19:21:26.2 it's a transformation that brought us the civil rights act and the voting rights act, a transformation that led to the first black member of congress and the first black and white children holding hands in the 19:21:41.2 same playground in the same school. a transformation without which i would not be standing here speaking to you today. but i am. and i'm proud because thanks to this resolution, we're taking 19:21:56.0 another step in acknowledging a dark corner of 0 our history. we're taking a step that allows us, after looking at 4,700 deaths from lynchings and hate 19:22:12.2 that lied behind those deaths, and this chamber's refusal to try and stop those deaths that we are finally saying that we were wrong. there is a power in 19:22:28.4 acknowledging error and mistakes. it is a power that potentially transforms not only those who were impacted directly by the lynchings but also those who are 19:22:44.2 the progeny of those who perpetrated them. i think it's been mentioned that there's an exhibit in chicago right now. its a ea powerful photographic-- --it's a powerful photographic exhibit of some of the lynchings 19:22:58.3 that occurred across the country, and as has already been remarked, what often is most powerful is not the gruesome aspects of the lynching itself. it's not the terrible rending of 19:23:16.7 the body that took place. what's most horrific, what's most disturbing to the soul is photographs in which you see young little white girls or 19:23:32.4 young little white boys with their parents out on an outing loorksing at the degradation of 0 another human being. you wonder not only what the 19:23:49.4 lynching did to the family member of those who were lynched but also what it did to the sensibilities of those young people. 0 now that we're finally 19:24:05.7 acknowledging this injustice, it gives us an opportunity to reflect on the cruelties that can happen to all of us. and then hopefully we can take 19:24:19.7 the time to teach our children to treat people who are differently -- who look different than we do with the same respect that we would expect. and so it's fitting, it's proper, and it's right that 19:24:33.9 we're doing what we're doing here today. i do hope that, as we commemorate this past injustice, that this chamber also spends some time, however, doing something concrete and tangible 19:24:54.2 to heal the long shadow of slavery and the legacy of racial discrimination so that 100 years from now we can look back and be proud and not have to apologize once again. 19:25:10.4 that means completing the unfinished work of the civil rights movement, that means closing the gap that still exists in health care and education and income. there are more ways to 19:25:24.7 perpetrate violence than simply a lynching. there is eight violence that-- --there's the violence that we subject young children to when they don't have any opportunity and they have no hope and they stand on street corners not thinking much of themselves, not 19:25:42.8 thinking that their lives are worth living. that's a form of violence that this chamber could do something 19:25:51.9 about. it means just as we're spending time apologizing today for these past failures of the senate to act, we should spend some time debating the extension of the voting rights act, the best ways to cover the 45 million 19:26:07.9 uninsured americans, how we can make young african-american children, the great-great grandchildren or the great-great-great-grandchildren 19:26:23.9 of those who have been harmed, how can we make sure college is affordable to them? these are the ways we can final ensure that the blessings of opportunity finally reach every american, that we can finally claim a victory in the long struggle for civil rights. today is a step in the right direction. 19:26:41.0 today gives us an opportunity to heal and to move forward. and for those who still harbor ainger in their hearts, who still wonder, how do you #u move on from such terrible violence, it's worth us reflecting for a moment on mamie till mobley. 19:27:03.3 her boy was only 14 years old when they found him in the mississippi river, beaten and blood did ied beyond recognition-- --beaten and bloodied beyond recognition. 19:27:18.5 emmet till was only 14 years old. when his mother saw her child, her baby, unrecognize rbl, his face so badly beaten, it barely looked human and it was suggested that she should have a 19:27:33.7 closed casket, she said, no, we're going to have an open casket, and everybody is going to witness what they did to my child. and as a consequence of that courage displayed by a mother, 19:27:50.8 it galvanized the civil rights movement in the north and in the south, and yet despite that, manie till mobley has repeatedly said, i never wasted a day 19:28:08.3 hating. imagine that. i never wasted a day hating. not one day. i rise today thanking god that the united states senate, the representatives of the american 19:28:21.3 people, and our highest ideals will not waste one more day without issues the apology that will continue to march us down the path of transformation that mamie till mobley has been on 19:28:43.0 her whole life. i am grateful and i am looking forward to joining hands with my colleagues and the american people to make sure that when our children and grandchildren look back at our actions in this chamber that we don't have 19:28:57.2 something to apologize about. i yield the time. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from arkansas. mr. pryor: thank you, mr. president. i join my colleagues today to talk about one of our nation's 19:29:13.8 darkest periods, a stain in history we'd rather forget but that we cannot ignore. the white mobs committed 4,742 hangings, flaggings and burnings 19:29:30.5 of-- --floggings and burnings of african-americans. yet the u.s. senate watched indifferently failing to pass any 26900 separate bills before it to make lynching a federal crime. senate resolution 39 expressing the senate's apology for failing 19:29:47.5 to adopt antilynching legislation is long overdue. i would like to express my sincere apologies and regret to the families in arkansas and the nation, especially to the 19:30:02.9 victims and the their decendants that this body failed to help at a time when they needed it most. i hope that acknowledging these grave injustices of the past will help again to heal the wounds that exist today. 19:30:19.6 even more so, this acknowledgment should serve as a lesson that government must step in to foster racial reconciliation, ensure the mob mentality never returns, and protect those who are most 19:30:36.2 vulnerable. the senate can start by continuing to advance civil rights and equality and work to close the divide that continues in our neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. i'm afraid that if we don't 19:30:52.5 start truly addressing inequities, we will look back once again at the senate's inaction with disdain and remorse. most of the worst offenses of lynching occurred in the south, 19:31:06.6 and arkansas is no different. between the years 1860 and 1936, 318 lynchings occurred in arkansas. of this number, 230 of the victims were black, including 19:31:25.2 six females. that's about three-quarters of the lynchings in our state that are recorded were against african-americans. mr. president, of course the statistics don't have a face. they don't feel pain. 19:31:39.5 nor do they hold memories. but people and families all over arkansas do, and they remember these crimes and the senate's inaction to protect them.÷ in march of 1892, a reporter 19:31:55.7 from the "christian recorder" reported the chaos and hopelessness occurring throughout my state. there is much uneasiness and unrest all over this state -- this is a quote -- "there is much uneasiness and unrest all over this state among our people 19:32:12.7 alluding to the fact that the people all over the state are being lynched upon the slightest provocation. some being strung up to telegraph poles, others burnt at the stake, and still others 19:32:26.8 being shot like dogs. in the last 30 days, there have been not less than eight colored persons lynched in this state. at texarcana a few days ago, a man was burnt at the stake." 19:32:43.2 as i continue the quote, it says, "in pine bluff a few days later, two men were strung up and shot. and this too by the brilliant glare of the electric lights at srarpber, george harris was taken from jail and shot for 19:32:58.0 killing a white man for poisoning his domestic happiness. at wilmar, a boy was induced to confess to the commission of an outrage upon promise of his liberty. and when he had confessed, he 19:33:13.0 was strung up and shot. over in lone oak county, a whole family, consisting of husband, wife and child, were shot down like dogs. the situation is alarming in the extreme." 19:33:27.2 this is a quote from an article that appeared in 1892. mr. president, there are -- there were few honest press accounts of such lynchings, a problem that continues to trouble historians today as they put together the pieces of this 19:33:44.6 period. most arkansas press accounts were no different. lynchers were considered heroes. officers, conniving. the accused, guilty. a case in point. in 1919, arkansas would be home 19:34:02.8 of a terrible racial injustice, the so-called elaine race riot. according to sketchy accounts that have been pieced together by historians, in september 1919, black sharecroppers met to 19:34:18.2 protest unfair settlements for their cotton crops from white plantation owners. local law enforcement broke up the union's meeting. the next day, a thousand white men and troops of the u.s. army converged on phillips county to 19:34:35.1 put an end to the black sharecroppers' so-called insurrection. the number of african-american deaths from this lynching is disputed, ranging from 20 at the low end all the way up to 856 men and women on the high end. 19:34:52.2 the details of the elaine race riot of 1919 have never been formally written down. but mayor robert miller of helena, arkansas, remembers them vividly. at the time, mayor miller's four uncles were preparing for a 19:35:08.7 hunting trip. three of them had traveled to a town near elaine, helena, arkansas, for this special occasion which turned tragic when a mob saw the brothers with guns in hand and assuming they were part of the insurrection, 19:35:25.1 all four were immediately killed. of the antilynching legislation we are considering today, mayor miller says, "it won't change what happened but at least it's a good thing, a movement in the 19:35:39.8 right direction." mr. president, in 2000, the "arkansas times" newspaper wrote 19:35:50.2 an article about one of arkansas's most high-profile lynchings and the lasting impact it had on families in arkansas today. in may 1927, a mentally retarded black man named john carter was accused of attacking a white 19:36:08.0 mother and daughter. upon his capture near little rock, a mob of 100 quickly gathered and prevented police from taking him to little rock, where the police would have protected him from being lynched. 19:36:22.8 after hanging him from a utility pole, the mob dragged john carter's body through the city of little rock and burned him in the downtown -- in downtown little rock at 9th and broadway. 19:36:38.7 the "arkansas times" recall recounts a conversation that occurred 30 years later, in september of 1957, of a mother talking to civil rights pioneer daze -- daisy baits about the john carter lynching. 19:36:56.4 the mother had to say -- and i quote -- "i'm frightened, miss baits, not for myself but for my children. when i was a little girl, my mother and i saw a lynch mob dragging a body of a negro man through the streets of little 19:37:11.0 rock. we were told to get off the streets. we ran. and by cutting through side streets and alleys, we managed to make it to the home of a friend. but we were close enough to hear 19:37:26.6 the screams of the mob, close enough to smell the sickening odor of burning flesh. and miss bates, they took the pews from bethel church to make the fire. 19:37:42.2 they burned the body of this negro man right at the edge of the negro business section." the woman speaking to daisy bates was named birdie eckfort. her daughter elizabeth, one of 19:37:59.3 the little rock nine, would walk through an angry, threatening crowd the following day to claim her right to an equal education at little rock central high school. mr. president, little rock 19:38:15.1 central high school today reminds us of some of the darkest days during the civil rights movement. as a former student, however, i can tell you that it also represents hope and achievement. 2007 will mark the 50th 19:38:34.3 anniversary of desegregation process at little rock central high school. last friday, i spoke with seven members of the little rock nine to tell them that we're closer to funding an adequate visitor's center and museum for this 19:38:50.7 landmark anniversary. minni jean brown trickie, one of the little rock nine, said this visitor's center will serve many purposes, but what struck me was her assurance that the center is 19:39:07.5 an opportunity for healing. today's resolution offers similar opportunities. it allows us to remember the past, begin healing from the past, look at how far our nation 19:39:22.2 has come to address equality and discrimination and rededicate ourselves to acknowledging how much further we must go from here. mr. president, i yield the floor. 19:39:46.0 a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr.al czar: thank you very much -- mr. salazar: thank you very much, mr. president. i rise this evening to speak in support of senate resolution 39, apologizing for the senate's 19:39:59.9 failure to enact antilynching legislation. i think that it's important for us to reflect on the statements that have been made by my colleagues, including the distinguished senator from louisiana and the distinguished senator from virginia so that we 19:40:16.8 can remember the history of this country and how america has been an america in progress. the past can be painted in statistics or it can be painted in the stories of people who have suffered from the unjust 19:40:34.0 result of the absence of an antilynching law. the past we can speak about the time between 1882-1968, when there were nearly 5,000 lynchings that occurred. 19:40:46.6 and these lynchings that occurred were not lynchings that 19:40:50.6 occurred just in the southern part of the united states of america but happened throughout most of the states of our country, including in my own home state of colorado, where a historian has, in his own research, concluded that there were about 175 lynchings that 19:41:06.7 occurred in colorado between 1859-1919. so it is appropriate and fitting that today we apologize for the absence of those laws, that we recognize that people like james 19:41:24.6 cameron, who became a survivor of the lynchings of that time period, recognize that this united states senate body today says we apologize for that past. i also believe that it is 19:41:41.3 perhaps even more important for us to look to the future of america and to look at the kinds of racial issues and the challenges that we face as a nation to create an america that truly is an america of 19:41:57.6 inclusion. it is one thing for us to stand here and -- in the chambers of the united states senate today to look at our history and to learn from that painful history. but it is equally as important for us to look to the future and to recognize that the challenges that we face in this america 19:42:13.5 today, in the decade ahead, in the hundred years ahead require us to learn from those very painful lessons of the past. and when one looks at those very painful lessons of the past, we have to recognize that for the first 250 years of the beginnings of this nation, we 19:42:30.2 had a system of law that recognized that it was okay for one group of people to own another group of people under our system of slavery just because of the color of their skins. and it is important for us also 19:42:45.0 to recognize that it took the bloodiest war of these united states during the civil war, where over half a million people were killed on our own soils here in america to bring about an end to the system of slavery and to usher in the 13th and 19:43:02.3 14th and 15th amendments, which are the bedrock of the constitutional liberties which we now endow upon all people of america. but notwithstanding the fact that in that time period of the civil war, we saw the blood and 19:43:19.2 life of so many americans laid down in this country, we still continued through another period of almost a hundred years where we divided our nation according to groups. it was over a hundred years ago when justice harlan, writing for 19:43:36.0 the dissent in the now famous case of policy v. -- of fplecy v. ferguson made the decision. justice harlan disagreeing with 19:43:52.2 the segregation system that was ushered under that decision, he said, "the destinies of the races in this country are insolubly linked together and the interests of both require that the common government law shall not permit the seeds of 19:44:08.5 race hate to be planted under the sanction of law." that was over a hundred years ago, and yet it took another almost half a century, in fact, more than half a century, until 1954 in the decisions of brown vs. the board of education, 19:44:24.4 mr. president, for the u.s. supreme court, under the leadership of justice warren, to say that in these united states, separate but equal was unconstitutional under the 14th amendment. it took another more than half a century for the united states 19:44:41.0 supreme court to make that statement. and so when we look to the future of america, when we look to the diversity that defines our country, it is my belief that this next century will be defined by how we as an american 19:44:57.3 society embrace the concept of an inclusive america. and when we embrace a concept of an inclusive america, we talk about including people of all backgrounds, be they anglo-americans, french 19:45:14.0 americans, african-americans, latinos, native americans, women, that we as an american society will be challenged in the century ahead by how we deal with the issue of inclusion and the greatness of this country will be defined by 19:45:30.3 how successful we are in making sure that we are inclusive of all people. and there are some who have recognized this. just as sandra -- justice sandra day o'connor, in writing for the united states supreme court in the now famous 19:45:45.9 decision of the university of michigan from just several years ago, made the following comment 19:45:51.0 about the importance of diversity in higher education. justice o'connor, in the majority opinion, said the following -- and i quote -- "these benefits" -- talking about the benefits of higher 19:46:04.9 education and diversity in higher education, said -- "these benefits are not theoretical but real, as major american businesses have made clear that the skills needed in today's increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse 19:46:20.8 people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints." that was from the brief she cited submitted by general motors. she went on to say, "what is more, high-ranking retired officers and civilian leaders of the united states military 19:46:37.9 assert" -- and she quotes from the brief of the former joint chiefs of staff, she says -- "based on their decades of experience, a highly-qualified, racially diverse officer corps is essential to the military's ability to fulfill its principal 19:46:53.9 mission: to provide national security."ñ i believe it was in that articulation by justice day o'connor where she articulated the challenge and the opportunity that we have as an american society 19:47:08.4 as the 21st century unfolds in front of us. in my estimation, the greatness of this country depends on our learning and not forgetting the painful lessons of the past, including the lynchings that occurred across america, and also 19:47:23.2 looking forward to the challenge of including people of all backgrounds and all races in all of the business affairs and civic affairs of this nation. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the 19:47:41.1 senator from florida. mr. nelson: mr. president, i'm very glad that we're doing this. there have been attempts in the past by other members of congress, my 19:47:59.0 good friend, the former congressman tony hall of ohio, who had tried back several years before to get a resolution of apology with regard to slavery, and they never 19:48:12.7 could work out all the details in that. and so i'm very glad that the senate has come to this point, that the senate could critique itself for this legislative body's 19:48:30.2 failure to enact antilynching laws back at a time when it would have been so important to stop this kind of mayhem and murderous rampages that mobs would 19:48:48.0 take supposedly justice into their own hands, and thank goodness that we've come to a point at which we can admit our mistakes, even though this is several generations later, and 19:49:06.2 pass a resolution like this as we will do tonight. interestingly, one of my political heroes is a person that americans rarely hear about. 19:49:21.7 he was a british parliamentarian in the late 1700's and the early 1800's named william wilburforce. wilburforce was elected to the parliament at the 19:49:35.0 age of 21 along with one of his best friends, william pitt the younger, and in three years at age 24, pitt was elected prime minister. and, of course, wilburforce could have 19:49:51.7 been in his cabinet. but at that point, wilburforce had recognized the great evil of the day and dedicated his life to the elimination of the economic order of the day, which was the english slave trade, 19:50:09.7 where the captains would take the boats down off the coast of africa under the guise of friendship, round up native after carngs put 19:50:23.6 them in the holds of those slave ship, take them to the new world and sell them. and wilburforce is a hero to me because as a government official, a member of parliament, he would not even join william pitt the 19:50:39.5 younger's cabinet. he wanted to devote his life to the elimination of the slave trade, and it took him 20 years to 19:50:48.9 do it. and time after time he was beat back, but he persevered and he finally won. 20 years later. and then before wilbur 19:51:05.3 forecast died, he saw that parliament actually bollished slavery. that was some 30 years before slavery was abolished here in america. so it is a privilege for me to be here at long 19:51:24.1 last to join our colleagues to apologize for the senate's failure in the 1930's to pass legislation outlawing the barbaric practice of 19:51:39.4 lynching. for more than a century, this country presented two realities to its citizens, enshrines in 19:51:52.0 our constitution is a government and a legal system designed to protect the rights of all americans so that our freedom cannot be taken away or infringed upon without due process of law, but for many decades, however, this 19:52:06.9 system of justice and respect for the rule of law didn't apply to all of the citizens of this country. in 1857, in the dred scott supreme court decision, that guarantee 19:52:21.7 in the u.s. constitution, all men are created equal, was not intended to include blacks by that decision. and if more years black americans found few protections in the 19:52:38.3 constitutional guarantees of liberty and freedom and equal protection of the laws. a black man accused of a crime against a white person found that he had no access to the courts 19:52:53.1 to move -- prove his innocence. he had no access to a fair and impartial jury of his peers. all too often the white citizens armed with guns and feelings of 19:53:10.3 righteousness would take the accused as law enforcement officers stood by and would brutalize them and hang them in a public setting 19:53:26.1 for other members of the can community to view and feel avenged. how horrible would that be? a public spectacle. that was supposed to intimidate. 19:53:40.5 that was supposed to strike fear. did it? you bet it did. it was meant to send a message to the members of the black community that they better remain in their place to remember that the guarantees of freedom 19:53:55.9 and fairness in the constitution did not include them. in my state of florida, there were 61 lynchings of black americans between 1921 and 1946, which, of course, 19:54:15.2 represents only a fraction of the total number that were committed in my state. and there's no justification or explanation for these horrible acts of violence. as a nation that we respect the rule of law, 19:54:34.0 of court-proscribed justice, what happened was it was vigilantism and mob rule. that's what determined justice, and that is 19:54:51.5 never justifiable. there is a place in florida called rosewood, rosewood, florida. it was the site in the 1920's of what many describe as a massacre. that black community was 19:55:09.9 destroyed by whites, and no arrests were ever made in as many as 27 racial killings in that location. and as florida finally 19:55:24.9 passed the nation's first compensation for blacks who suffered from those past racial injustices, it was all directed back to the massacres that occurred at rosewood, florida. 19:55:42.3 the 94 florida legislature passed the 19:55:47.5 rosewood claims bill to compensate victims for the loss of property as a result of the failure to prosecute those individuals responsible. i felt as a floridian that this acknowledgement was long 19:56:04.2 overdue, and it made me proud to see at long last that we addressed the tragedy of rosewood. now, as a member of the u.s. senate, i feel that this resolution that 19:56:18.0 we're passing tonight is long overdue, and in being proud of this, i am also humbled, mr. president, to stand up as a member of the senate and to personally apologize for the 19:56:37.3 senate's failure to act. a failure to outlaw barbaric acts such as lynchings and racial 19:56:51.6 massacres. i'm proud too that we can today reaffirm that we are a nation of laws designed to protect the freedom and liberty of 19:57:04.2 all americans -- all americans -- regardless of race. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator yields the floor. the senator from arkansas. a senator: mr. president, i know 19:57:18.5 we have other senators on the way to the chamber to speak. and i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: mr. bennett: mr. president. 19:57:51.4 the presiding officer: the senator from you tawsm. mr. bennett: mr. president, i will v listened with -- the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. the senator is recognized. mr. bennett: mr. president, i have listened with great interest to the presentations 19:58:07.6 made on the floor and wish to be associated with the sentiments involved here. i come from a state that does not have a history of lynchings, but that does not mean that i should be absolved from the concern that all americans should have over the lynchings that occurred. 19:58:23.8 and i note that it was the filibuster that made it possible for the senate to be the one, the body that blocked this legislation in the past. and i would hope that in the future we would all realize that the filibuster should be 19:58:40.2 used for more beneficial purposes than that. i do ask unanimous consent now that there be a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that the senate now proceed to the consideration of 19:58:55.3 senate resolution 170, which was submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the title. the clerk: senate resolution 170, relative to the death of jay james exon, former writes senator for the state of nebraska. the presiding officer: without 19:59:11.4 objection. the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the programmable -- preamble be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table. the presiding officer: is there objection? hearing none so ordered. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous 19:59:26.5 consent that the senate immediately proceed to executive session to consider calendar number 150, the nomination of bryant montgomery to be assistant secretary of housing and urban development. i further ask unanimous consent that the nomination be confirmed. the motion to reconsider 19:59:42.8 be laid upon the table, the president be immediately notified of the senate's action and the senate then return to legislative session. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennett: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, the senate stand 19:59:57.3 in adjournment until 9:45 a.m. on tuesday, june 14. i further ask that following the prayer and the pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved and that the

An Indigenous Navajo high school teacher with a group of students in a school classroom.

An Indigenous Navajo high school teacher with a group of students in a school classroom.

THE SENATE Morning business followed by general debate on the Thomas Griffith nomination to the US court of appeals in the district - vote on Tuesday --- senate expected to debate resolution that apologize to the families of victims of lynchings 19:00:15.0 concept -- that it's important to remind the american people about the evil chapters in our history. it is the reason we construct museums in washington and beyond, to hold up for all to see how capable we are of descending into the heart of darkness. it is important for us 19:00:31.5 to look back into the past so that we can pledge, pledge never again to allow racial hatred to consume our ideals or humanity. president bush in his second inaugural address -- and i quote from janet's letter -- "our 19:00:48.4 country must abandon all habits of racism because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time." 19:00:58.1 she concludes with these statements, "an apology, i concede, will do nothing for the thousands of people who have perished during what has been called "the black holocaust." it cannot repair the battered souls of their 19:01:12.3 survivors. it is, after all, only a symbolic act. our symbol, however, the eagle, old glory, lady liberty, to mention but a few, are but shortian narratives of who we are as americans. 19:01:27.5 it is through the acknowledgement of the senate's abdication of its duty to protect and defend the rights of all american citizens that perhaps we can begin to understand the pain and anger that still lingers in the hearts and minds of so many who have been deprived of the equality 19:01:45.3 promised in our constitution."ñ my friend and mentor writes "there martin luther king, jr. once said that -- quote -- "the arrest, of history bends toward justice. 19:02:03.7 " today as the senate members cast their historic votes that ark dips closer to its destination" signed janet lange therehart cohen. mr. president, i ask that this 19:02:18.1 full letter be made a part of the record of this debate on the resolution. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. allen: mr. president, i'm proud that this resolution will pass tonight. the senate is going to be on record condemning the brutal atrocities that plagued our 19:02:33.9 great nation for over a century. ly close with the words of the resolution "whereas an apology offered in the spirit of true repentance moves the united states towards reconciliation and may become central to a in 19:02:49.6 new understanding on which improved racial relations could be forged now thereforebe it resolved that the senate apologizes to the victims of lynching. 19:03:03.5 it 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 constitutional 19:03:19.8 protections accorded all citizens of the united states. and we remember the history of lynching to ensure that these tragedies will neither be forgotten nor repeated. my colleagues, i ask you to join all of us in examining our 19:03:36.3 history. learn from history. never again sit quietly. never again turn ones head away when the ugly specter of racism, antisemitism, hate and intolerance rises again. 19:03:50.9 it is our responsibility to stand strong for freedom and justice. in the future, mr. president, i am confident that this senate will perform better than it has in the past. we will protect the god-given blessings of all people to life 19:04:08.4 and liberty to all people regardless of their race, their ethnicity or their religious beliefs. the senate can do better. we have done better tonight. 19:04:23.6 but the real lesson is when we have learned that when such acts happen in the future will this senate stand and rise to condemn it to protect those god-given liberties. i know senator landrieu and i believe the senate will rise 19:04:41.2 aappropriately. mr. president, with that i ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the previous agreement, the senate now proceed to the vote on the pending resolution. i further ask consent that notwithstanding the adoption of 19:04:55.1 the resolution, the remaining time under the previous agreement remain available for senators who wish to make statements, provided that any statements relating to the resolution appear tryer -- prior to its adoption in the congressional record. 19:05:12.2 the presiding officer: without objection it is so ordered. the question is now on the resolution. all those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the resolution is adopted. the preamble is agreed to. ms. landrieu: mr. president? 19:05:31.6 the presiding officer: who yields time? the senator from louisiana. a senator: mr. president, what is the status of time? mr. kerry: is it under control or is it just open? the presiding officer: the 19:05:44.4 senators from virginia and louisiana control the time. mr. kerry: i understand. ms. landrieu: mr. president, i'm happy to yield to the senator from massachusetts in just one moment because he has been very 19:05:56.2 patient to speak. and as a cosponsor of this resolution that just passed, it's really a privilege and appropriate for senator kerry to be one of the first senators to speak upon its passage, but i would like to mention very 19:06:12.6 briefly because i'm not sure he is going to be able to stay with us much longer, mr. james cameron has been with us all day here in the senate. mr. cameron is 91 years old. he lives in marion, indiana n.1930 when he was 16 years old, 19:06:29.4 a mob dragged him from a cell at grant county jail, put a rope around his neck. he was accused of a murder and a rape that he was nowhere around when they occurred. his associates were both lynched that night. 19:06:44.3 a man in the crowd spared him by proclaiming that he in fact was innocent and should be let go. he then went on to live an extraordinary life without bitterness, with a lot of love. he is married 67 years. 19:07:01.1 his four children, multiple grandchildren. senator evan bayh that serves in this body when he was governor of indiana pardoned mr. cameron for anything. he is really the one that has forgiven us and for what was 19:07:19.5 done to him. i wanted to mention him. i yield the floor to senator kerry. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. mr. kerry: mr. president, thank you. i want to start by thanking both senator landrieu and senator allen for their leadership on this effort, and for all those 19:07:36.0 descendants of families who have been absolutely extraordinary in the way in which we have relived their pain, brought it to the public view, kind of laid their hearts out on the table in a very real and emotional way. and i think that's been a 19:07:53.3 wonderful part of this process, the way in which this book that jimmy allen put together has helped to sort of really unleash a pain that was never lost, 19:08:14.5 never forgotten by anybody, but never quite had a place to play itself out until this public effort is being made by the united states senate. there's no small irony, i 19:08:29.1 suspect, in the fact that the senate is here sort of making good on what the senate failed to do. and i personally am struck by even at this significant moment 19:08:47.3 the undeniable and inescapable reality that there aren't 100 senators as cosponsors. maybe by the end of the evening there will be, but as we stand 19:09:00.1 here with this resolution now passed by voice vote there aren't. moreover, all the people in the senate and the press understand how we work here. and i think it's critical that we take the step we're taking 19:09:17.7 and have taken, but at the same time, wouldn't it have been just that much more extraordinary and significant if we were having a recorded vote with all 100 senators recording their votes? we're not. 19:09:32.9 and so even today as we take this gigantic step, we're also saying to american -- america, there's a journey still to travel. i don't want to diminish one eye kwroeta, and i don't mean to, 19:09:49.8 because i think what is happening here today is so significant, but at the same time, it has to give all of us a kind of kick in the era -- rear-end to get us out there to do the other things that are 19:10:04.7 necessary, that give fuller meaning to the words that are going to be expressed here and have been expressed here, most importantly to give fuller meaning for the emotions laid bare by the families who have 19:10:21.8 come here to share this with us. i want to join not just in thanking mr. cameron and others but january the langhart cohen who is here and bill cohen who 19:10:38.6 is up in the gallery. we certainly appreciate her commitment to this effort and the meaning of this to her and all of the families that have come here together. mr. president, it's pretty incredible to think about it. lynchings really replaced 19:10:58.1 slavery. they came in the aftermath of the slavery around 1880's, and between the 1880's and 1968, i have to pause when i think about that, because i was already a 19:11:13.3 young officer in the military. i had left college. i remember the early part of the 1960's devoted to the civil rights movement, the mississippi voter registration drive. we were still recording lynchings during that period of 19:11:29.9 time but i didn't know it. not that in sense i know it today. i thought i knew history pretty well, but i'll tell you, until i saw this array of photographs which then sparked my curiosity to read more about it, i had 19:11:48.6 always thought like most american that's a lynching was just sling the rope over the branch of the tree and that's it. the story is so much more gruesome than that, so much more dark and horrendous, as a moment 19:12:08.2 in american history that it's really hard to believe that it happened at all in our country. which is another reason that it's so important we're taking this step to remember. we've seen revisionism on almost 19:12:22.6 every part of history including the holocaust. so it is good that we take this step today and it is good that we have these photographs brought together as a compilation of history, and it is good that the senate is taking this effort tonight. it is extraordinary to think 19:12:37.8 that 99% of the perpetrators of lynchings escaped any reach of the law whatsoever. it's incredible to think that almost 5,000 people are recording as incidents and how 19:12:55.2 many are not recorded, how many went without the local authorities in each of those communities who are already complicitious in what happened standing by, per missive, turning away from basic human 19:13:13.5 rights. how of those incidents were not recorded? a lot of us have read a lot about world war ii and the holocaust and other moments of history where there's a knock on the door and life changes. 19:13:28.4 but you have to stop and really think what it was like in all but four states in our country. not just for african-americans but for new people, for folks who had come here from other 19:13:46.2 places to live the american dream. in some cases they weren't knocks. they were just angry mobs screaming and yelling with torches and running rampant through households dragging people out screaming. in other cases, there was a 19:14:03.5 pretext, more polite, but it was never polite in what it ended up as. lynchings were not just lynchings, they were organized torture. they were incidents of kinds of torture that defy the 19:14:20.7 imagination that you don't even want to talk about. the kinds of things that any descent society ought to stand up against. people were literally tortured for sport in front of people, and crowds would cheer, bedlam, 19:14:37.9 children brought to be spectators. some of these photographs show kids standing there with their eyes wide open and adults standing beside them, who were supposed to be more responsible, 19:14:51.2 glued to the horror that they were witnessing. in the first half of the last century alone, in the 20th century, over 200 antilynching bills were introduced to the 19:15:06.3 united states congress -- 200. and three times the house of representatives passed antilynching legislation. seven presidents asked for this legislation to be passed. the united states senate said no 19:15:26.8 so it is important that we're here today to apologize. some people wonder what the effect of an apology is, and we 19:15:38.9 can understand that question being asked. but this is sort of a day of reckoning for us as a country. it's a moment for the conscience of our country to be listened to by everybody. it's an embarrassingly and unforgiveibly late moment in 19:15:54.1 coming but we're addressing a stain on our history, and we are working to heal wounds across generations. i think that that is important. some people might try to diminish that. but i think the very lack of unity that i phepbsed earlier, 19:16:11.7 in fact, goes to show why this apology is so important and why we all have to keep moving in this direction.ñ mr. president, no words, obviously, are going to undo the horror of those 5,000 americans 19:16:27.0 losing their lives. no apology is going to just wipe away the memories of mr. cameron and others, though they've shown a greater graciousness of understanding than others even at this moment. and the fact is that this 19:16:45.2 resolution can be one more step in the effort for all of us to try to get over the divide that still exists between race -- races and as a result of jim crow in this country. 19:16:59.8 but only if you face the truth. it is the piebl that reminds us that it's the truth that sets us free. so we have to embrace it, commit ourselves to put our hearts and our actions where our words have now preceded us. this should be an important step 19:17:16.8 forward. but frankly, it will only do that if we don't step here. the truth is, mr. president, that it's not enough to face the who are he of lynchings if we then just walk out of here and 19:17:33.1 consciously turn away from legally separate and unequal schools in america. it's not enough to decry decades of refusing to use the use of law against lynching if today we 19:17:48.5 reuse it to use the force of law to tear down the barriers that prevent people from voting, barriers in the economy, divisions in the health care system that works for too few of those who are in the minority in 19:18:04.0 america. it's only by reconciling the past that you can understand where you have to go in the few of and how to get there. i ask my colleagues just to remember the words of julian bond when he dedicated that beautiful, simple memorial in 19:18:21.1 montgomery, alabama, to those who gave their lives for civil rights. and he said that it was erected as much to remember the dead as it was for those young people who cannot remember the period when the sacrifices began. with its small crueltyties and 19:18:36.6 monstrous injustices, its petty indignities and its deft-dealing inequities. there are too many young to remember that from that seeming hopelessness there arose a mighty movement, simple in its tactics, over whelming in its 19:18:56.1 impact. that is why we have to remember the period of the lynchings. that's why this resolution is important. for the young people who don't know what it to wake up in the middle of the night to hear that 19:19:10.8 knock, or young people who need to commit to help our country to complete the journey in order guarantee that we make it that you will it promises to be and can be, we will never erase what mr. cameron or mr. wright and too many others went through, but we certainly can honor the 19:19:31.5 legacy of these civil rights heroes and the martyrs who came before us by doing right by them and by the country, and i 0 hope this resolution will help us do that. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: who 19:19:53.4 yields time? mr. kerry: mr. president, i yield such time as the senator from illinois wishes. the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. obama: thank you, 19:20:08.8 mr. president. i'd like to rise in strong support of this resolution. before i make any further remarks, i'd like to recognize doria d. johnson and thank her for coming. sheels ea from evanston, illinois. ms. johnston is the great-great-granddaughter of 19:20:26.7 anthony crawford, a south carolina farmer who was lynched nearly 100 years ago for the crime of being a successful black farmer. i'm sure this day has special meaning for her and the other family members of those who were impacted by these great 19:20:41.5 tragedies of the past, and i want to thank her and others for being here today. since america's darkest days of 19:20:53.8 jim crow, separate but equal, fire hoses, church bombings, cross burnings and lynchings, the people of this great nation have found the courage, on 19:21:08.5 occasion, to speak up and speak out so that we can right this country's wrongs. so that together we can walk down that long road of transformation that continues to perfect our union. 19:21:26.2 it's a transformation that brought us the civil rights act and the voting rights act, a transformation that led to the first black member of congress and the first black and white children holding hands in the 19:21:41.2 same playground in the same school. a transformation without which i would not be standing here speaking to you today. but i am. and i'm proud because thanks to this resolution, we're taking 19:21:56.0 another step in acknowledging a dark corner of 0 our history. we're taking a step that allows us, after looking at 4,700 deaths from lynchings and hate 19:22:12.2 that lied behind those deaths, and this chamber's refusal to try and stop those deaths that we are finally saying that we were wrong. there is a power in 19:22:28.4 acknowledging error and mistakes. it is a power that potentially transforms not only those who were impacted directly by the lynchings but also those who are 19:22:44.2 the progeny of those who perpetrated them. i think it's been mentioned that there's an exhibit in chicago right now. its a ea powerful photographic-- --it's a powerful photographic exhibit of some of the lynchings 19:22:58.3 that occurred across the country, and as has already been remarked, what often is most powerful is not the gruesome aspects of the lynching itself. it's not the terrible rending of 19:23:16.7 the body that took place. what's most horrific, what's most disturbing to the soul is photographs in which you see young little white girls or 19:23:32.4 young little white boys with their parents out on an outing loorksing at the degradation of 0 another human being. you wonder not only what the 19:23:49.4 lynching did to the family member of those who were lynched but also what it did to the sensibilities of those young people. 0 now that we're finally 19:24:05.7 acknowledging this injustice, it gives us an opportunity to reflect on the cruelties that can happen to all of us. and then hopefully we can take 19:24:19.7 the time to teach our children to treat people who are differently -- who look different than we do with the same respect that we would expect. and so it's fitting, it's proper, and it's right that 19:24:33.9 we're doing what we're doing here today. i do hope that, as we commemorate this past injustice, that this chamber also spends some time, however, doing something concrete and tangible 19:24:54.2 to heal the long shadow of slavery and the legacy of racial discrimination so that 100 years from now we can look back and be proud and not have to apologize once again. 19:25:10.4 that means completing the unfinished work of the civil rights movement, that means closing the gap that still exists in health care and education and income. there are more ways to 19:25:24.7 perpetrate violence than simply a lynching. there is eight violence that-- --there's the violence that we subject young children to when they don't have any opportunity and they have no hope and they stand on street corners not thinking much of themselves, not 19:25:42.8 thinking that their lives are worth living. that's a form of violence that this chamber could do something 19:25:51.9 about. it means just as we're spending time apologizing today for these past failures of the senate to act, we should spend some time debating the extension of the voting rights act, the best ways to cover the 45 million 19:26:07.9 uninsured americans, how we can make young african-american children, the great-great grandchildren or the great-great-great-grandchildren 19:26:23.9 of those who have been harmed, how can we make sure college is affordable to them? these are the ways we can final ensure that the blessings of opportunity finally reach every american, that we can finally claim a victory in the long struggle for civil rights. today is a step in the right direction. 19:26:41.0 today gives us an opportunity to heal and to move forward. and for those who still harbor ainger in their hearts, who still wonder, how do you #u move on from such terrible violence, it's worth us reflecting for a moment on mamie till mobley. 19:27:03.3 her boy was only 14 years old when they found him in the mississippi river, beaten and blood did ied beyond recognition-- --beaten and bloodied beyond recognition. 19:27:18.5 emmet till was only 14 years old. when his mother saw her child, her baby, unrecognize rbl, his face so badly beaten, it barely looked human and it was suggested that she should have a 19:27:33.7 closed casket, she said, no, we're going to have an open casket, and everybody is going to witness what they did to my child. and as a consequence of that courage displayed by a mother, 19:27:50.8 it galvanized the civil rights movement in the north and in the south, and yet despite that, manie till mobley has repeatedly said, i never wasted a day 19:28:08.3 hating. imagine that. i never wasted a day hating. not one day. i rise today thanking god that the united states senate, the representatives of the american 19:28:21.3 people, and our highest ideals will not waste one more day without issues the apology that will continue to march us down the path of transformation that mamie till mobley has been on 19:28:43.0 her whole life. i am grateful and i am looking forward to joining hands with my colleagues and the american people to make sure that when our children and grandchildren look back at our actions in this chamber that we don't have 19:28:57.2 something to apologize about. i yield the time. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from arkansas. mr. pryor: thank you, mr. president. i join my colleagues today to talk about one of our nation's 19:29:13.8 darkest periods, a stain in history we'd rather forget but that we cannot ignore. the white mobs committed 4,742 hangings, flaggings and burnings 19:29:30.5 of-- --floggings and burnings of african-americans. yet the u.s. senate watched indifferently failing to pass any 26900 separate bills before it to make lynching a federal crime. senate resolution 39 expressing the senate's apology for failing 19:29:47.5 to adopt antilynching legislation is long overdue. i would like to express my sincere apologies and regret to the families in arkansas and the nation, especially to the 19:30:02.9 victims and the their decendants that this body failed to help at a time when they needed it most. i hope that acknowledging these grave injustices of the past will help again to heal the wounds that exist today. 19:30:19.6 even more so, this acknowledgment should serve as a lesson that government must step in to foster racial reconciliation, ensure the mob mentality never returns, and protect those who are most 19:30:36.2 vulnerable. the senate can start by continuing to advance civil rights and equality and work to close the divide that continues in our neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. i'm afraid that if we don't 19:30:52.5 start truly addressing inequities, we will look back once again at the senate's inaction with disdain and remorse. most of the worst offenses of lynching occurred in the south, 19:31:06.6 and arkansas is no different. between the years 1860 and 1936, 318 lynchings occurred in arkansas. of this number, 230 of the victims were black, including 19:31:25.2 six females. that's about three-quarters of the lynchings in our state that are recorded were against african-americans. mr. president, of course the statistics don't have a face. they don't feel pain. 19:31:39.5 nor do they hold memories. but people and families all over arkansas do, and they remember these crimes and the senate's inaction to protect them.÷ in march of 1892, a reporter 19:31:55.7 from the "christian recorder" reported the chaos and hopelessness occurring throughout my state. there is much uneasiness and unrest all over this state -- this is a quote -- "there is much uneasiness and unrest all over this state among our people 19:32:12.7 alluding to the fact that the people all over the state are being lynched upon the slightest provocation. some being strung up to telegraph poles, others burnt at the stake, and still others 19:32:26.8 being shot like dogs. in the last 30 days, there have been not less than eight colored persons lynched in this state. at texarcana a few days ago, a man was burnt at the stake." 19:32:43.2 as i continue the quote, it says, "in pine bluff a few days later, two men were strung up and shot. and this too by the brilliant glare of the electric lights at srarpber, george harris was taken from jail and shot for 19:32:58.0 killing a white man for poisoning his domestic happiness. at wilmar, a boy was induced to confess to the commission of an outrage upon promise of his liberty. and when he had confessed, he 19:33:13.0 was strung up and shot. over in lone oak county, a whole family, consisting of husband, wife and child, were shot down like dogs. the situation is alarming in the extreme." 19:33:27.2 this is a quote from an article that appeared in 1892. mr. president, there are -- there were few honest press accounts of such lynchings, a problem that continues to trouble historians today as they put together the pieces of this 19:33:44.6 period. most arkansas press accounts were no different. lynchers were considered heroes. officers, conniving. the accused, guilty. a case in point. in 1919, arkansas would be home 19:34:02.8 of a terrible racial injustice, the so-called elaine race riot. according to sketchy accounts that have been pieced together by historians, in september 1919, black sharecroppers met to 19:34:18.2 protest unfair settlements for their cotton crops from white plantation owners. local law enforcement broke up the union's meeting. the next day, a thousand white men and troops of the u.s. army converged on phillips county to 19:34:35.1 put an end to the black sharecroppers' so-called insurrection. the number of african-american deaths from this lynching is disputed, ranging from 20 at the low end all the way up to 856 men and women on the high end. 19:34:52.2 the details of the elaine race riot of 1919 have never been formally written down. but mayor robert miller of helena, arkansas, remembers them vividly. at the time, mayor miller's four uncles were preparing for a 19:35:08.7 hunting trip. three of them had traveled to a town near elaine, helena, arkansas, for this special occasion which turned tragic when a mob saw the brothers with guns in hand and assuming they were part of the insurrection, 19:35:25.1 all four were immediately killed. of the antilynching legislation we are considering today, mayor miller says, "it won't change what happened but at least it's a good thing, a movement in the 19:35:39.8 right direction." mr. president, in 2000, the "arkansas times" newspaper wrote 19:35:50.2 an article about one of arkansas's most high-profile lynchings and the lasting impact it had on families in arkansas today. in may 1927, a mentally retarded black man named john carter was accused of attacking a white 19:36:08.0 mother and daughter. upon his capture near little rock, a mob of 100 quickly gathered and prevented police from taking him to little rock, where the police would have protected him from being lynched. 19:36:22.8 after hanging him from a utility pole, the mob dragged john carter's body through the city of little rock and burned him in the downtown -- in downtown little rock at 9th and broadway. 19:36:38.7 the "arkansas times" recall recounts a conversation that occurred 30 years later, in september of 1957, of a mother talking to civil rights pioneer daze -- daisy baits about the john carter lynching. 19:36:56.4 the mother had to say -- and i quote -- "i'm frightened, miss baits, not for myself but for my children. when i was a little girl, my mother and i saw a lynch mob dragging a body of a negro man through the streets of little 19:37:11.0 rock. we were told to get off the streets. we ran. and by cutting through side streets and alleys, we managed to make it to the home of a friend. but we were close enough to hear 19:37:26.6 the screams of the mob, close enough to smell the sickening odor of burning flesh. and miss bates, they took the pews from bethel church to make the fire. 19:37:42.2 they burned the body of this negro man right at the edge of the negro business section." the woman speaking to daisy bates was named birdie eckfort. her daughter elizabeth, one of 19:37:59.3 the little rock nine, would walk through an angry, threatening crowd the following day to claim her right to an equal education at little rock central high school. mr. president, little rock 19:38:15.1 central high school today reminds us of some of the darkest days during the civil rights movement. as a former student, however, i can tell you that it also represents hope and achievement. 2007 will mark the 50th 19:38:34.3 anniversary of desegregation process at little rock central high school. last friday, i spoke with seven members of the little rock nine to tell them that we're closer to funding an adequate visitor's center and museum for this 19:38:50.7 landmark anniversary. minni jean brown trickie, one of the little rock nine, said this visitor's center will serve many purposes, but what struck me was her assurance that the center is 19:39:07.5 an opportunity for healing. today's resolution offers similar opportunities. it allows us to remember the past, begin healing from the past, look at how far our nation 19:39:22.2 has come to address equality and discrimination and rededicate ourselves to acknowledging how much further we must go from here. mr. president, i yield the floor. 19:39:46.0 a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr.al czar: thank you very much -- mr. salazar: thank you very much, mr. president. i rise this evening to speak in support of senate resolution 39, apologizing for the senate's 19:39:59.9 failure to enact antilynching legislation. i think that it's important for us to reflect on the statements that have been made by my colleagues, including the distinguished senator from louisiana and the distinguished senator from virginia so that we 19:40:16.8 can remember the history of this country and how america has been an america in progress. the past can be painted in statistics or it can be painted in the stories of people who have suffered from the unjust 19:40:34.0 result of the absence of an antilynching law. the past we can speak about the time between 1882-1968, when there were nearly 5,000 lynchings that occurred. 19:40:46.6 and these lynchings that occurred were not lynchings that 19:40:50.6 occurred just in the southern part of the united states of america but happened throughout most of the states of our country, including in my own home state of colorado, where a historian has, in his own research, concluded that there were about 175 lynchings that 19:41:06.7 occurred in colorado between 1859-1919. so it is appropriate and fitting that today we apologize for the absence of those laws, that we recognize that people like james 19:41:24.6 cameron, who became a survivor of the lynchings of that time period, recognize that this united states senate body today says we apologize for that past. i also believe that it is 19:41:41.3 perhaps even more important for us to look to the future of america and to look at the kinds of racial issues and the challenges that we face as a nation to create an america that truly is an america of 19:41:57.6 inclusion. it is one thing for us to stand here and -- in the chambers of the united states senate today to look at our history and to learn from that painful history. but it is equally as important for us to look to the future and to recognize that the challenges that we face in this america 19:42:13.5 today, in the decade ahead, in the hundred years ahead require us to learn from those very painful lessons of the past. and when one looks at those very painful lessons of the past, we have to recognize that for the first 250 years of the beginnings of this nation, we 19:42:30.2 had a system of law that recognized that it was okay for one group of people to own another group of people under our system of slavery just because of the color of their skins. and it is important for us also 19:42:45.0 to recognize that it took the bloodiest war of these united states during the civil war, where over half a million people were killed on our own soils here in america to bring about an end to the system of slavery and to usher in the 13th and 19:43:02.3 14th and 15th amendments, which are the bedrock of the constitutional liberties which we now endow upon all people of america. but notwithstanding the fact that in that time period of the civil war, we saw the blood and 19:43:19.2 life of so many americans laid down in this country, we still continued through another period of almost a hundred years where we divided our nation according to groups. it was over a hundred years ago when justice harlan, writing for 19:43:36.0 the dissent in the now famous case of policy v. -- of fplecy v. ferguson made the decision. justice harlan disagreeing with 19:43:52.2 the segregation system that was ushered under that decision, he said, "the destinies of the races in this country are insolubly linked together and the interests of both require that the common government law shall not permit the seeds of 19:44:08.5 race hate to be planted under the sanction of law." that was over a hundred years ago, and yet it took another almost half a century, in fact, more than half a century, until 1954 in the decisions of brown vs. the board of education, 19:44:24.4 mr. president, for the u.s. supreme court, under the leadership of justice warren, to say that in these united states, separate but equal was unconstitutional under the 14th amendment. it took another more than half a century for the united states 19:44:41.0 supreme court to make that statement. and so when we look to the future of america, when we look to the diversity that defines our country, it is my belief that this next century will be defined by how we as an american 19:44:57.3 society embrace the concept of an inclusive america. and when we embrace a concept of an inclusive america, we talk about including people of all backgrounds, be they anglo-americans, french 19:45:14.0 americans, african-americans, latinos, native americans, women, that we as an american society will be challenged in the century ahead by how we deal with the issue of inclusion and the greatness of this country will be defined by 19:45:30.3 how successful we are in making sure that we are inclusive of all people. and there are some who have recognized this. just as sandra -- justice sandra day o'connor, in writing for the united states supreme court in the now famous 19:45:45.9 decision of the university of michigan from just several years ago, made the following comment 19:45:51.0 about the importance of diversity in higher education. justice o'connor, in the majority opinion, said the following -- and i quote -- "these benefits" -- talking about the benefits of higher 19:46:04.9 education and diversity in higher education, said -- "these benefits are not theoretical but real, as major american businesses have made clear that the skills needed in today's increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse 19:46:20.8 people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints." that was from the brief she cited submitted by general motors. she went on to say, "what is more, high-ranking retired officers and civilian leaders of the united states military 19:46:37.9 assert" -- and she quotes from the brief of the former joint chiefs of staff, she says -- "based on their decades of experience, a highly-qualified, racially diverse officer corps is essential to the military's ability to fulfill its principal 19:46:53.9 mission: to provide national security."ñ i believe it was in that articulation by justice day o'connor where she articulated the challenge and the opportunity that we have as an american society 19:47:08.4 as the 21st century unfolds in front of us. in my estimation, the greatness of this country depends on our learning and not forgetting the painful lessons of the past, including the lynchings that occurred across america, and also 19:47:23.2 looking forward to the challenge of including people of all backgrounds and all races in all of the business affairs and civic affairs of this nation. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the 19:47:41.1 senator from florida. mr. nelson: mr. president, i'm very glad that we're doing this. there have been attempts in the past by other members of congress, my 19:47:59.0 good friend, the former congressman tony hall of ohio, who had tried back several years before to get a resolution of apology with regard to slavery, and they never 19:48:12.7 could work out all the details in that. and so i'm very glad that the senate has come to this point, that the senate could critique itself for this legislative body's 19:48:30.2 failure to enact antilynching laws back at a time when it would have been so important to stop this kind of mayhem and murderous rampages that mobs would 19:48:48.0 take supposedly justice into their own hands, and thank goodness that we've come to a point at which we can admit our mistakes, even though this is several generations later, and 19:49:06.2 pass a resolution like this as we will do tonight. interestingly, one of my political heroes is a person that americans rarely hear about. 19:49:21.7 he was a british parliamentarian in the late 1700's and the early 1800's named william wilburforce. wilburforce was elected to the parliament at the 19:49:35.0 age of 21 along with one of his best friends, william pitt the younger, and in three years at age 24, pitt was elected prime minister. and, of course, wilburforce could have 19:49:51.7 been in his cabinet. but at that point, wilburforce had recognized the great evil of the day and dedicated his life to the elimination of the economic order of the day, which was the english slave trade, 19:50:09.7 where the captains would take the boats down off the coast of africa under the guise of friendship, round up native after carngs put 19:50:23.6 them in the holds of those slave ship, take them to the new world and sell them. and wilburforce is a hero to me because as a government official, a member of parliament, he would not even join william pitt the 19:50:39.5 younger's cabinet. he wanted to devote his life to the elimination of the slave trade, and it took him 20 years to 19:50:48.9 do it. and time after time he was beat back, but he persevered and he finally won. 20 years later. and then before wilbur 19:51:05.3 forecast died, he saw that parliament actually bollished slavery. that was some 30 years before slavery was abolished here in america. so it is a privilege for me to be here at long 19:51:24.1 last to join our colleagues to apologize for the senate's failure in the 1930's to pass legislation outlawing the barbaric practice of 19:51:39.4 lynching. for more than a century, this country presented two realities to its citizens, enshrines in 19:51:52.0 our constitution is a government and a legal system designed to protect the rights of all americans so that our freedom cannot be taken away or infringed upon without due process of law, but for many decades, however, this 19:52:06.9 system of justice and respect for the rule of law didn't apply to all of the citizens of this country. in 1857, in the dred scott supreme court decision, that guarantee 19:52:21.7 in the u.s. constitution, all men are created equal, was not intended to include blacks by that decision. and if more years black americans found few protections in the 19:52:38.3 constitutional guarantees of liberty and freedom and equal protection of the laws. a black man accused of a crime against a white person found that he had no access to the courts 19:52:53.1 to move -- prove his innocence. he had no access to a fair and impartial jury of his peers. all too often the white citizens armed with guns and feelings of 19:53:10.3 righteousness would take the accused as law enforcement officers stood by and would brutalize them and hang them in a public setting 19:53:26.1 for other members of the can community to view and feel avenged. how horrible would that be? a public spectacle. that was supposed to intimidate. 19:53:40.5 that was supposed to strike fear. did it? you bet it did. it was meant to send a message to the members of the black community that they better remain in their place to remember that the guarantees of freedom 19:53:55.9 and fairness in the constitution did not include them. in my state of florida, there were 61 lynchings of black americans between 1921 and 1946, which, of course, 19:54:15.2 represents only a fraction of the total number that were committed in my state. and there's no justification or explanation for these horrible acts of violence. as a nation that we respect the rule of law, 19:54:34.0 of court-proscribed justice, what happened was it was vigilantism and mob rule. that's what determined justice, and that is 19:54:51.5 never justifiable. there is a place in florida called rosewood, rosewood, florida. it was the site in the 1920's of what many describe as a massacre. that black community was 19:55:09.9 destroyed by whites, and no arrests were ever made in as many as 27 racial killings in that location. and as florida finally 19:55:24.9 passed the nation's first compensation for blacks who suffered from those past racial injustices, it was all directed back to the massacres that occurred at rosewood, florida. 19:55:42.3 the 94 florida legislature passed the 19:55:47.5 rosewood claims bill to compensate victims for the loss of property as a result of the failure to prosecute those individuals responsible. i felt as a floridian that this acknowledgement was long 19:56:04.2 overdue, and it made me proud to see at long last that we addressed the tragedy of rosewood. now, as a member of the u.s. senate, i feel that this resolution that 19:56:18.0 we're passing tonight is long overdue, and in being proud of this, i am also humbled, mr. president, to stand up as a member of the senate and to personally apologize for the 19:56:37.3 senate's failure to act. a failure to outlaw barbaric acts such as lynchings and racial 19:56:51.6 massacres. i'm proud too that we can today reaffirm that we are a nation of laws designed to protect the freedom and liberty of 19:57:04.2 all americans -- all americans -- regardless of race. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator yields the floor. the senator from arkansas. a senator: mr. president, i know 19:57:18.5 we have other senators on the way to the chamber to speak. and i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: mr. bennett: mr. president. 19:57:51.4 the presiding officer: the senator from you tawsm. mr. bennett: mr. president, i will v listened with -- the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. the senator is recognized. mr. bennett: mr. president, i have listened with great interest to the presentations 19:58:07.6 made on the floor and wish to be associated with the sentiments involved here. i come from a state that does not have a history of lynchings, but that does not mean that i should be absolved from the concern that all americans should have over the lynchings that occurred. 19:58:23.8 and i note that it was the filibuster that made it possible for the senate to be the one, the body that blocked this legislation in the past. and i would hope that in the future we would all realize that the filibuster should be 19:58:40.2 used for more beneficial purposes than that. i do ask unanimous consent now that there be a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that the senate now proceed to the consideration of 19:58:55.3 senate resolution 170, which was submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the title. the clerk: senate resolution 170, relative to the death of jay james exon, former writes senator for the state of nebraska. the presiding officer: without 19:59:11.4 objection. the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the programmable -- preamble be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table. the presiding officer: is there objection? hearing none so ordered. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous 19:59:26.5 consent that the senate immediately proceed to executive session to consider calendar number 150, the nomination of bryant montgomery to be assistant secretary of housing and urban development. i further ask unanimous consent that the nomination be confirmed. the motion to reconsider 19:59:42.8 be laid upon the table, the president be immediately notified of the senate's action and the senate then return to legislative session. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennett: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, the senate stand 19:59:57.3 in adjournment until 9:45 a.m. on tuesday, june 14. i further ask that following the prayer and the pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved and that the

A multiracial group of six high school students sitting at their desks in a classroom having a discussion with the teacher. She is walk between the desks to the front of the class as she speaks.

THE SENATE Morning business followed by general debate on the Thomas Griffith nomination to the US court of appeals in the district - vote on Tuesday --- senate expected to debate resolution that apologize to the families of victims of lynchings 19:00:15.0 concept -- that it's important to remind the american people about the evil chapters in our history. it is the reason we construct museums in washington and beyond, to hold up for all to see how capable we are of descending into the heart of darkness. it is important for us 19:00:31.5 to look back into the past so that we can pledge, pledge never again to allow racial hatred to consume our ideals or humanity. president bush in his second inaugural address -- and i quote from janet's letter -- "our 19:00:48.4 country must abandon all habits of racism because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time." 19:00:58.1 she concludes with these statements, "an apology, i concede, will do nothing for the thousands of people who have perished during what has been called "the black holocaust." it cannot repair the battered souls of their 19:01:12.3 survivors. it is, after all, only a symbolic act. our symbol, however, the eagle, old glory, lady liberty, to mention but a few, are but shortian narratives of who we are as americans. 19:01:27.5 it is through the acknowledgement of the senate's abdication of its duty to protect and defend the rights of all american citizens that perhaps we can begin to understand the pain and anger that still lingers in the hearts and minds of so many who have been deprived of the equality 19:01:45.3 promised in our constitution."? my friend and mentor writes "there martin luther king, jr. once said that -- quote -- "the arrest, of history bends toward justice. 19:02:03.7 " today as the senate members cast their historic votes that ark dips closer to its destination" signed janet lange therehart cohen. mr. president, i ask that this 19:02:18.1 full letter be made a part of the record of this debate on the resolution. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. allen: mr. president, i'm proud that this resolution will pass tonight. the senate is going to be on record condemning the brutal atrocities that plagued our 19:02:33.9 great nation for over a century. ly close with the words of the resolution "whereas an apology offered in the spirit of true repentance moves the united states towards reconciliation and may become central to a in 19:02:49.6 new understanding on which improved racial relations could be forged now thereforebe it resolved that the senate apologizes to the victims of lynching. 19:03:03.5 it 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 constitutional 19:03:19.8 protections accorded all citizens of the united states. and we remember the history of lynching to ensure that these tragedies will neither be forgotten nor repeated. my colleagues, i ask you to join all of us in examining our 19:03:36.3 history. learn from history. never again sit quietly. never again turn ones head away when the ugly specter of racism, antisemitism, hate and intolerance rises again. 19:03:50.9 it is our responsibility to stand strong for freedom and justice. in the future, mr. president, i am confident that this senate will perform better than it has in the past. we will protect the god-given blessings of all people to life 19:04:08.4 and liberty to all people regardless of their race, their ethnicity or their religious beliefs. the senate can do better. we have done better tonight. 19:04:23.6 but the real lesson is when we have learned that when such acts happen in the future will this senate stand and rise to condemn it to protect those god-given liberties. i know senator landrieu and i believe the senate will rise 19:04:41.2 aappropriately. mr. president, with that i ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the previous agreement, the senate now proceed to the vote on the pending resolution. i further ask consent that notwithstanding the adoption of 19:04:55.1 the resolution, the remaining time under the previous agreement remain available for senators who wish to make statements, provided that any statements relating to the resolution appear tryer -- prior to its adoption in the congressional record. 19:05:12.2 the presiding officer: without objection it is so ordered. the question is now on the resolution. all those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the resolution is adopted. the preamble is agreed to. ms. landrieu: mr. president? 19:05:31.6 the presiding officer: who yields time? the senator from louisiana. a senator: mr. president, what is the status of time? mr. kerry: is it under control or is it just open? the presiding officer: the 19:05:44.4 senators from virginia and louisiana control the time. mr. kerry: i understand. ms. landrieu: mr. president, i'm happy to yield to the senator from massachusetts in just one moment because he has been very 19:05:56.2 patient to speak. and as a cosponsor of this resolution that just passed, it's really a privilege and appropriate for senator kerry to be one of the first senators to speak upon its passage, but i would like to mention very 19:06:12.6 briefly because i'm not sure he is going to be able to stay with us much longer, mr. james cameron has been with us all day here in the senate. mr. cameron is 91 years old. he lives in marion, indiana n.1930 when he was 16 years old, 19:06:29.4 a mob dragged him from a cell at grant county jail, put a rope around his neck. he was accused of a murder and a rape that he was nowhere around when they occurred. his associates were both lynched that night. 19:06:44.3 a man in the crowd spared him by proclaiming that he in fact was innocent and should be let go. he then went on to live an extraordinary life without bitterness, with a lot of love. he is married 67 years. 19:07:01.1 his four children, multiple grandchildren. senator evan bayh that serves in this body when he was governor of indiana pardoned mr. cameron for anything. he is really the one that has forgiven us and for what was 19:07:19.5 done to him. i wanted to mention him. i yield the floor to senator kerry. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. mr. kerry: mr. president, thank you. i want to start by thanking both senator landrieu and senator allen for their leadership on this effort, and for all those 19:07:36.0 descendants of families who have been absolutely extraordinary in the way in which we have relived their pain, brought it to the public view, kind of laid their hearts out on the table in a very real and emotional way. and i think that's been a 19:07:53.3 wonderful part of this process, the way in which this book that jimmy allen put together has helped to sort of really unleash a pain that was never lost, 19:08:14.5 never forgotten by anybody, but never quite had a place to play itself out until this public effort is being made by the united states senate. there's no small irony, i 19:08:29.1 suspect, in the fact that the senate is here sort of making good on what the senate failed to do. and i personally am struck by even at this significant moment 19:08:47.3 the undeniable and inescapable reality that there aren't 100 senators as cosponsors. maybe by the end of the evening there will be, but as we stand 19:09:00.1 here with this resolution now passed by voice vote there aren't. moreover, all the people in the senate and the press understand how we work here. and i think it's critical that we take the step we're taking 19:09:17.7 and have taken, but at the same time, wouldn't it have been just that much more extraordinary and significant if we were having a recorded vote with all 100 senators recording their votes? we're not. 19:09:32.9 and so even today as we take this gigantic step, we're also saying to american -- america, there's a journey still to travel. i don't want to diminish one eye kwroeta, and i don't mean to, 19:09:49.8 because i think what is happening here today is so significant, but at the same time, it has to give all of us a kind of kick in the era -- rear-end to get us out there to do the other things that are 19:10:04.7 necessary, that give fuller meaning to the words that are going to be expressed here and have been expressed here, most importantly to give fuller meaning for the emotions laid bare by the families who have 19:10:21.8 come here to share this with us. i want to join not just in thanking mr. cameron and others but january the langhart cohen who is here and bill cohen who 19:10:38.6 is up in the gallery. we certainly appreciate her commitment to this effort and the meaning of this to her and all of the families that have come here together. mr. president, it's pretty incredible to think about it. lynchings really replaced 19:10:58.1 slavery. they came in the aftermath of the slavery around 1880's, and between the 1880's and 1968, i have to pause when i think about that, because i was already a 19:11:13.3 young officer in the military. i had left college. i remember the early part of the 1960's devoted to the civil rights movement, the mississippi voter registration drive. we were still recording lynchings during that period of 19:11:29.9 time but i didn't know it. not that in sense i know it today. i thought i knew history pretty well, but i'll tell you, until i saw this array of photographs which then sparked my curiosity to read more about it, i had 19:11:48.6 always thought like most american that's a lynching was just sling the rope over the branch of the tree and that's it. the story is so much more gruesome than that, so much more dark and horrendous, as a moment 19:12:08.2 in american history that it's really hard to believe that it happened at all in our country. which is another reason that it's so important we're taking this step to remember. we've seen revisionism on almost 19:12:22.6 every part of history including the holocaust. so it is good that we take this step today and it is good that we have these photographs brought together as a compilation of history, and it is good that the senate is taking this effort tonight. it is extraordinary to think 19:12:37.8 that 99% of the perpetrators of lynchings escaped any reach of the law whatsoever. it's incredible to think that almost 5,000 people are recording as incidents and how 19:12:55.2 many are not recorded, how many went without the local authorities in each of those communities who are already complicitious in what happened standing by, per missive, turning away from basic human 19:13:13.5 rights. how of those incidents were not recorded? a lot of us have read a lot about world war ii and the holocaust and other moments of history where there's a knock on the door and life changes. 19:13:28.4 but you have to stop and really think what it was like in all but four states in our country. not just for african-americans but for new people, for folks who had come here from other 19:13:46.2 places to live the american dream. in some cases they weren't knocks. they were just angry mobs screaming and yelling with torches and running rampant through households dragging people out screaming. in other cases, there was a 19:14:03.5 pretext, more polite, but it was never polite in what it ended up as. lynchings were not just lynchings, they were organized torture. they were incidents of kinds of torture that defy the 19:14:20.7 imagination that you don't even want to talk about. the kinds of things that any descent society ought to stand up against. people were literally tortured for sport in front of people, and crowds would cheer, bedlam, 19:14:37.9 children brought to be spectators. some of these photographs show kids standing there with their eyes wide open and adults standing beside them, who were supposed to be more responsible, 19:14:51.2 glued to the horror that they were witnessing. in the first half of the last century alone, in the 20th century, over 200 antilynching bills were introduced to the 19:15:06.3 united states congress -- 200. and three times the house of representatives passed antilynching legislation. seven presidents asked for this legislation to be passed. the united states senate said no 19:15:26.8 so it is important that we're here today to apologize. some people wonder what the effect of an apology is, and we 19:15:38.9 can understand that question being asked. but this is sort of a day of reckoning for us as a country. it's a moment for the conscience of our country to be listened to by everybody. it's an embarrassingly and unforgiveibly late moment in 19:15:54.1 coming but we're addressing a stain on our history, and we are working to heal wounds across generations. i think that that is important. some people might try to diminish that. but i think the very lack of unity that i phepbsed earlier, 19:16:11.7 in fact, goes to show why this apology is so important and why we all have to keep moving in this direction.? mr. president, no words, obviously, are going to undo the horror of those 5,000 americans 19:16:27.0 losing their lives. no apology is going to just wipe away the memories of mr. cameron and others, though they've shown a greater graciousness of understanding than others even at this moment. and the fact is that this 19:16:45.2 resolution can be one more step in the effort for all of us to try to get over the divide that still exists between race -- races and as a result of jim crow in this country. 19:16:59.8 but only if you face the truth. it is the piebl that reminds us that it's the truth that sets us free. so we have to embrace it, commit ourselves to put our hearts and our actions where our words have now preceded us. this should be an important step 19:17:16.8 forward. but frankly, it will only do that if we don't step here. the truth is, mr. president, that it's not enough to face the who are he of lynchings if we then just walk out of here and 19:17:33.1 consciously turn away from legally separate and unequal schools in america. it's not enough to decry decades of refusing to use the use of law against lynching if today we 19:17:48.5 reuse it to use the force of law to tear down the barriers that prevent people from voting, barriers in the economy, divisions in the health care system that works for too few of those who are in the minority in 19:18:04.0 america. it's only by reconciling the past that you can understand where you have to go in the few of and how to get there. i ask my colleagues just to remember the words of julian bond when he dedicated that beautiful, simple memorial in 19:18:21.1 montgomery, alabama, to those who gave their lives for civil rights. and he said that it was erected as much to remember the dead as it was for those young people who cannot remember the period when the sacrifices began. with its small crueltyties and 19:18:36.6 monstrous injustices, its petty indignities and its deft-dealing inequities. there are too many young to remember that from that seeming hopelessness there arose a mighty movement, simple in its tactics, over whelming in its 19:18:56.1 impact. that is why we have to remember the period of the lynchings. that's why this resolution is important. for the young people who don't know what it to wake up in the middle of the night to hear that 19:19:10.8 knock, or young people who need to commit to help our country to complete the journey in order guarantee that we make it that you will it promises to be and can be, we will never erase what mr. cameron or mr. wright and too many others went through, but we certainly can honor the 19:19:31.5 legacy of these civil rights heroes and the martyrs who came before us by doing right by them and by the country, and i 0 hope this resolution will help us do that. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: who 19:19:53.4 yields time? mr. kerry: mr. president, i yield such time as the senator from illinois wishes. the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. obama: thank you, 19:20:08.8 mr. president. i'd like to rise in strong support of this resolution. before i make any further remarks, i'd like to recognize doria d. johnson and thank her for coming. sheels ea from evanston, illinois. ms. johnston is the great-great-granddaughter of 19:20:26.7 anthony crawford, a south carolina farmer who was lynched nearly 100 years ago for the crime of being a successful black farmer. i'm sure this day has special meaning for her and the other family members of those who were impacted by these great 19:20:41.5 tragedies of the past, and i want to thank her and others for being here today. since america's darkest days of 19:20:53.8 jim crow, separate but equal, fire hoses, church bombings, cross burnings and lynchings, the people of this great nation have found the courage, on 19:21:08.5 occasion, to speak up and speak out so that we can right this country's wrongs. so that together we can walk down that long road of transformation that continues to perfect our union. 19:21:26.2 it's a transformation that brought us the civil rights act and the voting rights act, a transformation that led to the first black member of congress and the first black and white children holding hands in the 19:21:41.2 same playground in the same school. a transformation without which i would not be standing here speaking to you today. but i am. and i'm proud because thanks to this resolution, we're taking 19:21:56.0 another step in acknowledging a dark corner of 0 our history. we're taking a step that allows us, after looking at 4,700 deaths from lynchings and hate 19:22:12.2 that lied behind those deaths, and this chamber's refusal to try and stop those deaths that we are finally saying that we were wrong. there is a power in 19:22:28.4 acknowledging error and mistakes. it is a power that potentially transforms not only those who were impacted directly by the lynchings but also those who are 19:22:44.2 the progeny of those who perpetrated them. i think it's been mentioned that there's an exhibit in chicago right now. its a ea powerful photographic-- --it's a powerful photographic exhibit of some of the lynchings 19:22:58.3 that occurred across the country, and as has already been remarked, what often is most powerful is not the gruesome aspects of the lynching itself. it's not the terrible rending of 19:23:16.7 the body that took place. what's most horrific, what's most disturbing to the soul is photographs in which you see young little white girls or 19:23:32.4 young little white boys with their parents out on an outing loorksing at the degradation of 0 another human being. you wonder not only what the 19:23:49.4 lynching did to the family member of those who were lynched but also what it did to the sensibilities of those young people. 0 now that we're finally 19:24:05.7 acknowledging this injustice, it gives us an opportunity to reflect on the cruelties that can happen to all of us. and then hopefully we can take 19:24:19.7 the time to teach our children to treat people who are differently -- who look different than we do with the same respect that we would expect. and so it's fitting, it's proper, and it's right that 19:24:33.9 we're doing what we're doing here today. i do hope that, as we commemorate this past injustice, that this chamber also spends some time, however, doing something concrete and tangible 19:24:54.2 to heal the long shadow of slavery and the legacy of racial discrimination so that 100 years from now we can look back and be proud and not have to apologize once again. 19:25:10.4 that means completing the unfinished work of the civil rights movement, that means closing the gap that still exists in health care and education and income. there are more ways to 19:25:24.7 perpetrate violence than simply a lynching. there is eight violence that-- --there's the violence that we subject young children to when they don't have any opportunity and they have no hope and they stand on street corners not thinking much of themselves, not 19:25:42.8 thinking that their lives are worth living. that's a form of violence that this chamber could do something 19:25:51.9 about. it means just as we're spending time apologizing today for these past failures of the senate to act, we should spend some time debating the extension of the voting rights act, the best ways to cover the 45 million 19:26:07.9 uninsured americans, how we can make young african-american children, the great-great grandchildren or the great-great-great-grandchildren 19:26:23.9 of those who have been harmed, how can we make sure college is affordable to them? these are the ways we can final ensure that the blessings of opportunity finally reach every american, that we can finally claim a victory in the long struggle for civil rights. today is a step in the right direction. 19:26:41.0 today gives us an opportunity to heal and to move forward. and for those who still harbor ainger in their hearts, who still wonder, how do you #u move on from such terrible violence, it's worth us reflecting for a moment on mamie till mobley. 19:27:03.3 her boy was only 14 years old when they found him in the mississippi river, beaten and blood did ied beyond recognition-- --beaten and bloodied beyond recognition. 19:27:18.5 emmet till was only 14 years old. when his mother saw her child, her baby, unrecognize rbl, his face so badly beaten, it barely looked human and it was suggested that she should have a 19:27:33.7 closed casket, she said, no, we're going to have an open casket, and everybody is going to witness what they did to my child. and as a consequence of that courage displayed by a mother, 19:27:50.8 it galvanized the civil rights movement in the north and in the south, and yet despite that, manie till mobley has repeatedly said, i never wasted a day 19:28:08.3 hating. imagine that. i never wasted a day hating. not one day. i rise today thanking god that the united states senate, the representatives of the american 19:28:21.3 people, and our highest ideals will not waste one more day without issues the apology that will continue to march us down the path of transformation that mamie till mobley has been on 19:28:43.0 her whole life. i am grateful and i am looking forward to joining hands with my colleagues and the american people to make sure that when our children and grandchildren look back at our actions in this chamber that we don't have 19:28:57.2 something to apologize about. i yield the time. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from arkansas. mr. pryor: thank you, mr. president. i join my colleagues today to talk about one of our nation's 19:29:13.8 darkest periods, a stain in history we'd rather forget but that we cannot ignore. the white mobs committed 4,742 hangings, flaggings and burnings 19:29:30.5 of-- --floggings and burnings of african-americans. yet the u.s. senate watched indifferently failing to pass any 26900 separate bills before it to make lynching a federal crime. senate resolution 39 expressing the senate's apology for failing 19:29:47.5 to adopt antilynching legislation is long overdue. i would like to express my sincere apologies and regret to the families in arkansas and the nation, especially to the 19:30:02.9 victims and the their decendants that this body failed to help at a time when they needed it most. i hope that acknowledging these grave injustices of the past will help again to heal the wounds that exist today. 19:30:19.6 even more so, this acknowledgment should serve as a lesson that government must step in to foster racial reconciliation, ensure the mob mentality never returns, and protect those who are most 19:30:36.2 vulnerable. the senate can start by continuing to advance civil rights and equality and work to close the divide that continues in our neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. i'm afraid that if we don't 19:30:52.5 start truly addressing inequities, we will look back once again at the senate's inaction with disdain and remorse. most of the worst offenses of lynching occurred in the south, 19:31:06.6 and arkansas is no different. between the years 1860 and 1936, 318 lynchings occurred in arkansas. of this number, 230 of the victims were black, including 19:31:25.2 six females. that's about three-quarters of the lynchings in our state that are recorded were against african-americans. mr. president, of course the statistics don't have a face. they don't feel pain. 19:31:39.5 nor do they hold memories. but people and families all over arkansas do, and they remember these crimes and the senate's inaction to protect them.? in march of 1892, a reporter 19:31:55.7 from the "christian recorder" reported the chaos and hopelessness occurring throughout my state. there is much uneasiness and unrest all over this state -- this is a quote -- "there is much uneasiness and unrest all over this state among our people 19:32:12.7 alluding to the fact that the people all over the state are being lynched upon the slightest provocation. some being strung up to telegraph poles, others burnt at the stake, and still others 19:32:26.8 being shot like dogs. in the last 30 days, there have been not less than eight colored persons lynched in this state. at texarcana a few days ago, a man was burnt at the stake." 19:32:43.2 as i continue the quote, it says, "in pine bluff a few days later, two men were strung up and shot. and this too by the brilliant glare of the electric lights at srarpber, george harris was taken from jail and shot for 19:32:58.0 killing a white man for poisoning his domestic happiness. at wilmar, a boy was induced to confess to the commission of an outrage upon promise of his liberty. and when he had confessed, he 19:33:13.0 was strung up and shot. over in lone oak county, a whole family, consisting of husband, wife and child, were shot down like dogs. the situation is alarming in the extreme." 19:33:27.2 this is a quote from an article that appeared in 1892. mr. president, there are -- there were few honest press accounts of such lynchings, a problem that continues to trouble historians today as they put together the pieces of this 19:33:44.6 period. most arkansas press accounts were no different. lynchers were considered heroes. officers, conniving. the accused, guilty. a case in point. in 1919, arkansas would be home 19:34:02.8 of a terrible racial injustice, the so-called elaine race riot. according to sketchy accounts that have been pieced together by historians, in september 1919, black sharecroppers met to 19:34:18.2 protest unfair settlements for their cotton crops from white plantation owners. local law enforcement broke up the union's meeting. the next day, a thousand white men and troops of the u.s. army converged on phillips county to 19:34:35.1 put an end to the black sharecroppers' so-called insurrection. the number of african-american deaths from this lynching is disputed, ranging from 20 at the low end all the way up to 856 men and women on the high end. 19:34:52.2 the details of the elaine race riot of 1919 have never been formally written down. but mayor robert miller of helena, arkansas, remembers them vividly. at the time, mayor miller's four uncles were preparing for a 19:35:08.7 hunting trip. three of them had traveled to a town near elaine, helena, arkansas, for this special occasion which turned tragic when a mob saw the brothers with guns in hand and assuming they were part of the insurrection, 19:35:25.1 all four were immediately killed. of the antilynching legislation we are considering today, mayor miller says, "it won't change what happened but at least it's a good thing, a movement in the 19:35:39.8 right direction." mr. president, in 2000, the "arkansas times" newspaper wrote 19:35:50.2 an article about one of arkansas's most high-profile lynchings and the lasting impact it had on families in arkansas today. in may 1927, a mentally retarded black man named john carter was accused of attacking a white 19:36:08.0 mother and daughter. upon his capture near little rock, a mob of 100 quickly gathered and prevented police from taking him to little rock, where the police would have protected him from being lynched. 19:36:22.8 after hanging him from a utility pole, the mob dragged john carter's body through the city of little rock and burned him in the downtown -- in downtown little rock at 9th and broadway. 19:36:38.7 the "arkansas times" recall recounts a conversation that occurred 30 years later, in september of 1957, of a mother talking to civil rights pioneer daze -- daisy baits about the john carter lynching. 19:36:56.4 the mother had to say -- and i quote -- "i'm frightened, miss baits, not for myself but for my children. when i was a little girl, my mother and i saw a lynch mob dragging a body of a negro man through the streets of little 19:37:11.0 rock. we were told to get off the streets. we ran. and by cutting through side streets and alleys, we managed to make it to the home of a friend. but we were close enough to hear 19:37:26.6 the screams of the mob, close enough to smell the sickening odor of burning flesh. and miss bates, they took the pews from bethel church to make the fire. 19:37:42.2 they burned the body of this negro man right at the edge of the negro business section." the woman speaking to daisy bates was named birdie eckfort. her daughter elizabeth, one of 19:37:59.3 the little rock nine, would walk through an angry, threatening crowd the following day to claim her right to an equal education at little rock central high school. mr. president, little rock 19:38:15.1 central high school today reminds us of some of the darkest days during the civil rights movement. as a former student, however, i can tell you that it also represents hope and achievement. 2007 will mark the 50th 19:38:34.3 anniversary of desegregation process at little rock central high school. last friday, i spoke with seven members of the little rock nine to tell them that we're closer to funding an adequate visitor's center and museum for this 19:38:50.7 landmark anniversary. minni jean brown trickie, one of the little rock nine, said this visitor's center will serve many purposes, but what struck me was her assurance that the center is 19:39:07.5 an opportunity for healing. today's resolution offers similar opportunities. it allows us to remember the past, begin healing from the past, look at how far our nation 19:39:22.2 has come to address equality and discrimination and rededicate ourselves to acknowledging how much further we must go from here. mr. president, i yield the floor. 19:39:46.0 a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr.al czar: thank you very much -- mr. salazar: thank you very much, mr. president. i rise this evening to speak in support of senate resolution 39, apologizing for the senate's 19:39:59.9 failure to enact antilynching legislation. i think that it's important for us to reflect on the statements that have been made by my colleagues, including the distinguished senator from louisiana and the distinguished senator from virginia so that we 19:40:16.8 can remember the history of this country and how america has been an america in progress. the past can be painted in statistics or it can be painted in the stories of people who have suffered from the unjust 19:40:34.0 result of the absence of an antilynching law. the past we can speak about the time between 1882-1968, when there were nearly 5,000 lynchings that occurred. 19:40:46.6 and these lynchings that occurred were not lynchings that 19:40:50.6 occurred just in the southern part of the united states of america but happened throughout most of the states of our country, including in my own home state of colorado, where a historian has, in his own research, concluded that there were about 175 lynchings that 19:41:06.7 occurred in colorado between 1859-1919. so it is appropriate and fitting that today we apologize for the absence of those laws, that we recognize that people like james 19:41:24.6 cameron, who became a survivor of the lynchings of that time period, recognize that this united states senate body today says we apologize for that past. i also believe that it is 19:41:41.3 perhaps even more important for us to look to the future of america and to look at the kinds of racial issues and the challenges that we face as a nation to create an america that truly is an america of 19:41:57.6 inclusion. it is one thing for us to stand here and -- in the chambers of the united states senate today to look at our history and to learn from that painful history. but it is equally as important for us to look to the future and to recognize that the challenges that we face in this america 19:42:13.5 today, in the decade ahead, in the hundred years ahead require us to learn from those very painful lessons of the past. and when one looks at those very painful lessons of the past, we have to recognize that for the first 250 years of the beginnings of this nation, we 19:42:30.2 had a system of law that recognized that it was okay for one group of people to own another group of people under our system of slavery just because of the color of their skins. and it is important for us also 19:42:45.0 to recognize that it took the bloodiest war of these united states during the civil war, where over half a million people were killed on our own soils here in america to bring about an end to the system of slavery and to usher in the 13th and 19:43:02.3 14th and 15th amendments, which are the bedrock of the constitutional liberties which we now endow upon all people of america. but notwithstanding the fact that in that time period of the civil war, we saw the blood and 19:43:19.2 life of so many americans laid down in this country, we still continued through another period of almost a hundred years where we divided our nation according to groups. it was over a hundred years ago when justice harlan, writing for 19:43:36.0 the dissent in the now famous case of policy v. -- of fplecy v. ferguson made the decision. justice harlan disagreeing with 19:43:52.2 the segregation system that was ushered under that decision, he said, "the destinies of the races in this country are insolubly linked together and the interests of both require that the common government law shall not permit the seeds of 19:44:08.5 race hate to be planted under the sanction of law." that was over a hundred years ago, and yet it took another almost half a century, in fact, more than half a century, until 1954 in the decisions of brown vs. the board of education, 19:44:24.4 mr. president, for the u.s. supreme court, under the leadership of justice warren, to say that in these united states, separate but equal was unconstitutional under the 14th amendment. it took another more than half a century for the united states 19:44:41.0 supreme court to make that statement. and so when we look to the future of america, when we look to the diversity that defines our country, it is my belief that this next century will be defined by how we as an american 19:44:57.3 society embrace the concept of an inclusive america. and when we embrace a concept of an inclusive america, we talk about including people of all backgrounds, be they anglo-americans, french 19:45:14.0 americans, african-americans, latinos, native americans, women, that we as an american society will be challenged in the century ahead by how we deal with the issue of inclusion and the greatness of this country will be defined by 19:45:30.3 how successful we are in making sure that we are inclusive of all people. and there are some who have recognized this. just as sandra -- justice sandra day o'connor, in writing for the united states supreme court in the now famous 19:45:45.9 decision of the university of michigan from just several years ago, made the following comment 19:45:51.0 about the importance of diversity in higher education. justice o'connor, in the majority opinion, said the following -- and i quote -- "these benefits" -- talking about the benefits of higher 19:46:04.9 education and diversity in higher education, said -- "these benefits are not theoretical but real, as major american businesses have made clear that the skills needed in today's increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse 19:46:20.8 people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints." that was from the brief she cited submitted by general motors. she went on to say, "what is more, high-ranking retired officers and civilian leaders of the united states military 19:46:37.9 assert" -- and she quotes from the brief of the former joint chiefs of staff, she says -- "based on their decades of experience, a highly-qualified, racially diverse officer corps is essential to the military's ability to fulfill its principal 19:46:53.9 mission: to provide national security."? i believe it was in that articulation by justice day o'connor where she articulated the challenge and the opportunity that we have as an american society 19:47:08.4 as the 21st century unfolds in front of us. in my estimation, the greatness of this country depends on our learning and not forgetting the painful lessons of the past, including the lynchings that occurred across america, and also 19:47:23.2 looking forward to the challenge of including people of all backgrounds and all races in all of the business affairs and civic affairs of this nation. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the 19:47:41.1 senator from florida. mr. nelson: mr. president, i'm very glad that we're doing this. there have been attempts in the past by other members of congress, my 19:47:59.0 good friend, the former congressman tony hall of ohio, who had tried back several years before to get a resolution of apology with regard to slavery, and they never 19:48:12.7 could work out all the details in that. and so i'm very glad that the senate has come to this point, that the senate could critique itself for this legislative body's 19:48:30.2 failure to enact antilynching laws back at a time when it would have been so important to stop this kind of mayhem and murderous rampages that mobs would 19:48:48.0 take supposedly justice into their own hands, and thank goodness that we've come to a point at which we can admit our mistakes, even though this is several generations later, and 19:49:06.2 pass a resolution like this as we will do tonight. interestingly, one of my political heroes is a person that americans rarely hear about. 19:49:21.7 he was a british parliamentarian in the late 1700's and the early 1800's named william wilburforce. wilburforce was elected to the parliament at the 19:49:35.0 age of 21 along with one of his best friends, william pitt the younger, and in three years at age 24, pitt was elected prime minister. and, of course, wilburforce could have 19:49:51.7 been in his cabinet. but at that point, wilburforce had recognized the great evil of the day and dedicated his life to the elimination of the economic order of the day, which was the english slave trade, 19:50:09.7 where the captains would take the boats down off the coast of africa under the guise of friendship, round up native after carngs put 19:50:23.6 them in the holds of those slave ship, take them to the new world and sell them. and wilburforce is a hero to me because as a government official, a member of parliament, he would not even join william pitt the 19:50:39.5 younger's cabinet. he wanted to devote his life to the elimination of the slave trade, and it took him 20 years to 19:50:48.9 do it. and time after time he was beat back, but he persevered and he finally won. 20 years later. and then before wilbur 19:51:05.3 forecast died, he saw that parliament actually bollished slavery. that was some 30 years before slavery was abolished here in america. so it is a privilege for me to be here at long 19:51:24.1 last to join our colleagues to apologize for the senate's failure in the 1930's to pass legislation outlawing the barbaric practice of 19:51:39.4 lynching. for more than a century, this country presented two realities to its citizens, enshrines in 19:51:52.0 our constitution is a government and a legal system designed to protect the rights of all americans so that our freedom cannot be taken away or infringed upon without due process of law, but for many decades, however, this 19:52:06.9 system of justice and respect for the rule of law didn't apply to all of the citizens of this country. in 1857, in the dred scott supreme court decision, that guarantee 19:52:21.7 in the u.s. constitution, all men are created equal, was not intended to include blacks by that decision. and if more years black americans found few protections in the 19:52:38.3 constitutional guarantees of liberty and freedom and equal protection of the laws. a black man accused of a crime against a white person found that he had no access to the courts 19:52:53.1 to move -- prove his innocence. he had no access to a fair and impartial jury of his peers. all too often the white citizens armed with guns and feelings of 19:53:10.3 righteousness would take the accused as law enforcement officers stood by and would brutalize them and hang them in a public setting 19:53:26.1 for other members of the can community to view and feel avenged. how horrible would that be? a public spectacle. that was supposed to intimidate. 19:53:40.5 that was supposed to strike fear. did it? you bet it did. it was meant to send a message to the members of the black community that they better remain in their place to remember that the guarantees of freedom 19:53:55.9 and fairness in the constitution did not include them. in my state of florida, there were 61 lynchings of black americans between 1921 and 1946, which, of course, 19:54:15.2 represents only a fraction of the total number that were committed in my state. and there's no justification or explanation for these horrible acts of violence. as a nation that we respect the rule of law, 19:54:34.0 of court-proscribed justice, what happened was it was vigilantism and mob rule. that's what determined justice, and that is 19:54:51.5 never justifiable. there is a place in florida called rosewood, rosewood, florida. it was the site in the 1920's of what many describe as a massacre. that black community was 19:55:09.9 destroyed by whites, and no arrests were ever made in as many as 27 racial killings in that location. and as florida finally 19:55:24.9 passed the nation's first compensation for blacks who suffered from those past racial injustices, it was all directed back to the massacres that occurred at rosewood, florida. 19:55:42.3 the 94 florida legislature passed the 19:55:47.5 rosewood claims bill to compensate victims for the loss of property as a result of the failure to prosecute those individuals responsible. i felt as a floridian that this acknowledgement was long 19:56:04.2 overdue, and it made me proud to see at long last that we addressed the tragedy of rosewood. now, as a member of the u.s. senate, i feel that this resolution that 19:56:18.0 we're passing tonight is long overdue, and in being proud of this, i am also humbled, mr. president, to stand up as a member of the senate and to personally apologize for the 19:56:37.3 senate's failure to act. a failure to outlaw barbaric acts such as lynchings and racial 19:56:51.6 massacres. i'm proud too that we can today reaffirm that we are a nation of laws designed to protect the freedom and liberty of 19:57:04.2 all americans -- all americans -- regardless of race. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator yields the floor. the senator from arkansas. a senator: mr. president, i know 19:57:18.5 we have other senators on the way to the chamber to speak. and i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: mr. bennett: mr. president. 19:57:51.4 the presiding officer: the senator from you tawsm. mr. bennett: mr. president, i will v listened with -- the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. the senator is recognized. mr. bennett: mr. president, i have listened with great interest to the presentations 19:58:07.6 made on the floor and wish to be associated with the sentiments involved here. i come from a state that does not have a history of lynchings, but that does not mean that i should be absolved from the concern that all americans should have over the lynchings that occurred. 19:58:23.8 and i note that it was the filibuster that made it possible for the senate to be the one, the body that blocked this legislation in the past. and i would hope that in the future we would all realize that the filibuster should be 19:58:40.2 used for more beneficial purposes than that. i do ask unanimous consent now that there be a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that the senate now proceed to the consideration of 19:58:55.3 senate resolution 170, which was submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the title. the clerk: senate resolution 170, relative to the death of jay james exon, former writes senator for the state of nebraska. the presiding officer: without 19:59:11.4 objection. the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the programmable -- preamble be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table. the presiding officer: is there objection? hearing none so ordered. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous 19:59:26.5 consent that the senate immediately proceed to executive session to consider calendar number 150, the nomination of bryant montgomery to be assistant secretary of housing and urban development. i further ask unanimous consent that the nomination be confirmed. the motion to reconsider 19:59:42.8 be laid upon the table, the president be immediately notified of the senate's action and the senate then return to legislative session. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennett: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, the senate stand 19:59:57.3 in adjournment until 9:45 a.m. on tuesday, june 14. i further ask that following the prayer and the pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved and that the

An Indigenous Navajo high school teacher with a group of students in a school library.

THE SENATE Morning business followed by general debate on the Thomas Griffith nomination to the US court of appeals in the district - vote on Tuesday --- senate expected to debate resolution that apologize to the families of victims of lynchings 19:00:15.0 concept -- that it's important to remind the american people about the evil chapters in our history. it is the reason we construct museums in washington and beyond, to hold up for all to see how capable we are of descending into the heart of darkness. it is important for us 19:00:31.5 to look back into the past so that we can pledge, pledge never again to allow racial hatred to consume our ideals or humanity. president bush in his second inaugural address -- and i quote from janet's letter -- "our 19:00:48.4 country must abandon all habits of racism because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time." 19:00:58.1 she concludes with these statements, "an apology, i concede, will do nothing for the thousands of people who have perished during what has been called "the black holocaust." it cannot repair the battered souls of their 19:01:12.3 survivors. it is, after all, only a symbolic act. our symbol, however, the eagle, old glory, lady liberty, to mention but a few, are but shortian narratives of who we are as americans. 19:01:27.5 it is through the acknowledgement of the senate's abdication of its duty to protect and defend the rights of all american citizens that perhaps we can begin to understand the pain and anger that still lingers in the hearts and minds of so many who have been deprived of the equality 19:01:45.3 promised in our constitution."ñ my friend and mentor writes "there martin luther king, jr. once said that -- quote -- "the arrest, of history bends toward justice. 19:02:03.7 " today as the senate members cast their historic votes that ark dips closer to its destination" signed janet lange therehart cohen. mr. president, i ask that this 19:02:18.1 full letter be made a part of the record of this debate on the resolution. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. allen: mr. president, i'm proud that this resolution will pass tonight. the senate is going to be on record condemning the brutal atrocities that plagued our 19:02:33.9 great nation for over a century. ly close with the words of the resolution "whereas an apology offered in the spirit of true repentance moves the united states towards reconciliation and may become central to a in 19:02:49.6 new understanding on which improved racial relations could be forged now thereforebe it resolved that the senate apologizes to the victims of lynching. 19:03:03.5 it 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 constitutional 19:03:19.8 protections accorded all citizens of the united states. and we remember the history of lynching to ensure that these tragedies will neither be forgotten nor repeated. my colleagues, i ask you to join all of us in examining our 19:03:36.3 history. learn from history. never again sit quietly. never again turn ones head away when the ugly specter of racism, antisemitism, hate and intolerance rises again. 19:03:50.9 it is our responsibility to stand strong for freedom and justice. in the future, mr. president, i am confident that this senate will perform better than it has in the past. we will protect the god-given blessings of all people to life 19:04:08.4 and liberty to all people regardless of their race, their ethnicity or their religious beliefs. the senate can do better. we have done better tonight. 19:04:23.6 but the real lesson is when we have learned that when such acts happen in the future will this senate stand and rise to condemn it to protect those god-given liberties. i know senator landrieu and i believe the senate will rise 19:04:41.2 aappropriately. mr. president, with that i ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the previous agreement, the senate now proceed to the vote on the pending resolution. i further ask consent that notwithstanding the adoption of 19:04:55.1 the resolution, the remaining time under the previous agreement remain available for senators who wish to make statements, provided that any statements relating to the resolution appear tryer -- prior to its adoption in the congressional record. 19:05:12.2 the presiding officer: without objection it is so ordered. the question is now on the resolution. all those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the resolution is adopted. the preamble is agreed to. ms. landrieu: mr. president? 19:05:31.6 the presiding officer: who yields time? the senator from louisiana. a senator: mr. president, what is the status of time? mr. kerry: is it under control or is it just open? the presiding officer: the 19:05:44.4 senators from virginia and louisiana control the time. mr. kerry: i understand. ms. landrieu: mr. president, i'm happy to yield to the senator from massachusetts in just one moment because he has been very 19:05:56.2 patient to speak. and as a cosponsor of this resolution that just passed, it's really a privilege and appropriate for senator kerry to be one of the first senators to speak upon its passage, but i would like to mention very 19:06:12.6 briefly because i'm not sure he is going to be able to stay with us much longer, mr. james cameron has been with us all day here in the senate. mr. cameron is 91 years old. he lives in marion, indiana n.1930 when he was 16 years old, 19:06:29.4 a mob dragged him from a cell at grant county jail, put a rope around his neck. he was accused of a murder and a rape that he was nowhere around when they occurred. his associates were both lynched that night. 19:06:44.3 a man in the crowd spared him by proclaiming that he in fact was innocent and should be let go. he then went on to live an extraordinary life without bitterness, with a lot of love. he is married 67 years. 19:07:01.1 his four children, multiple grandchildren. senator evan bayh that serves in this body when he was governor of indiana pardoned mr. cameron for anything. he is really the one that has forgiven us and for what was 19:07:19.5 done to him. i wanted to mention him. i yield the floor to senator kerry. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. mr. kerry: mr. president, thank you. i want to start by thanking both senator landrieu and senator allen for their leadership on this effort, and for all those 19:07:36.0 descendants of families who have been absolutely extraordinary in the way in which we have relived their pain, brought it to the public view, kind of laid their hearts out on the table in a very real and emotional way. and i think that's been a 19:07:53.3 wonderful part of this process, the way in which this book that jimmy allen put together has helped to sort of really unleash a pain that was never lost, 19:08:14.5 never forgotten by anybody, but never quite had a place to play itself out until this public effort is being made by the united states senate. there's no small irony, i 19:08:29.1 suspect, in the fact that the senate is here sort of making good on what the senate failed to do. and i personally am struck by even at this significant moment 19:08:47.3 the undeniable and inescapable reality that there aren't 100 senators as cosponsors. maybe by the end of the evening there will be, but as we stand 19:09:00.1 here with this resolution now passed by voice vote there aren't. moreover, all the people in the senate and the press understand how we work here. and i think it's critical that we take the step we're taking 19:09:17.7 and have taken, but at the same time, wouldn't it have been just that much more extraordinary and significant if we were having a recorded vote with all 100 senators recording their votes? we're not. 19:09:32.9 and so even today as we take this gigantic step, we're also saying to american -- america, there's a journey still to travel. i don't want to diminish one eye kwroeta, and i don't mean to, 19:09:49.8 because i think what is happening here today is so significant, but at the same time, it has to give all of us a kind of kick in the era -- rear-end to get us out there to do the other things that are 19:10:04.7 necessary, that give fuller meaning to the words that are going to be expressed here and have been expressed here, most importantly to give fuller meaning for the emotions laid bare by the families who have 19:10:21.8 come here to share this with us. i want to join not just in thanking mr. cameron and others but january the langhart cohen who is here and bill cohen who 19:10:38.6 is up in the gallery. we certainly appreciate her commitment to this effort and the meaning of this to her and all of the families that have come here together. mr. president, it's pretty incredible to think about it. lynchings really replaced 19:10:58.1 slavery. they came in the aftermath of the slavery around 1880's, and between the 1880's and 1968, i have to pause when i think about that, because i was already a 19:11:13.3 young officer in the military. i had left college. i remember the early part of the 1960's devoted to the civil rights movement, the mississippi voter registration drive. we were still recording lynchings during that period of 19:11:29.9 time but i didn't know it. not that in sense i know it today. i thought i knew history pretty well, but i'll tell you, until i saw this array of photographs which then sparked my curiosity to read more about it, i had 19:11:48.6 always thought like most american that's a lynching was just sling the rope over the branch of the tree and that's it. the story is so much more gruesome than that, so much more dark and horrendous, as a moment 19:12:08.2 in american history that it's really hard to believe that it happened at all in our country. which is another reason that it's so important we're taking this step to remember. we've seen revisionism on almost 19:12:22.6 every part of history including the holocaust. so it is good that we take this step today and it is good that we have these photographs brought together as a compilation of history, and it is good that the senate is taking this effort tonight. it is extraordinary to think 19:12:37.8 that 99% of the perpetrators of lynchings escaped any reach of the law whatsoever. it's incredible to think that almost 5,000 people are recording as incidents and how 19:12:55.2 many are not recorded, how many went without the local authorities in each of those communities who are already complicitious in what happened standing by, per missive, turning away from basic human 19:13:13.5 rights. how of those incidents were not recorded? a lot of us have read a lot about world war ii and the holocaust and other moments of history where there's a knock on the door and life changes. 19:13:28.4 but you have to stop and really think what it was like in all but four states in our country. not just for african-americans but for new people, for folks who had come here from other 19:13:46.2 places to live the american dream. in some cases they weren't knocks. they were just angry mobs screaming and yelling with torches and running rampant through households dragging people out screaming. in other cases, there was a 19:14:03.5 pretext, more polite, but it was never polite in what it ended up as. lynchings were not just lynchings, they were organized torture. they were incidents of kinds of torture that defy the 19:14:20.7 imagination that you don't even want to talk about. the kinds of things that any descent society ought to stand up against. people were literally tortured for sport in front of people, and crowds would cheer, bedlam, 19:14:37.9 children brought to be spectators. some of these photographs show kids standing there with their eyes wide open and adults standing beside them, who were supposed to be more responsible, 19:14:51.2 glued to the horror that they were witnessing. in the first half of the last century alone, in the 20th century, over 200 antilynching bills were introduced to the 19:15:06.3 united states congress -- 200. and three times the house of representatives passed antilynching legislation. seven presidents asked for this legislation to be passed. the united states senate said no 19:15:26.8 so it is important that we're here today to apologize. some people wonder what the effect of an apology is, and we 19:15:38.9 can understand that question being asked. but this is sort of a day of reckoning for us as a country. it's a moment for the conscience of our country to be listened to by everybody. it's an embarrassingly and unforgiveibly late moment in 19:15:54.1 coming but we're addressing a stain on our history, and we are working to heal wounds across generations. i think that that is important. some people might try to diminish that. but i think the very lack of unity that i phepbsed earlier, 19:16:11.7 in fact, goes to show why this apology is so important and why we all have to keep moving in this direction.ñ mr. president, no words, obviously, are going to undo the horror of those 5,000 americans 19:16:27.0 losing their lives. no apology is going to just wipe away the memories of mr. cameron and others, though they've shown a greater graciousness of understanding than others even at this moment. and the fact is that this 19:16:45.2 resolution can be one more step in the effort for all of us to try to get over the divide that still exists between race -- races and as a result of jim crow in this country. 19:16:59.8 but only if you face the truth. it is the piebl that reminds us that it's the truth that sets us free. so we have to embrace it, commit ourselves to put our hearts and our actions where our words have now preceded us. this should be an important step 19:17:16.8 forward. but frankly, it will only do that if we don't step here. the truth is, mr. president, that it's not enough to face the who are he of lynchings if we then just walk out of here and 19:17:33.1 consciously turn away from legally separate and unequal schools in america. it's not enough to decry decades of refusing to use the use of law against lynching if today we 19:17:48.5 reuse it to use the force of law to tear down the barriers that prevent people from voting, barriers in the economy, divisions in the health care system that works for too few of those who are in the minority in 19:18:04.0 america. it's only by reconciling the past that you can understand where you have to go in the few of and how to get there. i ask my colleagues just to remember the words of julian bond when he dedicated that beautiful, simple memorial in 19:18:21.1 montgomery, alabama, to those who gave their lives for civil rights. and he said that it was erected as much to remember the dead as it was for those young people who cannot remember the period when the sacrifices began. with its small crueltyties and 19:18:36.6 monstrous injustices, its petty indignities and its deft-dealing inequities. there are too many young to remember that from that seeming hopelessness there arose a mighty movement, simple in its tactics, over whelming in its 19:18:56.1 impact. that is why we have to remember the period of the lynchings. that's why this resolution is important. for the young people who don't know what it to wake up in the middle of the night to hear that 19:19:10.8 knock, or young people who need to commit to help our country to complete the journey in order guarantee that we make it that you will it promises to be and can be, we will never erase what mr. cameron or mr. wright and too many others went through, but we certainly can honor the 19:19:31.5 legacy of these civil rights heroes and the martyrs who came before us by doing right by them and by the country, and i 0 hope this resolution will help us do that. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: who 19:19:53.4 yields time? mr. kerry: mr. president, i yield such time as the senator from illinois wishes. the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. obama: thank you, 19:20:08.8 mr. president. i'd like to rise in strong support of this resolution. before i make any further remarks, i'd like to recognize doria d. johnson and thank her for coming. sheels ea from evanston, illinois. ms. johnston is the great-great-granddaughter of 19:20:26.7 anthony crawford, a south carolina farmer who was lynched nearly 100 years ago for the crime of being a successful black farmer. i'm sure this day has special meaning for her and the other family members of those who were impacted by these great 19:20:41.5 tragedies of the past, and i want to thank her and others for being here today. since america's darkest days of 19:20:53.8 jim crow, separate but equal, fire hoses, church bombings, cross burnings and lynchings, the people of this great nation have found the courage, on 19:21:08.5 occasion, to speak up and speak out so that we can right this country's wrongs. so that together we can walk down that long road of transformation that continues to perfect our union. 19:21:26.2 it's a transformation that brought us the civil rights act and the voting rights act, a transformation that led to the first black member of congress and the first black and white children holding hands in the 19:21:41.2 same playground in the same school. a transformation without which i would not be standing here speaking to you today. but i am. and i'm proud because thanks to this resolution, we're taking 19:21:56.0 another step in acknowledging a dark corner of 0 our history. we're taking a step that allows us, after looking at 4,700 deaths from lynchings and hate 19:22:12.2 that lied behind those deaths, and this chamber's refusal to try and stop those deaths that we are finally saying that we were wrong. there is a power in 19:22:28.4 acknowledging error and mistakes. it is a power that potentially transforms not only those who were impacted directly by the lynchings but also those who are 19:22:44.2 the progeny of those who perpetrated them. i think it's been mentioned that there's an exhibit in chicago right now. its a ea powerful photographic-- --it's a powerful photographic exhibit of some of the lynchings 19:22:58.3 that occurred across the country, and as has already been remarked, what often is most powerful is not the gruesome aspects of the lynching itself. it's not the terrible rending of 19:23:16.7 the body that took place. what's most horrific, what's most disturbing to the soul is photographs in which you see young little white girls or 19:23:32.4 young little white boys with their parents out on an outing loorksing at the degradation of 0 another human being. you wonder not only what the 19:23:49.4 lynching did to the family member of those who were lynched but also what it did to the sensibilities of those young people. 0 now that we're finally 19:24:05.7 acknowledging this injustice, it gives us an opportunity to reflect on the cruelties that can happen to all of us. and then hopefully we can take 19:24:19.7 the time to teach our children to treat people who are differently -- who look different than we do with the same respect that we would expect. and so it's fitting, it's proper, and it's right that 19:24:33.9 we're doing what we're doing here today. i do hope that, as we commemorate this past injustice, that this chamber also spends some time, however, doing something concrete and tangible 19:24:54.2 to heal the long shadow of slavery and the legacy of racial discrimination so that 100 years from now we can look back and be proud and not have to apologize once again. 19:25:10.4 that means completing the unfinished work of the civil rights movement, that means closing the gap that still exists in health care and education and income. there are more ways to 19:25:24.7 perpetrate violence than simply a lynching. there is eight violence that-- --there's the violence that we subject young children to when they don't have any opportunity and they have no hope and they stand on street corners not thinking much of themselves, not 19:25:42.8 thinking that their lives are worth living. that's a form of violence that this chamber could do something 19:25:51.9 about. it means just as we're spending time apologizing today for these past failures of the senate to act, we should spend some time debating the extension of the voting rights act, the best ways to cover the 45 million 19:26:07.9 uninsured americans, how we can make young african-american children, the great-great grandchildren or the great-great-great-grandchildren 19:26:23.9 of those who have been harmed, how can we make sure college is affordable to them? these are the ways we can final ensure that the blessings of opportunity finally reach every american, that we can finally claim a victory in the long struggle for civil rights. today is a step in the right direction. 19:26:41.0 today gives us an opportunity to heal and to move forward. and for those who still harbor ainger in their hearts, who still wonder, how do you #u move on from such terrible violence, it's worth us reflecting for a moment on mamie till mobley. 19:27:03.3 her boy was only 14 years old when they found him in the mississippi river, beaten and blood did ied beyond recognition-- --beaten and bloodied beyond recognition. 19:27:18.5 emmet till was only 14 years old. when his mother saw her child, her baby, unrecognize rbl, his face so badly beaten, it barely looked human and it was suggested that she should have a 19:27:33.7 closed casket, she said, no, we're going to have an open casket, and everybody is going to witness what they did to my child. and as a consequence of that courage displayed by a mother, 19:27:50.8 it galvanized the civil rights movement in the north and in the south, and yet despite that, manie till mobley has repeatedly said, i never wasted a day 19:28:08.3 hating. imagine that. i never wasted a day hating. not one day. i rise today thanking god that the united states senate, the representatives of the american 19:28:21.3 people, and our highest ideals will not waste one more day without issues the apology that will continue to march us down the path of transformation that mamie till mobley has been on 19:28:43.0 her whole life. i am grateful and i am looking forward to joining hands with my colleagues and the american people to make sure that when our children and grandchildren look back at our actions in this chamber that we don't have 19:28:57.2 something to apologize about. i yield the time. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from arkansas. mr. pryor: thank you, mr. president. i join my colleagues today to talk about one of our nation's 19:29:13.8 darkest periods, a stain in history we'd rather forget but that we cannot ignore. the white mobs committed 4,742 hangings, flaggings and burnings 19:29:30.5 of-- --floggings and burnings of african-americans. yet the u.s. senate watched indifferently failing to pass any 26900 separate bills before it to make lynching a federal crime. senate resolution 39 expressing the senate's apology for failing 19:29:47.5 to adopt antilynching legislation is long overdue. i would like to express my sincere apologies and regret to the families in arkansas and the nation, especially to the 19:30:02.9 victims and the their decendants that this body failed to help at a time when they needed it most. i hope that acknowledging these grave injustices of the past will help again to heal the wounds that exist today. 19:30:19.6 even more so, this acknowledgment should serve as a lesson that government must step in to foster racial reconciliation, ensure the mob mentality never returns, and protect those who are most 19:30:36.2 vulnerable. the senate can start by continuing to advance civil rights and equality and work to close the divide that continues in our neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. i'm afraid that if we don't 19:30:52.5 start truly addressing inequities, we will look back once again at the senate's inaction with disdain and remorse. most of the worst offenses of lynching occurred in the south, 19:31:06.6 and arkansas is no different. between the years 1860 and 1936, 318 lynchings occurred in arkansas. of this number, 230 of the victims were black, including 19:31:25.2 six females. that's about three-quarters of the lynchings in our state that are recorded were against african-americans. mr. president, of course the statistics don't have a face. they don't feel pain. 19:31:39.5 nor do they hold memories. but people and families all over arkansas do, and they remember these crimes and the senate's inaction to protect them.÷ in march of 1892, a reporter 19:31:55.7 from the "christian recorder" reported the chaos and hopelessness occurring throughout my state. there is much uneasiness and unrest all over this state -- this is a quote -- "there is much uneasiness and unrest all over this state among our people 19:32:12.7 alluding to the fact that the people all over the state are being lynched upon the slightest provocation. some being strung up to telegraph poles, others burnt at the stake, and still others 19:32:26.8 being shot like dogs. in the last 30 days, there have been not less than eight colored persons lynched in this state. at texarcana a few days ago, a man was burnt at the stake." 19:32:43.2 as i continue the quote, it says, "in pine bluff a few days later, two men were strung up and shot. and this too by the brilliant glare of the electric lights at srarpber, george harris was taken from jail and shot for 19:32:58.0 killing a white man for poisoning his domestic happiness. at wilmar, a boy was induced to confess to the commission of an outrage upon promise of his liberty. and when he had confessed, he 19:33:13.0 was strung up and shot. over in lone oak county, a whole family, consisting of husband, wife and child, were shot down like dogs. the situation is alarming in the extreme." 19:33:27.2 this is a quote from an article that appeared in 1892. mr. president, there are -- there were few honest press accounts of such lynchings, a problem that continues to trouble historians today as they put together the pieces of this 19:33:44.6 period. most arkansas press accounts were no different. lynchers were considered heroes. officers, conniving. the accused, guilty. a case in point. in 1919, arkansas would be home 19:34:02.8 of a terrible racial injustice, the so-called elaine race riot. according to sketchy accounts that have been pieced together by historians, in september 1919, black sharecroppers met to 19:34:18.2 protest unfair settlements for their cotton crops from white plantation owners. local law enforcement broke up the union's meeting. the next day, a thousand white men and troops of the u.s. army converged on phillips county to 19:34:35.1 put an end to the black sharecroppers' so-called insurrection. the number of african-american deaths from this lynching is disputed, ranging from 20 at the low end all the way up to 856 men and women on the high end. 19:34:52.2 the details of the elaine race riot of 1919 have never been formally written down. but mayor robert miller of helena, arkansas, remembers them vividly. at the time, mayor miller's four uncles were preparing for a 19:35:08.7 hunting trip. three of them had traveled to a town near elaine, helena, arkansas, for this special occasion which turned tragic when a mob saw the brothers with guns in hand and assuming they were part of the insurrection, 19:35:25.1 all four were immediately killed. of the antilynching legislation we are considering today, mayor miller says, "it won't change what happened but at least it's a good thing, a movement in the 19:35:39.8 right direction." mr. president, in 2000, the "arkansas times" newspaper wrote 19:35:50.2 an article about one of arkansas's most high-profile lynchings and the lasting impact it had on families in arkansas today. in may 1927, a mentally retarded black man named john carter was accused of attacking a white 19:36:08.0 mother and daughter. upon his capture near little rock, a mob of 100 quickly gathered and prevented police from taking him to little rock, where the police would have protected him from being lynched. 19:36:22.8 after hanging him from a utility pole, the mob dragged john carter's body through the city of little rock and burned him in the downtown -- in downtown little rock at 9th and broadway. 19:36:38.7 the "arkansas times" recall recounts a conversation that occurred 30 years later, in september of 1957, of a mother talking to civil rights pioneer daze -- daisy baits about the john carter lynching. 19:36:56.4 the mother had to say -- and i quote -- "i'm frightened, miss baits, not for myself but for my children. when i was a little girl, my mother and i saw a lynch mob dragging a body of a negro man through the streets of little 19:37:11.0 rock. we were told to get off the streets. we ran. and by cutting through side streets and alleys, we managed to make it to the home of a friend. but we were close enough to hear 19:37:26.6 the screams of the mob, close enough to smell the sickening odor of burning flesh. and miss bates, they took the pews from bethel church to make the fire. 19:37:42.2 they burned the body of this negro man right at the edge of the negro business section." the woman speaking to daisy bates was named birdie eckfort. her daughter elizabeth, one of 19:37:59.3 the little rock nine, would walk through an angry, threatening crowd the following day to claim her right to an equal education at little rock central high school. mr. president, little rock 19:38:15.1 central high school today reminds us of some of the darkest days during the civil rights movement. as a former student, however, i can tell you that it also represents hope and achievement. 2007 will mark the 50th 19:38:34.3 anniversary of desegregation process at little rock central high school. last friday, i spoke with seven members of the little rock nine to tell them that we're closer to funding an adequate visitor's center and museum for this 19:38:50.7 landmark anniversary. minni jean brown trickie, one of the little rock nine, said this visitor's center will serve many purposes, but what struck me was her assurance that the center is 19:39:07.5 an opportunity for healing. today's resolution offers similar opportunities. it allows us to remember the past, begin healing from the past, look at how far our nation 19:39:22.2 has come to address equality and discrimination and rededicate ourselves to acknowledging how much further we must go from here. mr. president, i yield the floor. 19:39:46.0 a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr.al czar: thank you very much -- mr. salazar: thank you very much, mr. president. i rise this evening to speak in support of senate resolution 39, apologizing for the senate's 19:39:59.9 failure to enact antilynching legislation. i think that it's important for us to reflect on the statements that have been made by my colleagues, including the distinguished senator from louisiana and the distinguished senator from virginia so that we 19:40:16.8 can remember the history of this country and how america has been an america in progress. the past can be painted in statistics or it can be painted in the stories of people who have suffered from the unjust 19:40:34.0 result of the absence of an antilynching law. the past we can speak about the time between 1882-1968, when there were nearly 5,000 lynchings that occurred. 19:40:46.6 and these lynchings that occurred were not lynchings that 19:40:50.6 occurred just in the southern part of the united states of america but happened throughout most of the states of our country, including in my own home state of colorado, where a historian has, in his own research, concluded that there were about 175 lynchings that 19:41:06.7 occurred in colorado between 1859-1919. so it is appropriate and fitting that today we apologize for the absence of those laws, that we recognize that people like james 19:41:24.6 cameron, who became a survivor of the lynchings of that time period, recognize that this united states senate body today says we apologize for that past. i also believe that it is 19:41:41.3 perhaps even more important for us to look to the future of america and to look at the kinds of racial issues and the challenges that we face as a nation to create an america that truly is an america of 19:41:57.6 inclusion. it is one thing for us to stand here and -- in the chambers of the united states senate today to look at our history and to learn from that painful history. but it is equally as important for us to look to the future and to recognize that the challenges that we face in this america 19:42:13.5 today, in the decade ahead, in the hundred years ahead require us to learn from those very painful lessons of the past. and when one looks at those very painful lessons of the past, we have to recognize that for the first 250 years of the beginnings of this nation, we 19:42:30.2 had a system of law that recognized that it was okay for one group of people to own another group of people under our system of slavery just because of the color of their skins. and it is important for us also 19:42:45.0 to recognize that it took the bloodiest war of these united states during the civil war, where over half a million people were killed on our own soils here in america to bring about an end to the system of slavery and to usher in the 13th and 19:43:02.3 14th and 15th amendments, which are the bedrock of the constitutional liberties which we now endow upon all people of america. but notwithstanding the fact that in that time period of the civil war, we saw the blood and 19:43:19.2 life of so many americans laid down in this country, we still continued through another period of almost a hundred years where we divided our nation according to groups. it was over a hundred years ago when justice harlan, writing for 19:43:36.0 the dissent in the now famous case of policy v. -- of fplecy v. ferguson made the decision. justice harlan disagreeing with 19:43:52.2 the segregation system that was ushered under that decision, he said, "the destinies of the races in this country are insolubly linked together and the interests of both require that the common government law shall not permit the seeds of 19:44:08.5 race hate to be planted under the sanction of law." that was over a hundred years ago, and yet it took another almost half a century, in fact, more than half a century, until 1954 in the decisions of brown vs. the board of education, 19:44:24.4 mr. president, for the u.s. supreme court, under the leadership of justice warren, to say that in these united states, separate but equal was unconstitutional under the 14th amendment. it took another more than half a century for the united states 19:44:41.0 supreme court to make that statement. and so when we look to the future of america, when we look to the diversity that defines our country, it is my belief that this next century will be defined by how we as an american 19:44:57.3 society embrace the concept of an inclusive america. and when we embrace a concept of an inclusive america, we talk about including people of all backgrounds, be they anglo-americans, french 19:45:14.0 americans, african-americans, latinos, native americans, women, that we as an american society will be challenged in the century ahead by how we deal with the issue of inclusion and the greatness of this country will be defined by 19:45:30.3 how successful we are in making sure that we are inclusive of all people. and there are some who have recognized this. just as sandra -- justice sandra day o'connor, in writing for the united states supreme court in the now famous 19:45:45.9 decision of the university of michigan from just several years ago, made the following comment 19:45:51.0 about the importance of diversity in higher education. justice o'connor, in the majority opinion, said the following -- and i quote -- "these benefits" -- talking about the benefits of higher 19:46:04.9 education and diversity in higher education, said -- "these benefits are not theoretical but real, as major american businesses have made clear that the skills needed in today's increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse 19:46:20.8 people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints." that was from the brief she cited submitted by general motors. she went on to say, "what is more, high-ranking retired officers and civilian leaders of the united states military 19:46:37.9 assert" -- and she quotes from the brief of the former joint chiefs of staff, she says -- "based on their decades of experience, a highly-qualified, racially diverse officer corps is essential to the military's ability to fulfill its principal 19:46:53.9 mission: to provide national security."ñ i believe it was in that articulation by justice day o'connor where she articulated the challenge and the opportunity that we have as an american society 19:47:08.4 as the 21st century unfolds in front of us. in my estimation, the greatness of this country depends on our learning and not forgetting the painful lessons of the past, including the lynchings that occurred across america, and also 19:47:23.2 looking forward to the challenge of including people of all backgrounds and all races in all of the business affairs and civic affairs of this nation. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the 19:47:41.1 senator from florida. mr. nelson: mr. president, i'm very glad that we're doing this. there have been attempts in the past by other members of congress, my 19:47:59.0 good friend, the former congressman tony hall of ohio, who had tried back several years before to get a resolution of apology with regard to slavery, and they never 19:48:12.7 could work out all the details in that. and so i'm very glad that the senate has come to this point, that the senate could critique itself for this legislative body's 19:48:30.2 failure to enact antilynching laws back at a time when it would have been so important to stop this kind of mayhem and murderous rampages that mobs would 19:48:48.0 take supposedly justice into their own hands, and thank goodness that we've come to a point at which we can admit our mistakes, even though this is several generations later, and 19:49:06.2 pass a resolution like this as we will do tonight. interestingly, one of my political heroes is a person that americans rarely hear about. 19:49:21.7 he was a british parliamentarian in the late 1700's and the early 1800's named william wilburforce. wilburforce was elected to the parliament at the 19:49:35.0 age of 21 along with one of his best friends, william pitt the younger, and in three years at age 24, pitt was elected prime minister. and, of course, wilburforce could have 19:49:51.7 been in his cabinet. but at that point, wilburforce had recognized the great evil of the day and dedicated his life to the elimination of the economic order of the day, which was the english slave trade, 19:50:09.7 where the captains would take the boats down off the coast of africa under the guise of friendship, round up native after carngs put 19:50:23.6 them in the holds of those slave ship, take them to the new world and sell them. and wilburforce is a hero to me because as a government official, a member of parliament, he would not even join william pitt the 19:50:39.5 younger's cabinet. he wanted to devote his life to the elimination of the slave trade, and it took him 20 years to 19:50:48.9 do it. and time after time he was beat back, but he persevered and he finally won. 20 years later. and then before wilbur 19:51:05.3 forecast died, he saw that parliament actually bollished slavery. that was some 30 years before slavery was abolished here in america. so it is a privilege for me to be here at long 19:51:24.1 last to join our colleagues to apologize for the senate's failure in the 1930's to pass legislation outlawing the barbaric practice of 19:51:39.4 lynching. for more than a century, this country presented two realities to its citizens, enshrines in 19:51:52.0 our constitution is a government and a legal system designed to protect the rights of all americans so that our freedom cannot be taken away or infringed upon without due process of law, but for many decades, however, this 19:52:06.9 system of justice and respect for the rule of law didn't apply to all of the citizens of this country. in 1857, in the dred scott supreme court decision, that guarantee 19:52:21.7 in the u.s. constitution, all men are created equal, was not intended to include blacks by that decision. and if more years black americans found few protections in the 19:52:38.3 constitutional guarantees of liberty and freedom and equal protection of the laws. a black man accused of a crime against a white person found that he had no access to the courts 19:52:53.1 to move -- prove his innocence. he had no access to a fair and impartial jury of his peers. all too often the white citizens armed with guns and feelings of 19:53:10.3 righteousness would take the accused as law enforcement officers stood by and would brutalize them and hang them in a public setting 19:53:26.1 for other members of the can community to view and feel avenged. how horrible would that be? a public spectacle. that was supposed to intimidate. 19:53:40.5 that was supposed to strike fear. did it? you bet it did. it was meant to send a message to the members of the black community that they better remain in their place to remember that the guarantees of freedom 19:53:55.9 and fairness in the constitution did not include them. in my state of florida, there were 61 lynchings of black americans between 1921 and 1946, which, of course, 19:54:15.2 represents only a fraction of the total number that were committed in my state. and there's no justification or explanation for these horrible acts of violence. as a nation that we respect the rule of law, 19:54:34.0 of court-proscribed justice, what happened was it was vigilantism and mob rule. that's what determined justice, and that is 19:54:51.5 never justifiable. there is a place in florida called rosewood, rosewood, florida. it was the site in the 1920's of what many describe as a massacre. that black community was 19:55:09.9 destroyed by whites, and no arrests were ever made in as many as 27 racial killings in that location. and as florida finally 19:55:24.9 passed the nation's first compensation for blacks who suffered from those past racial injustices, it was all directed back to the massacres that occurred at rosewood, florida. 19:55:42.3 the 94 florida legislature passed the 19:55:47.5 rosewood claims bill to compensate victims for the loss of property as a result of the failure to prosecute those individuals responsible. i felt as a floridian that this acknowledgement was long 19:56:04.2 overdue, and it made me proud to see at long last that we addressed the tragedy of rosewood. now, as a member of the u.s. senate, i feel that this resolution that 19:56:18.0 we're passing tonight is long overdue, and in being proud of this, i am also humbled, mr. president, to stand up as a member of the senate and to personally apologize for the 19:56:37.3 senate's failure to act. a failure to outlaw barbaric acts such as lynchings and racial 19:56:51.6 massacres. i'm proud too that we can today reaffirm that we are a nation of laws designed to protect the freedom and liberty of 19:57:04.2 all americans -- all americans -- regardless of race. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator yields the floor. the senator from arkansas. a senator: mr. president, i know 19:57:18.5 we have other senators on the way to the chamber to speak. and i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: mr. bennett: mr. president. 19:57:51.4 the presiding officer: the senator from you tawsm. mr. bennett: mr. president, i will v listened with -- the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. the senator is recognized. mr. bennett: mr. president, i have listened with great interest to the presentations 19:58:07.6 made on the floor and wish to be associated with the sentiments involved here. i come from a state that does not have a history of lynchings, but that does not mean that i should be absolved from the concern that all americans should have over the lynchings that occurred. 19:58:23.8 and i note that it was the filibuster that made it possible for the senate to be the one, the body that blocked this legislation in the past. and i would hope that in the future we would all realize that the filibuster should be 19:58:40.2 used for more beneficial purposes than that. i do ask unanimous consent now that there be a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that the senate now proceed to the consideration of 19:58:55.3 senate resolution 170, which was submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the title. the clerk: senate resolution 170, relative to the death of jay james exon, former writes senator for the state of nebraska. the presiding officer: without 19:59:11.4 objection. the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the programmable -- preamble be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table. the presiding officer: is there objection? hearing none so ordered. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous 19:59:26.5 consent that the senate immediately proceed to executive session to consider calendar number 150, the nomination of bryant montgomery to be assistant secretary of housing and urban development. i further ask unanimous consent that the nomination be confirmed. the motion to reconsider 19:59:42.8 be laid upon the table, the president be immediately notified of the senate's action and the senate then return to legislative session. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennett: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, the senate stand 19:59:57.3 in adjournment until 9:45 a.m. on tuesday, june 14. i further ask that following the prayer and the pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved and that the

THE SENATE Morning business followed by general debate on the Thomas Griffith nomination to the US court of appeals in the district - vote on Tuesday --- senate expected to debate resolution that apologize to the families of victims of lynchings 19:00:15.0 concept -- that it's important to remind the american people about the evil chapters in our history. it is the reason we construct museums in washington and beyond, to hold up for all to see how capable we are of descending into the heart of darkness. it is important for us 19:00:31.5 to look back into the past so that we can pledge, pledge never again to allow racial hatred to consume our ideals or humanity. president bush in his second inaugural address -- and i quote from janet's letter -- "our 19:00:48.4 country must abandon all habits of racism because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time." 19:00:58.1 she concludes with these statements, "an apology, i concede, will do nothing for the thousands of people who have perished during what has been called "the black holocaust." it cannot repair the battered souls of their 19:01:12.3 survivors. it is, after all, only a symbolic act. our symbol, however, the eagle, old glory, lady liberty, to mention but a few, are but shortian narratives of who we are as americans. 19:01:27.5 it is through the acknowledgement of the senate's abdication of its duty to protect and defend the rights of all american citizens that perhaps we can begin to understand the pain and anger that still lingers in the hearts and minds of so many who have been deprived of the equality 19:01:45.3 promised in our constitution."ñ my friend and mentor writes "there martin luther king, jr. once said that -- quote -- "the arrest, of history bends toward justice. 19:02:03.7 " today as the senate members cast their historic votes that ark dips closer to its destination" signed janet lange therehart cohen. mr. president, i ask that this 19:02:18.1 full letter be made a part of the record of this debate on the resolution. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. allen: mr. president, i'm proud that this resolution will pass tonight. the senate is going to be on record condemning the brutal atrocities that plagued our 19:02:33.9 great nation for over a century. ly close with the words of the resolution "whereas an apology offered in the spirit of true repentance moves the united states towards reconciliation and may become central to a in 19:02:49.6 new understanding on which improved racial relations could be forged now thereforebe it resolved that the senate apologizes to the victims of lynching. 19:03:03.5 it 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 constitutional 19:03:19.8 protections accorded all citizens of the united states. and we remember the history of lynching to ensure that these tragedies will neither be forgotten nor repeated. my colleagues, i ask you to join all of us in examining our 19:03:36.3 history. learn from history. never again sit quietly. never again turn ones head away when the ugly specter of racism, antisemitism, hate and intolerance rises again. 19:03:50.9 it is our responsibility to stand strong for freedom and justice. in the future, mr. president, i am confident that this senate will perform better than it has in the past. we will protect the god-given blessings of all people to life 19:04:08.4 and liberty to all people regardless of their race, their ethnicity or their religious beliefs. the senate can do better. we have done better tonight. 19:04:23.6 but the real lesson is when we have learned that when such acts happen in the future will this senate stand and rise to condemn it to protect those god-given liberties. i know senator landrieu and i believe the senate will rise 19:04:41.2 aappropriately. mr. president, with that i ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the previous agreement, the senate now proceed to the vote on the pending resolution. i further ask consent that notwithstanding the adoption of 19:04:55.1 the resolution, the remaining time under the previous agreement remain available for senators who wish to make statements, provided that any statements relating to the resolution appear tryer -- prior to its adoption in the congressional record. 19:05:12.2 the presiding officer: without objection it is so ordered. the question is now on the resolution. all those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the resolution is adopted. the preamble is agreed to. ms. landrieu: mr. president? 19:05:31.6 the presiding officer: who yields time? the senator from louisiana. a senator: mr. president, what is the status of time? mr. kerry: is it under control or is it just open? the presiding officer: the 19:05:44.4 senators from virginia and louisiana control the time. mr. kerry: i understand. ms. landrieu: mr. president, i'm happy to yield to the senator from massachusetts in just one moment because he has been very 19:05:56.2 patient to speak. and as a cosponsor of this resolution that just passed, it's really a privilege and appropriate for senator kerry to be one of the first senators to speak upon its passage, but i would like to mention very 19:06:12.6 briefly because i'm not sure he is going to be able to stay with us much longer, mr. james cameron has been with us all day here in the senate. mr. cameron is 91 years old. he lives in marion, indiana n.1930 when he was 16 years old, 19:06:29.4 a mob dragged him from a cell at grant county jail, put a rope around his neck. he was accused of a murder and a rape that he was nowhere around when they occurred. his associates were both lynched that night. 19:06:44.3 a man in the crowd spared him by proclaiming that he in fact was innocent and should be let go. he then went on to live an extraordinary life without bitterness, with a lot of love. he is married 67 years. 19:07:01.1 his four children, multiple grandchildren. senator evan bayh that serves in this body when he was governor of indiana pardoned mr. cameron for anything. he is really the one that has forgiven us and for what was 19:07:19.5 done to him. i wanted to mention him. i yield the floor to senator kerry. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. mr. kerry: mr. president, thank you. i want to start by thanking both senator landrieu and senator allen for their leadership on this effort, and for all those 19:07:36.0 descendants of families who have been absolutely extraordinary in the way in which we have relived their pain, brought it to the public view, kind of laid their hearts out on the table in a very real and emotional way. and i think that's been a 19:07:53.3 wonderful part of this process, the way in which this book that jimmy allen put together has helped to sort of really unleash a pain that was never lost, 19:08:14.5 never forgotten by anybody, but never quite had a place to play itself out until this public effort is being made by the united states senate. there's no small irony, i 19:08:29.1 suspect, in the fact that the senate is here sort of making good on what the senate failed to do. and i personally am struck by even at this significant moment 19:08:47.3 the undeniable and inescapable reality that there aren't 100 senators as cosponsors. maybe by the end of the evening there will be, but as we stand 19:09:00.1 here with this resolution now passed by voice vote there aren't. moreover, all the people in the senate and the press understand how we work here. and i think it's critical that we take the step we're taking 19:09:17.7 and have taken, but at the same time, wouldn't it have been just that much more extraordinary and significant if we were having a recorded vote with all 100 senators recording their votes? we're not. 19:09:32.9 and so even today as we take this gigantic step, we're also saying to american -- america, there's a journey still to travel. i don't want to diminish one eye kwroeta, and i don't mean to, 19:09:49.8 because i think what is happening here today is so significant, but at the same time, it has to give all of us a kind of kick in the era -- rear-end to get us out there to do the other things that are 19:10:04.7 necessary, that give fuller meaning to the words that are going to be expressed here and have been expressed here, most importantly to give fuller meaning for the emotions laid bare by the families who have 19:10:21.8 come here to share this with us. i want to join not just in thanking mr. cameron and others but january the langhart cohen who is here and bill cohen who 19:10:38.6 is up in the gallery. we certainly appreciate her commitment to this effort and the meaning of this to her and all of the families that have come here together. mr. president, it's pretty incredible to think about it. lynchings really replaced 19:10:58.1 slavery. they came in the aftermath of the slavery around 1880's, and between the 1880's and 1968, i have to pause when i think about that, because i was already a 19:11:13.3 young officer in the military. i had left college. i remember the early part of the 1960's devoted to the civil rights movement, the mississippi voter registration drive. we were still recording lynchings during that period of 19:11:29.9 time but i didn't know it. not that in sense i know it today. i thought i knew history pretty well, but i'll tell you, until i saw this array of photographs which then sparked my curiosity to read more about it, i had 19:11:48.6 always thought like most american that's a lynching was just sling the rope over the branch of the tree and that's it. the story is so much more gruesome than that, so much more dark and horrendous, as a moment 19:12:08.2 in american history that it's really hard to believe that it happened at all in our country. which is another reason that it's so important we're taking this step to remember. we've seen revisionism on almost 19:12:22.6 every part of history including the holocaust. so it is good that we take this step today and it is good that we have these photographs brought together as a compilation of history, and it is good that the senate is taking this effort tonight. it is extraordinary to think 19:12:37.8 that 99% of the perpetrators of lynchings escaped any reach of the law whatsoever. it's incredible to think that almost 5,000 people are recording as incidents and how 19:12:55.2 many are not recorded, how many went without the local authorities in each of those communities who are already complicitious in what happened standing by, per missive, turning away from basic human 19:13:13.5 rights. how of those incidents were not recorded? a lot of us have read a lot about world war ii and the holocaust and other moments of history where there's a knock on the door and life changes. 19:13:28.4 but you have to stop and really think what it was like in all but four states in our country. not just for african-americans but for new people, for folks who had come here from other 19:13:46.2 places to live the american dream. in some cases they weren't knocks. they were just angry mobs screaming and yelling with torches and running rampant through households dragging people out screaming. in other cases, there was a 19:14:03.5 pretext, more polite, but it was never polite in what it ended up as. lynchings were not just lynchings, they were organized torture. they were incidents of kinds of torture that defy the 19:14:20.7 imagination that you don't even want to talk about. the kinds of things that any descent society ought to stand up against. people were literally tortured for sport in front of people, and crowds would cheer, bedlam, 19:14:37.9 children brought to be spectators. some of these photographs show kids standing there with their eyes wide open and adults standing beside them, who were supposed to be more responsible, 19:14:51.2 glued to the horror that they were witnessing. in the first half of the last century alone, in the 20th century, over 200 antilynching bills were introduced to the 19:15:06.3 united states congress -- 200. and three times the house of representatives passed antilynching legislation. seven presidents asked for this legislation to be passed. the united states senate said no 19:15:26.8 so it is important that we're here today to apologize. some people wonder what the effect of an apology is, and we 19:15:38.9 can understand that question being asked. but this is sort of a day of reckoning for us as a country. it's a moment for the conscience of our country to be listened to by everybody. it's an embarrassingly and unforgiveibly late moment in 19:15:54.1 coming but we're addressing a stain on our history, and we are working to heal wounds across generations. i think that that is important. some people might try to diminish that. but i think the very lack of unity that i phepbsed earlier, 19:16:11.7 in fact, goes to show why this apology is so important and why we all have to keep moving in this direction.ñ mr. president, no words, obviously, are going to undo the horror of those 5,000 americans 19:16:27.0 losing their lives. no apology is going to just wipe away the memories of mr. cameron and others, though they've shown a greater graciousness of understanding than others even at this moment. and the fact is that this 19:16:45.2 resolution can be one more step in the effort for all of us to try to get over the divide that still exists between race -- races and as a result of jim crow in this country. 19:16:59.8 but only if you face the truth. it is the piebl that reminds us that it's the truth that sets us free. so we have to embrace it, commit ourselves to put our hearts and our actions where our words have now preceded us. this should be an important step 19:17:16.8 forward. but frankly, it will only do that if we don't step here. the truth is, mr. president, that it's not enough to face the who are he of lynchings if we then just walk out of here and 19:17:33.1 consciously turn away from legally separate and unequal schools in america. it's not enough to decry decades of refusing to use the use of law against lynching if today we 19:17:48.5 reuse it to use the force of law to tear down the barriers that prevent people from voting, barriers in the economy, divisions in the health care system that works for too few of those who are in the minority in 19:18:04.0 america. it's only by reconciling the past that you can understand where you have to go in the few of and how to get there. i ask my colleagues just to remember the words of julian bond when he dedicated that beautiful, simple memorial in 19:18:21.1 montgomery, alabama, to those who gave their lives for civil rights. and he said that it was erected as much to remember the dead as it was for those young people who cannot remember the period when the sacrifices began. with its small crueltyties and 19:18:36.6 monstrous injustices, its petty indignities and its deft-dealing inequities. there are too many young to remember that from that seeming hopelessness there arose a mighty movement, simple in its tactics, over whelming in its 19:18:56.1 impact. that is why we have to remember the period of the lynchings. that's why this resolution is important. for the young people who don't know what it to wake up in the middle of the night to hear that 19:19:10.8 knock, or young people who need to commit to help our country to complete the journey in order guarantee that we make it that you will it promises to be and can be, we will never erase what mr. cameron or mr. wright and too many others went through, but we certainly can honor the 19:19:31.5 legacy of these civil rights heroes and the martyrs who came before us by doing right by them and by the country, and i 0 hope this resolution will help us do that. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: who 19:19:53.4 yields time? mr. kerry: mr. president, i yield such time as the senator from illinois wishes. the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. obama: thank you, 19:20:08.8 mr. president. i'd like to rise in strong support of this resolution. before i make any further remarks, i'd like to recognize doria d. johnson and thank her for coming. sheels ea from evanston, illinois. ms. johnston is the great-great-granddaughter of 19:20:26.7 anthony crawford, a south carolina farmer who was lynched nearly 100 years ago for the crime of being a successful black farmer. i'm sure this day has special meaning for her and the other family members of those who were impacted by these great 19:20:41.5 tragedies of the past, and i want to thank her and others for being here today. since america's darkest days of 19:20:53.8 jim crow, separate but equal, fire hoses, church bombings, cross burnings and lynchings, the people of this great nation have found the courage, on 19:21:08.5 occasion, to speak up and speak out so that we can right this country's wrongs. so that together we can walk down that long road of transformation that continues to perfect our union. 19:21:26.2 it's a transformation that brought us the civil rights act and the voting rights act, a transformation that led to the first black member of congress and the first black and white children holding hands in the 19:21:41.2 same playground in the same school. a transformation without which i would not be standing here speaking to you today. but i am. and i'm proud because thanks to this resolution, we're taking 19:21:56.0 another step in acknowledging a dark corner of 0 our history. we're taking a step that allows us, after looking at 4,700 deaths from lynchings and hate 19:22:12.2 that lied behind those deaths, and this chamber's refusal to try and stop those deaths that we are finally saying that we were wrong. there is a power in 19:22:28.4 acknowledging error and mistakes. it is a power that potentially transforms not only those who were impacted directly by the lynchings but also those who are 19:22:44.2 the progeny of those who perpetrated them. i think it's been mentioned that there's an exhibit in chicago right now. its a ea powerful photographic-- --it's a powerful photographic exhibit of some of the lynchings 19:22:58.3 that occurred across the country, and as has already been remarked, what often is most powerful is not the gruesome aspects of the lynching itself. it's not the terrible rending of 19:23:16.7 the body that took place. what's most horrific, what's most disturbing to the soul is photographs in which you see young little white girls or 19:23:32.4 young little white boys with their parents out on an outing loorksing at the degradation of 0 another human being. you wonder not only what the 19:23:49.4 lynching did to the family member of those who were lynched but also what it did to the sensibilities of those young people. 0 now that we're finally 19:24:05.7 acknowledging this injustice, it gives us an opportunity to reflect on the cruelties that can happen to all of us. and then hopefully we can take 19:24:19.7 the time to teach our children to treat people who are differently -- who look different than we do with the same respect that we would expect. and so it's fitting, it's proper, and it's right that 19:24:33.9 we're doing what we're doing here today. i do hope that, as we commemorate this past injustice, that this chamber also spends some time, however, doing something concrete and tangible 19:24:54.2 to heal the long shadow of slavery and the legacy of racial discrimination so that 100 years from now we can look back and be proud and not have to apologize once again. 19:25:10.4 that means completing the unfinished work of the civil rights movement, that means closing the gap that still exists in health care and education and income. there are more ways to 19:25:24.7 perpetrate violence than simply a lynching. there is eight violence that-- --there's the violence that we subject young children to when they don't have any opportunity and they have no hope and they stand on street corners not thinking much of themselves, not 19:25:42.8 thinking that their lives are worth living. that's a form of violence that this chamber could do something 19:25:51.9 about. it means just as we're spending time apologizing today for these past failures of the senate to act, we should spend some time debating the extension of the voting rights act, the best ways to cover the 45 million 19:26:07.9 uninsured americans, how we can make young african-american children, the great-great grandchildren or the great-great-great-grandchildren 19:26:23.9 of those who have been harmed, how can we make sure college is affordable to them? these are the ways we can final ensure that the blessings of opportunity finally reach every american, that we can finally claim a victory in the long struggle for civil rights. today is a step in the right direction. 19:26:41.0 today gives us an opportunity to heal and to move forward. and for those who still harbor ainger in their hearts, who still wonder, how do you #u move on from such terrible violence, it's worth us reflecting for a moment on mamie till mobley. 19:27:03.3 her boy was only 14 years old when they found him in the mississippi river, beaten and blood did ied beyond recognition-- --beaten and bloodied beyond recognition. 19:27:18.5 emmet till was only 14 years old. when his mother saw her child, her baby, unrecognize rbl, his face so badly beaten, it barely looked human and it was suggested that she should have a 19:27:33.7 closed casket, she said, no, we're going to have an open casket, and everybody is going to witness what they did to my child. and as a consequence of that courage displayed by a mother, 19:27:50.8 it galvanized the civil rights movement in the north and in the south, and yet despite that, manie till mobley has repeatedly said, i never wasted a day 19:28:08.3 hating. imagine that. i never wasted a day hating. not one day. i rise today thanking god that the united states senate, the representatives of the american 19:28:21.3 people, and our highest ideals will not waste one more day without issues the apology that will continue to march us down the path of transformation that mamie till mobley has been on 19:28:43.0 her whole life. i am grateful and i am looking forward to joining hands with my colleagues and the american people to make sure that when our children and grandchildren look back at our actions in this chamber that we don't have 19:28:57.2 something to apologize about. i yield the time. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from arkansas. mr. pryor: thank you, mr. president. i join my colleagues today to talk about one of our nation's 19:29:13.8 darkest periods, a stain in history we'd rather forget but that we cannot ignore. the white mobs committed 4,742 hangings, flaggings and burnings 19:29:30.5 of-- --floggings and burnings of african-americans. yet the u.s. senate watched indifferently failing to pass any 26900 separate bills before it to make lynching a federal crime. senate resolution 39 expressing the senate's apology for failing 19:29:47.5 to adopt antilynching legislation is long overdue. i would like to express my sincere apologies and regret to the families in arkansas and the nation, especially to the 19:30:02.9 victims and the their decendants that this body failed to help at a time when they needed it most. i hope that acknowledging these grave injustices of the past will help again to heal the wounds that exist today. 19:30:19.6 even more so, this acknowledgment should serve as a lesson that government must step in to foster racial reconciliation, ensure the mob mentality never returns, and protect those who are most 19:30:36.2 vulnerable. the senate can start by continuing to advance civil rights and equality and work to close the divide that continues in our neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. i'm afraid that if we don't 19:30:52.5 start truly addressing inequities, we will look back once again at the senate's inaction with disdain and remorse. most of the worst offenses of lynching occurred in the south, 19:31:06.6 and arkansas is no different. between the years 1860 and 1936, 318 lynchings occurred in arkansas. of this number, 230 of the victims were black, including 19:31:25.2 six females. that's about three-quarters of the lynchings in our state that are recorded were against african-americans. mr. president, of course the statistics don't have a face. they don't feel pain. 19:31:39.5 nor do they hold memories. but people and families all over arkansas do, and they remember these crimes and the senate's inaction to protect them.÷ in march of 1892, a reporter 19:31:55.7 from the "christian recorder" reported the chaos and hopelessness occurring throughout my state. there is much uneasiness and unrest all over this state -- this is a quote -- "there is much uneasiness and unrest all over this state among our people 19:32:12.7 alluding to the fact that the people all over the state are being lynched upon the slightest provocation. some being strung up to telegraph poles, others burnt at the stake, and still others 19:32:26.8 being shot like dogs. in the last 30 days, there have been not less than eight colored persons lynched in this state. at texarcana a few days ago, a man was burnt at the stake." 19:32:43.2 as i continue the quote, it says, "in pine bluff a few days later, two men were strung up and shot. and this too by the brilliant glare of the electric lights at srarpber, george harris was taken from jail and shot for 19:32:58.0 killing a white man for poisoning his domestic happiness. at wilmar, a boy was induced to confess to the commission of an outrage upon promise of his liberty. and when he had confessed, he 19:33:13.0 was strung up and shot. over in lone oak county, a whole family, consisting of husband, wife and child, were shot down like dogs. the situation is alarming in the extreme." 19:33:27.2 this is a quote from an article that appeared in 1892. mr. president, there are -- there were few honest press accounts of such lynchings, a problem that continues to trouble historians today as they put together the pieces of this 19:33:44.6 period. most arkansas press accounts were no different. lynchers were considered heroes. officers, conniving. the accused, guilty. a case in point. in 1919, arkansas would be home 19:34:02.8 of a terrible racial injustice, the so-called elaine race riot. according to sketchy accounts that have been pieced together by historians, in september 1919, black sharecroppers met to 19:34:18.2 protest unfair settlements for their cotton crops from white plantation owners. local law enforcement broke up the union's meeting. the next day, a thousand white men and troops of the u.s. army converged on phillips county to 19:34:35.1 put an end to the black sharecroppers' so-called insurrection. the number of african-american deaths from this lynching is disputed, ranging from 20 at the low end all the way up to 856 men and women on the high end. 19:34:52.2 the details of the elaine race riot of 1919 have never been formally written down. but mayor robert miller of helena, arkansas, remembers them vividly. at the time, mayor miller's four uncles were preparing for a 19:35:08.7 hunting trip. three of them had traveled to a town near elaine, helena, arkansas, for this special occasion which turned tragic when a mob saw the brothers with guns in hand and assuming they were part of the insurrection, 19:35:25.1 all four were immediately killed. of the antilynching legislation we are considering today, mayor miller says, "it won't change what happened but at least it's a good thing, a movement in the 19:35:39.8 right direction." mr. president, in 2000, the "arkansas times" newspaper wrote 19:35:50.2 an article about one of arkansas's most high-profile lynchings and the lasting impact it had on families in arkansas today. in may 1927, a mentally retarded black man named john carter was accused of attacking a white 19:36:08.0 mother and daughter. upon his capture near little rock, a mob of 100 quickly gathered and prevented police from taking him to little rock, where the police would have protected him from being lynched. 19:36:22.8 after hanging him from a utility pole, the mob dragged john carter's body through the city of little rock and burned him in the downtown -- in downtown little rock at 9th and broadway. 19:36:38.7 the "arkansas times" recall recounts a conversation that occurred 30 years later, in september of 1957, of a mother talking to civil rights pioneer daze -- daisy baits about the john carter lynching. 19:36:56.4 the mother had to say -- and i quote -- "i'm frightened, miss baits, not for myself but for my children. when i was a little girl, my mother and i saw a lynch mob dragging a body of a negro man through the streets of little 19:37:11.0 rock. we were told to get off the streets. we ran. and by cutting through side streets and alleys, we managed to make it to the home of a friend. but we were close enough to hear 19:37:26.6 the screams of the mob, close enough to smell the sickening odor of burning flesh. and miss bates, they took the pews from bethel church to make the fire. 19:37:42.2 they burned the body of this negro man right at the edge of the negro business section." the woman speaking to daisy bates was named birdie eckfort. her daughter elizabeth, one of 19:37:59.3 the little rock nine, would walk through an angry, threatening crowd the following day to claim her right to an equal education at little rock central high school. mr. president, little rock 19:38:15.1 central high school today reminds us of some of the darkest days during the civil rights movement. as a former student, however, i can tell you that it also represents hope and achievement. 2007 will mark the 50th 19:38:34.3 anniversary of desegregation process at little rock central high school. last friday, i spoke with seven members of the little rock nine to tell them that we're closer to funding an adequate visitor's center and museum for this 19:38:50.7 landmark anniversary. minni jean brown trickie, one of the little rock nine, said this visitor's center will serve many purposes, but what struck me was her assurance that the center is 19:39:07.5 an opportunity for healing. today's resolution offers similar opportunities. it allows us to remember the past, begin healing from the past, look at how far our nation 19:39:22.2 has come to address equality and discrimination and rededicate ourselves to acknowledging how much further we must go from here. mr. president, i yield the floor. 19:39:46.0 a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr.al czar: thank you very much -- mr. salazar: thank you very much, mr. president. i rise this evening to speak in support of senate resolution 39, apologizing for the senate's 19:39:59.9 failure to enact antilynching legislation. i think that it's important for us to reflect on the statements that have been made by my colleagues, including the distinguished senator from louisiana and the distinguished senator from virginia so that we 19:40:16.8 can remember the history of this country and how america has been an america in progress. the past can be painted in statistics or it can be painted in the stories of people who have suffered from the unjust 19:40:34.0 result of the absence of an antilynching law. the past we can speak about the time between 1882-1968, when there were nearly 5,000 lynchings that occurred. 19:40:46.6 and these lynchings that occurred were not lynchings that 19:40:50.6 occurred just in the southern part of the united states of america but happened throughout most of the states of our country, including in my own home state of colorado, where a historian has, in his own research, concluded that there were about 175 lynchings that 19:41:06.7 occurred in colorado between 1859-1919. so it is appropriate and fitting that today we apologize for the absence of those laws, that we recognize that people like james 19:41:24.6 cameron, who became a survivor of the lynchings of that time period, recognize that this united states senate body today says we apologize for that past. i also believe that it is 19:41:41.3 perhaps even more important for us to look to the future of america and to look at the kinds of racial issues and the challenges that we face as a nation to create an america that truly is an america of 19:41:57.6 inclusion. it is one thing for us to stand here and -- in the chambers of the united states senate today to look at our history and to learn from that painful history. but it is equally as important for us to look to the future and to recognize that the challenges that we face in this america 19:42:13.5 today, in the decade ahead, in the hundred years ahead require us to learn from those very painful lessons of the past. and when one looks at those very painful lessons of the past, we have to recognize that for the first 250 years of the beginnings of this nation, we 19:42:30.2 had a system of law that recognized that it was okay for one group of people to own another group of people under our system of slavery just because of the color of their skins. and it is important for us also 19:42:45.0 to recognize that it took the bloodiest war of these united states during the civil war, where over half a million people were killed on our own soils here in america to bring about an end to the system of slavery and to usher in the 13th and 19:43:02.3 14th and 15th amendments, which are the bedrock of the constitutional liberties which we now endow upon all people of america. but notwithstanding the fact that in that time period of the civil war, we saw the blood and 19:43:19.2 life of so many americans laid down in this country, we still continued through another period of almost a hundred years where we divided our nation according to groups. it was over a hundred years ago when justice harlan, writing for 19:43:36.0 the dissent in the now famous case of policy v. -- of fplecy v. ferguson made the decision. justice harlan disagreeing with 19:43:52.2 the segregation system that was ushered under that decision, he said, "the destinies of the races in this country are insolubly linked together and the interests of both require that the common government law shall not permit the seeds of 19:44:08.5 race hate to be planted under the sanction of law." that was over a hundred years ago, and yet it took another almost half a century, in fact, more than half a century, until 1954 in the decisions of brown vs. the board of education, 19:44:24.4 mr. president, for the u.s. supreme court, under the leadership of justice warren, to say that in these united states, separate but equal was unconstitutional under the 14th amendment. it took another more than half a century for the united states 19:44:41.0 supreme court to make that statement. and so when we look to the future of america, when we look to the diversity that defines our country, it is my belief that this next century will be defined by how we as an american 19:44:57.3 society embrace the concept of an inclusive america. and when we embrace a concept of an inclusive america, we talk about including people of all backgrounds, be they anglo-americans, french 19:45:14.0 americans, african-americans, latinos, native americans, women, that we as an american society will be challenged in the century ahead by how we deal with the issue of inclusion and the greatness of this country will be defined by 19:45:30.3 how successful we are in making sure that we are inclusive of all people. and there are some who have recognized this. just as sandra -- justice sandra day o'connor, in writing for the united states supreme court in the now famous 19:45:45.9 decision of the university of michigan from just several years ago, made the following comment 19:45:51.0 about the importance of diversity in higher education. justice o'connor, in the majority opinion, said the following -- and i quote -- "these benefits" -- talking about the benefits of higher 19:46:04.9 education and diversity in higher education, said -- "these benefits are not theoretical but real, as major american businesses have made clear that the skills needed in today's increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse 19:46:20.8 people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints." that was from the brief she cited submitted by general motors. she went on to say, "what is more, high-ranking retired officers and civilian leaders of the united states military 19:46:37.9 assert" -- and she quotes from the brief of the former joint chiefs of staff, she says -- "based on their decades of experience, a highly-qualified, racially diverse officer corps is essential to the military's ability to fulfill its principal 19:46:53.9 mission: to provide national security."ñ i believe it was in that articulation by justice day o'connor where she articulated the challenge and the opportunity that we have as an american society 19:47:08.4 as the 21st century unfolds in front of us. in my estimation, the greatness of this country depends on our learning and not forgetting the painful lessons of the past, including the lynchings that occurred across america, and also 19:47:23.2 looking forward to the challenge of including people of all backgrounds and all races in all of the business affairs and civic affairs of this nation. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the 19:47:41.1 senator from florida. mr. nelson: mr. president, i'm very glad that we're doing this. there have been attempts in the past by other members of congress, my 19:47:59.0 good friend, the former congressman tony hall of ohio, who had tried back several years before to get a resolution of apology with regard to slavery, and they never 19:48:12.7 could work out all the details in that. and so i'm very glad that the senate has come to this point, that the senate could critique itself for this legislative body's 19:48:30.2 failure to enact antilynching laws back at a time when it would have been so important to stop this kind of mayhem and murderous rampages that mobs would 19:48:48.0 take supposedly justice into their own hands, and thank goodness that we've come to a point at which we can admit our mistakes, even though this is several generations later, and 19:49:06.2 pass a resolution like this as we will do tonight. interestingly, one of my political heroes is a person that americans rarely hear about. 19:49:21.7 he was a british parliamentarian in the late 1700's and the early 1800's named william wilburforce. wilburforce was elected to the parliament at the 19:49:35.0 age of 21 along with one of his best friends, william pitt the younger, and in three years at age 24, pitt was elected prime minister. and, of course, wilburforce could have 19:49:51.7 been in his cabinet. but at that point, wilburforce had recognized the great evil of the day and dedicated his life to the elimination of the economic order of the day, which was the english slave trade, 19:50:09.7 where the captains would take the boats down off the coast of africa under the guise of friendship, round up native after carngs put 19:50:23.6 them in the holds of those slave ship, take them to the new world and sell them. and wilburforce is a hero to me because as a government official, a member of parliament, he would not even join william pitt the 19:50:39.5 younger's cabinet. he wanted to devote his life to the elimination of the slave trade, and it took him 20 years to 19:50:48.9 do it. and time after time he was beat back, but he persevered and he finally won. 20 years later. and then before wilbur 19:51:05.3 forecast died, he saw that parliament actually bollished slavery. that was some 30 years before slavery was abolished here in america. so it is a privilege for me to be here at long 19:51:24.1 last to join our colleagues to apologize for the senate's failure in the 1930's to pass legislation outlawing the barbaric practice of 19:51:39.4 lynching. for more than a century, this country presented two realities to its citizens, enshrines in 19:51:52.0 our constitution is a government and a legal system designed to protect the rights of all americans so that our freedom cannot be taken away or infringed upon without due process of law, but for many decades, however, this 19:52:06.9 system of justice and respect for the rule of law didn't apply to all of the citizens of this country. in 1857, in the dred scott supreme court decision, that guarantee 19:52:21.7 in the u.s. constitution, all men are created equal, was not intended to include blacks by that decision. and if more years black americans found few protections in the 19:52:38.3 constitutional guarantees of liberty and freedom and equal protection of the laws. a black man accused of a crime against a white person found that he had no access to the courts 19:52:53.1 to move -- prove his innocence. he had no access to a fair and impartial jury of his peers. all too often the white citizens armed with guns and feelings of 19:53:10.3 righteousness would take the accused as law enforcement officers stood by and would brutalize them and hang them in a public setting 19:53:26.1 for other members of the can community to view and feel avenged. how horrible would that be? a public spectacle. that was supposed to intimidate. 19:53:40.5 that was supposed to strike fear. did it? you bet it did. it was meant to send a message to the members of the black community that they better remain in their place to remember that the guarantees of freedom 19:53:55.9 and fairness in the constitution did not include them. in my state of florida, there were 61 lynchings of black americans between 1921 and 1946, which, of course, 19:54:15.2 represents only a fraction of the total number that were committed in my state. and there's no justification or explanation for these horrible acts of violence. as a nation that we respect the rule of law, 19:54:34.0 of court-proscribed justice, what happened was it was vigilantism and mob rule. that's what determined justice, and that is 19:54:51.5 never justifiable. there is a place in florida called rosewood, rosewood, florida. it was the site in the 1920's of what many describe as a massacre. that black community was 19:55:09.9 destroyed by whites, and no arrests were ever made in as many as 27 racial killings in that location. and as florida finally 19:55:24.9 passed the nation's first compensation for blacks who suffered from those past racial injustices, it was all directed back to the massacres that occurred at rosewood, florida. 19:55:42.3 the 94 florida legislature passed the 19:55:47.5 rosewood claims bill to compensate victims for the loss of property as a result of the failure to prosecute those individuals responsible. i felt as a floridian that this acknowledgement was long 19:56:04.2 overdue, and it made me proud to see at long last that we addressed the tragedy of rosewood. now, as a member of the u.s. senate, i feel that this resolution that 19:56:18.0 we're passing tonight is long overdue, and in being proud of this, i am also humbled, mr. president, to stand up as a member of the senate and to personally apologize for the 19:56:37.3 senate's failure to act. a failure to outlaw barbaric acts such as lynchings and racial 19:56:51.6 massacres. i'm proud too that we can today reaffirm that we are a nation of laws designed to protect the freedom and liberty of 19:57:04.2 all americans -- all americans -- regardless of race. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator yields the floor. the senator from arkansas. a senator: mr. president, i know 19:57:18.5 we have other senators on the way to the chamber to speak. and i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: mr. bennett: mr. president. 19:57:51.4 the presiding officer: the senator from you tawsm. mr. bennett: mr. president, i will v listened with -- the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. the senator is recognized. mr. bennett: mr. president, i have listened with great interest to the presentations 19:58:07.6 made on the floor and wish to be associated with the sentiments involved here. i come from a state that does not have a history of lynchings, but that does not mean that i should be absolved from the concern that all americans should have over the lynchings that occurred. 19:58:23.8 and i note that it was the filibuster that made it possible for the senate to be the one, the body that blocked this legislation in the past. and i would hope that in the future we would all realize that the filibuster should be 19:58:40.2 used for more beneficial purposes than that. i do ask unanimous consent now that there be a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that the senate now proceed to the consideration of 19:58:55.3 senate resolution 170, which was submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the title. the clerk: senate resolution 170, relative to the death of jay james exon, former writes senator for the state of nebraska. the presiding officer: without 19:59:11.4 objection. the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the programmable -- preamble be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table. the presiding officer: is there objection? hearing none so ordered. mr. bennett: i ask unanimous 19:59:26.5 consent that the senate immediately proceed to executive session to consider calendar number 150, the nomination of bryant montgomery to be assistant secretary of housing and urban development. i further ask unanimous consent that the nomination be confirmed. the motion to reconsider 19:59:42.8 be laid upon the table, the president be immediately notified of the senate's action and the senate then return to legislative session. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennett: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, the senate stand 19:59:57.3 in adjournment until 9:45 a.m. on tuesday, june 14. i further ask that following the prayer and the pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved and that the

An Indigenous Navajo high school teacher with a group of students in a school classroom.

An Indigenous Navajo high school teacher with a group of students in a school library.