The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House
U.S. House of Representatives
H-232, U.S. Capitol
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Speaker Pelosi:
I am writing to respectfully urge your assistance in bringing House Resolution 194, an act apologizing for the enslavement and racial segregation of African-Americans, to the House Floor for a vote.
This week, the North Carolina House followed its Senate counterpart in approving a similar resolution apologizing for this harmful, regrettable and unfortunate chapter in our Nation’s history. The state legislative bodies in Virginia and Maryland have already passed similar resolutions, and this action is also under consideration by lawmakers in Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, Alabama and Vermont.
For 246 years, our Constitution and our laws allowed African-Americans to be treated as property; and for 100 years afterwards, a system of Jim Crow laws in many states throughout the country deprived people of the opportunity for equal access to education, opportunity, health care and public facilities. While these laws may have been erased from the books, the effects still linger and haunt the psyches of many people today.
These disgraceful acts should be left to history and acknowledgement from this body that it failed to protect the rights and freedoms of some of its most vulnerable citizens will help ensure that they are left to history. This apology is important and long overdue, and there is a power in acknowledging error and mistake.
This resolve acknowledges the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow, and apologizes on behalf of the American people for the wrongs of those who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow. This cannot change the past, but it allows us to confront the ghosts of the past so that we can more easily move forward toward a brighter future.
There is strong precedent for this legislation, including the apology approved by the U.S. Senate in 2005 for its failure to enact anti-lynching legislation when it was needed to protect people. The bill has 50 co-sponsors and passage would confirm that the House is committed to a better future for all its citizens.
Acknowledging this injustice will provide a strong and tangible opportunity to reflect on the cruelties of the past, highlight the unfinished work of the civil rights movement and remind everyone of the acute need to narrow the persistent and longstanding gaps in healthcare, education, opportunity and income.
I appreciate your time and attention to this important matter, and sincerely hope that you will help move this opportunity for healing forward.
Thank you very much.