On Tuesday, July 29, 2008, the House of Representatives passed a nonbinding resolution, led by Rep. Steven Cohen (D-Tenn), which serves as a formal apology for the government's participation in African American slavery and the establishment of Jim Crow Laws. The resolution acknowledges "the lingering consequences of the misdeeds committed against African-Americans under slavery and Jim Crow."
The Senate did not opt to participate in a joint resolution.
This resolution is the first formal apology that has ever been issued by the federal government for its role in the enslavement, as well as the ensuing institutionalized oppression, of African Americans.
The event has incited interest and curiosity in several related areas. Questions about the nature of the Jim Crow Era, affirmative action, and the debate regarding reparations abound.
The Jim Crow Era is a period that stretched from shortly after the American Civil War until the mid 1960s. Although these laws were not inaugurated until after Reconstruction (1877), it is understood that they have earlier, more obscure origins. Legal and social regulations in the South dictated the tight parameters of African American liberty before the War. However, after the War-and before Reconstruction-Black Codes were immediately created in order to thwart the newfound freedoms granted to former slaves. These Black Codes restricted African Americans in regard to: their occupational choices (often limiting them to agricultural and domestic work); their choices of cohabitants and marriage partners (whites and blacks could be imprisoned for cohabitating or intermarrying); and their access to certain fundamental American liberties, such as the right to buy and sell property, and the freedoms of speech and movement.
The Jim Crow Era officially began in 1896 with the Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. While riding on a train in Louisiana, Homer Plessy, a man who was 1/8 African American and 7/8 Caucasian (otherwise referred to as an "octoroon"), sat in a car that was reserved for white passengers. After being solicited to leave the car, Plessy refused. Not only did the local court rule against Plessy, but later the Supreme Court upheld the decision. Hence, "separate but equal" became the ideological standard.
It can be said that the strength of Jim Crow began to weaken as early as 1915. Beginning with Guinn v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled against certain aspects of segregation and oppression. In 1954, the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education finally overturned the decision in Plessy v. Ferguson; it was thereafter nearly inevitable that the civil rights act would come to fruition.
Rep. Steve Cohen of Memphis, Tennessee, was not the first person to request this resolution from the government. Attempts to acquire reparations-essentially, "the act of making amends for a wrong or injury"-have been made since the late 19th century (when it became clear that "40 acres and mule" would exist only in the realm of fantasy). African Americans were themselves impeded from seeking reparations by the Black Codes, and later, by the Jim Crow Laws (such prohibitions being largely facilitated through unsanctioned violence).
The extreme reluctance of the U.S. government to issue an apology for African American slavery and the Jim Crow Era cannot be separated from the fact that such an apology might lend credence to the case for fiscal reparations.
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