[Cure-news] Florida Apologizes for Slavery, Gov. Mulls Reparations

[Ida Hakim]

Florida Apologizes for Slavery, Gov. Mulls Reparations
By Yoji Cole
March 27, 2008

The Florida State Legislature passed a resolution Wednesday that 
expressed "profound regret" for the state's role "in sanctioning and 
perpetuating involuntary servitude upon generations of African slaves," 
prompting the state's governor to say it might be time for 
reparations.Florida has paid reparations in the past when it allocated 
$2.1 million to the surviving victims of the Rosewood massacre of 1923, 
when white mobs attacked and killed many Black residents, reports The 
New York Times.   

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, following the resolution's passage, said it 
might be time to investigate whether the state should pursue further 
reparations for slavery, a comment few politicians are willing to make.

"All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to do 
nothing," Crist told the Times, quoting philosopher Edmund Burke. "I 
think we are reminded of that today because it takes courage to do the 
right thing, and it's not always easy."

"The apology is symbolic, but to think about a remedy is to go beyond 
symbol to substance. I think both the decision by the Florida 
legislature and the impressive comments by Gov. Crist are signs of 
America's progress on the issue of slavery and effort to begin to 
address some consequences of that tortured part of our history," says 
Charles Ogletree, Harvard Law School Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, 
and founding and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston 
Institute for Race and Justice.

Ogletree, who has been a member of a team of lawyers pursuing 
reparations for the victims of the Tulsa, Okla., race riots of 1921 and 
has been involved in seeking reparations from companies that profited 
from the slave trade, adds that he hopes CEOs follow Crist's lead.

"Gov. Crist's comments are rare in deed and ultimately refreshing for 
someone to even think about addressing the past and at least considering 
current remedies," says Ogletree. "I hope that it is an example of the 
independence and courage that other Chief Executives of the U.S. will 
consider in the months and years going forward."

Black leaders in Florida said they hoped the state's resolution would 
influence the U.S. Congress to offer an apology for the nation's 
involvement in slavery. At the very least, Florida's resolution is a 
great way for the state to begin to heal slavery's wounds, said State 
Democratic sen. Tony Hill.

"We've passed a lot of resolutions up here, a lot of powerful 
resolutions, but today it was done from a historian perspective," Hill 
said to NBC 12, a local news station. "I think we took another step in 
Florida in the area of reconciliation. This is a great opportunity for 
the House and the Senate to say I'm sorry back in the 1800s."

The resolution was passed unanimously by Florida's House and Senate. 
Florida becomes the sixth state to make a formal apology for slavery, 
following North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey, 
which apologized for slavery in January. Florida has state slavery laws 
that date back to 1822.

Florida, which became a state in 1845, seceded from the Union to join 
slave-holding states of the Confederacy in 1861. But The New York Times 
notes that the state's slavery roots stretch further back to the 
settlement of St. Augustine in 1565 when Africans were used as slave 
labor on the state's cattle ranches and sugar-cane plantations.

"From 1845 to 1860, it was one of the fastest-growing slave states in 
the union," author Larry E. Rivers, who wrote Slavery in Florida, told 
The New York Times. "When things were slowing down in Virginia and still 
going in South Carolina and North Carolina, slavery in Florida was 
growing in leaps and bounds."

Florida's resolution admonishes the state for authorizing "African 
slavery in one of its most brutal and dehumanizing forms." It also 
reveals the cruelty of the time, noting that laws then declared that a 
"slave duly convicted of robbery ... or burglary shall suffer death or 
have his or her ears nailed to posts and there stand for one hour and 
receive 30 lashes on his or her bare back at the discretion of the 
court." And it noted that freed slaves "were denied the right to vote 
and in later years were, by law, so repressed, restricted and harassed 
that by 1850 most had been driven from Florida," reports