Should We Apologize for History?

“You need help, Tony,” a voter from the heartland of America wrote to Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio), sponsor of a controversial bill that calls for Congress to formally apologize to African Americans for the institution of slavery. “You’re as damned stupid as a box of rocks.”

Shaking his head as if to clear cobwebs of disbelief, Hall continues to read from the handwritten letter. “I should like to see our nation return to slavery.”

Hall sighed, leaned back in his chair and read from yet another letter. “I want to go on record as being against any apology to the Negro race for our having brought them to this country whatsoever,” stated the neatly typed, one-page missive. “I think they should thank us for having brought them here.

“I saw a TV program where four very well-dressed colored women also wanted apologies. They were all well-educated with high-paying professions. If we had not brought their ancestors here, they would still be running around over there in loincloths with their breasts hanging out.”

For Hall, who has been in Congress since 1978 representing a district encompassing Dayton and most of its suburbs, the reaction to his bill has been an unsettling reality check of racial ill-feeling across the nation. During a recent interview in his Washington office, Hall said he was unprepared for the flood of angry letters, calls, e-mail and personal attacks that are spilling over his desk at the rate of more than 2-to-1 against his measure.

“I was surprised at the hate out there,” he said. “It’s very much alive, the hate, the division, the wounds. The fact this little, one sentence bill has produced so much firestorm, so much animosity . . . amazes me. I did not anticipate this.”

Judging from opinion page reports and street-corner debates, many Americans erroneously believe President Clinton offered the slavery apology as a part of his race relations speech earlier this month in San Diego. In fact, Hall said, the idea for a federal apology came to him a year and half ago. But the president’s speech gave Hall’s bill a springboard for national attention.

“It was coincidental that this came up and became an issue when he gave his speech in San Diego,” Hall said. “I didn’t intend for it to monopolize any attention from his speech and I hope it didn’t. But, in fact, it did become an issue right away and I was somewhat surprised and taken aback” by the attention.

Hall, 55, said the first time he heard two friends argue over the possible healing effect of an apology for slavery, he thought doing so would be redundant.

“I was stunned to learn that there has never been an official apology from our government for slavery,” he said, noting that he and his staff have spent hours in the Library of Congress researching the matter. “I was sure there had at some time been an apology. I was thinking that because of the 13th Amendment [which outlawed slavery in the wake of the Civil War] . . . I was thinking that Abraham Lincoln or the Congress might have said it back then. But, no, they didn’t.”

So, now, more than a century later, Hall wants Congress to make overdue amends.

“As a representative of the government, I have the right and I have taken the responsibility upon myself to introduce this bill that says it is the responsibility, at least of the people’s House, to apologize” for a social system that existed in this country for more than 200 years and initially was sanctioned by the Constitution, he said.

“There has never been any real closure. There’s never been any [national] discussion about the issue of slavery. We just put our head in the sand and went on. This is not just an issue for African Americans. It’s an issue for all Americans.”

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A former Peace Corps volunteer and devout Presbyterian, Hall has spent most of his tenure in Congress championing federal efforts to deal with global hunger, an interest that stems from his Christian faith. His social activism has taken him to places that many Americans either ignore or disdain--Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda and North Korea. He sees a parallel in his crusading against world hunger and his call for an apology to America’s slave descendants.

“Most people are in denial about things that are unpleasant or uncomfortable to deal with,” he said. “People want to think things are better and that bad things aren’t going on or only happened in the past, like there are no hungry people in the world or that racism doesn’t hurt people.”

Hall said he drafted his legislation with simplicity in mind. It reads: “Resolved by the House of Representatives that the Congress apologizes to African Americans whose ancestors suffered as slaves under the Constitution and laws of the United States until 1865.”

Hall quietly circulated the bill among some of his white colleagues and spoke with leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus to gauge responses. He held no news conferences to introduce it. “I was hoping to start quietly and build support,” he said.

No way.

Right from the start, the reaction was overwhelming--and mostly negative. Among Hall’s colleagues, only a handful responded favorably, most of them the six Republican and five other Democrats who agreed to co-sign his bill. A few members of the black caucus expressed qualified support for the measure, but said they would otherwise have no opinion on what they saw as a matter for white lawmakers to debate.

“I’m aware of their position and I agree with it,” Hall said. “I think it ought to be handled, at least initially, by white representatives.”

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Pointing to his stack of letters, he said it would be a hard sell to persuade a majority of his colleagues to risk invoking a similar reaction. Indeed, Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) has said he views the apology as “emotional symbolism” that “strikes me as a dead-end.”

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) also has cast doubt over Senate consideration of the measure, saying, “It probably would not happen.”

Hall said the congressional leadership’s chilly reaction hurts him more than the angry letters. “I would have thought they would have been thoughtful about it. Especially being a history professor as Gingrich has been, I would have thought he would have thought more than merely react to it.”

Hall said the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson told him in a private phone call that he would support the bill, only to later describe it “as not a very good idea.”

Although Jackson was careful not to criticize Hall personally, he said the apology “has no substantive value to it. . . . There must be some program of substance beyond just the apology.”

Faced with that kind of opposition, Hall concedes his bill is unlikely to win approval this year. “Now, everybody is running from it,” he said. Lawmakers “see the firestorm and they want to get out of the way. That bothers me.”

But he vowed to continue to press the issue. “I think someday we’re going to make an apology,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s going to happen this year or 10 years from now. But I think we’re going to do it.”