WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for slavery and the era of Jim Crow.
The House on Tuesday evening passed a resolution apologizing for slavery and Jim Crow laws.
The House on Tuesday evening passed a resolution apologizing for slavery and Jim Crow laws.
The nonbinding resolution, which passed on a voice vote, was introduced by Rep. Steve Cohen, a white lawmaker who represents a majority black district in Memphis, Tennessee.
While many states have apologized for slavery, it is the first time a branch of the federal government has done so, an aide to Cohen said.
In passing the resolution, the House also acknowledged the "injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow."
"Jim Crow," or Jim Crow laws, were state and local laws enacted mostly in the Southern and border states of the United States between the 1870s and 1965, when African-Americans were denied the right to vote and other civil liberties and were legally segregated from whites.
The name "Jim Crow" came from a character played by T.D. "Daddy" Rice who portrayed a slave while in blackface during the mid-1800s.
The resolution states that "the vestiges of Jim Crow continue to this day."
"African-Americans continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow -- long after both systems were formally abolished -- through enormous damage and loss, both tangible and intangible, including the loss of human dignity and liberty, the frustration of careers and professional lives, and the long-term loss of income and opportunity," the resolution states.
The House also committed itself to stopping "the occurrence of human rights violations in the future."
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The resolution does not address the controversial issue of reparations. Some members of the African-American community have called on lawmakers to give cash payments or other financial benefits to descendents of slaves as compensation for the suffering caused by slavery.
It is not the first time lawmakers have apologized to an ethnic group for injustices.
In April, the Senate passed a resolution sponsored by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, that apologized to Native Americans for "the many instances of violence, maltreatment and neglect."
In 1993 the Senate also passed a resolution apologizing for the "illegal overthrow" of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893.
In 1988, Congress passed and President Reagan signed an act apologizing to the 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were held in detention camps during World War II. The 60,000 detainees who were alive at the time each received $20,000 from the government.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Flooding feared along U.S.-Mexico border from Dolly
By Joe Mitchell
BROWNSVILLE, Texas (Reuters) - Hurricane Dolly, which unleashed a fury of winds and rain on the U.S.-Mexico coastline, weakened to a tropical storm on Thursday but concern remained over flooding along the populous Rio Grande Valley.
The Bush administration declared 15 of the Texas counties hit hardest by the storm as a disaster area, allowing them to draw on federal funds for cleanup and rebuilding.
More than 200,000 customers of American Electric Power Co's Texas unit, which serves the affected area, were without power on Thursday morning.
Dolly, the first hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic storm season to cross land, dumped up to 12 inches of rain in the first hours after coming ashore at the barrier island of South Padre Island on Wednesday, where it ripped off roofs and snapped trees.
Residents emerged from their homes and shelters to walk through streets littered with debris, toppled street lights and downed power poles.
"Everything is gone. Everything got wet," said Amber Acevado, who runs a flooring store on South Padre Island. "You stand here inside the store, you can see right through to the outside."
Many residents and tourists trapped on the island by the storm left after a causeway to the mainland reopened.
The storm missed most offshore drilling rigs and production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.
U.S. crude oil prices rose earlier this week on worries of possible storm damage to offshore drilling rigs. But oil prices fell after the storm barely dented supplies, and hit a 7-week low of $123.62 a barrel on Thursday.
POST-DOLLY FLOODING FEARED
Dolly was downgraded to a tropical storm late on Wednesday and remained at that strength as it moved inland, dumping enormous amounts of rain on south Texas and northeast Mexico and with sustained winds of 50 mph (80 kmh). It was expected to weaken further to a tropical depression later on Thursday.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said it could produce total rainfall of up to 20 inches in some places. "These rains are very likely to cause widespread flooding," the center said.
The storm was centered near Laredo, Texas, the NHC said in a report issued at 11 a.m. EDT.
The full effect of the flooding might not be seen for days as the rainfall flowed into the Rio Grande Valley, home to more than 1 million people.
There were no immediate reports that levees along the Rio Grande had been breached.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has put 1,200 National Guard troops on alert in case they are needed to help cope with the storm's aftermath.
Mexico's navy on Wednesday recovered the body of a fisherman who had gone missing off the Yucatan Peninsula as the storm passed through.
The only other reported casualty from the storm so far was a 17-year-old boy who was seriously injured when he fell seven stories from a condominium balcony in South Padre Island.
(Additional reporting by Jim Forsyth in San Antonio; Writing by Chris Baltimore, editing by David Storey)
(For latest U.S. National Hurricane Center reports, see http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/)
BROWNSVILLE, Texas (Reuters) - Hurricane Dolly, which unleashed a fury of winds and rain on the U.S.-Mexico coastline, weakened to a tropical storm on Thursday but concern remained over flooding along the populous Rio Grande Valley.
The Bush administration declared 15 of the Texas counties hit hardest by the storm as a disaster area, allowing them to draw on federal funds for cleanup and rebuilding.
More than 200,000 customers of American Electric Power Co's Texas unit, which serves the affected area, were without power on Thursday morning.
Dolly, the first hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic storm season to cross land, dumped up to 12 inches of rain in the first hours after coming ashore at the barrier island of South Padre Island on Wednesday, where it ripped off roofs and snapped trees.
Residents emerged from their homes and shelters to walk through streets littered with debris, toppled street lights and downed power poles.
"Everything is gone. Everything got wet," said Amber Acevado, who runs a flooring store on South Padre Island. "You stand here inside the store, you can see right through to the outside."
Many residents and tourists trapped on the island by the storm left after a causeway to the mainland reopened.
The storm missed most offshore drilling rigs and production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.
U.S. crude oil prices rose earlier this week on worries of possible storm damage to offshore drilling rigs. But oil prices fell after the storm barely dented supplies, and hit a 7-week low of $123.62 a barrel on Thursday.
POST-DOLLY FLOODING FEARED
Dolly was downgraded to a tropical storm late on Wednesday and remained at that strength as it moved inland, dumping enormous amounts of rain on south Texas and northeast Mexico and with sustained winds of 50 mph (80 kmh). It was expected to weaken further to a tropical depression later on Thursday.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said it could produce total rainfall of up to 20 inches in some places. "These rains are very likely to cause widespread flooding," the center said.
The storm was centered near Laredo, Texas, the NHC said in a report issued at 11 a.m. EDT.
The full effect of the flooding might not be seen for days as the rainfall flowed into the Rio Grande Valley, home to more than 1 million people.
There were no immediate reports that levees along the Rio Grande had been breached.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has put 1,200 National Guard troops on alert in case they are needed to help cope with the storm's aftermath.
Mexico's navy on Wednesday recovered the body of a fisherman who had gone missing off the Yucatan Peninsula as the storm passed through.
The only other reported casualty from the storm so far was a 17-year-old boy who was seriously injured when he fell seven stories from a condominium balcony in South Padre Island.
(Additional reporting by Jim Forsyth in San Antonio; Writing by Chris Baltimore, editing by David Storey)
(For latest U.S. National Hurricane Center reports, see http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/)
In Germany, Obama urges joint fight against terror
By DAVID ESPO and DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writers
BERLIN - Before an enormous crowd, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama on Thursday summoned Europeans and Americans together to "defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it" as surely as they conquered communism a generation ago.
"The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand," Obama said, speaking not far from where the Berlin Wall once divided the city.
"The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand," he said.
Obama said he was speaking as a citizen, not as a president, but the evening was awash in politics. His remarks inevitably invited comparison to historic speeches in the same city by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, and he borrowed rhetoric from his own appeals to campaign audiences in the likes of Berlin, N.H., when he addressed a crowd in one of the great cities of Europe.
"People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment. This is our time," he said.
Police spokesman Bernhard Schodrowski said the speech drew more than 200,000 people.
Obama's speech was the centerpiece of a fast-paced tour through Europe designed to reassure skeptical voters back home about his ability to lead the country and take a frayed cross-Atlantic alliance in a new direction after eight years of the Bush administration.
Republicans, chafing at the media attention Obama's campaign-season trip has drawn, sought to stoke doubts abut his claims.
In Die Welt, the German publication, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich., said: "No one knows which Obama will show. Will it be the ideological, left-wing Democratic primary candidate who vowed to 'end' the war rather than win it, or the Democratic nominee who dismisses the progressing coalition victory as a 'distraction'? Will it be the American populist who has told supporters in the United States that he will demand more from our allies in Europe and get it, or the liberal internationalist hell-bent on being liked in Europe's salons?"
Obama met earlier in the day with German Chancellor Angela Merkel for a discussion that ranged across the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, climate change, energy issues and more.
Knots of bystanders waited along Obama's motorcade route for him to pass. One man yelled out in English, "Yes, we can," the senator's campaign refrain, when he emerged from his car to enter his hotel.
Obama drew loud applause as he strode confidently across a large podium erected at the base of the Victory Column in Tiergarten Park in the heart of Berlin.
He drew loud applause when he talked of a world without nuclear weapons and again when he called for steps to counter climate change.
Obama mentioned Iraq, a war he has opposed from the start, only in passing. But in discussing Afghanistan, he said, "no one welcomes war. ... But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO's first mission beyond Europe's borders is a success."
He referred repeatedly to the Berlin airlift, launched by the Allies 60 years ago when the Russians sought to isolate the Western part of the city. If they had succeeded, he said, Communism would have marched across Europe.
"Where the last war had ended, another World War could have easily begun," the presidential candidate said.
Now, he said, the enemy is different but the need for an alliance is the same as he cited terrorism and the extremism that supports it. "This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it," he said.
BERLIN - Before an enormous crowd, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama on Thursday summoned Europeans and Americans together to "defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it" as surely as they conquered communism a generation ago.
"The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand," Obama said, speaking not far from where the Berlin Wall once divided the city.
"The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand," he said.
Obama said he was speaking as a citizen, not as a president, but the evening was awash in politics. His remarks inevitably invited comparison to historic speeches in the same city by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, and he borrowed rhetoric from his own appeals to campaign audiences in the likes of Berlin, N.H., when he addressed a crowd in one of the great cities of Europe.
"People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment. This is our time," he said.
Police spokesman Bernhard Schodrowski said the speech drew more than 200,000 people.
Obama's speech was the centerpiece of a fast-paced tour through Europe designed to reassure skeptical voters back home about his ability to lead the country and take a frayed cross-Atlantic alliance in a new direction after eight years of the Bush administration.
Republicans, chafing at the media attention Obama's campaign-season trip has drawn, sought to stoke doubts abut his claims.
In Die Welt, the German publication, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich., said: "No one knows which Obama will show. Will it be the ideological, left-wing Democratic primary candidate who vowed to 'end' the war rather than win it, or the Democratic nominee who dismisses the progressing coalition victory as a 'distraction'? Will it be the American populist who has told supporters in the United States that he will demand more from our allies in Europe and get it, or the liberal internationalist hell-bent on being liked in Europe's salons?"
Obama met earlier in the day with German Chancellor Angela Merkel for a discussion that ranged across the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, climate change, energy issues and more.
Knots of bystanders waited along Obama's motorcade route for him to pass. One man yelled out in English, "Yes, we can," the senator's campaign refrain, when he emerged from his car to enter his hotel.
Obama drew loud applause as he strode confidently across a large podium erected at the base of the Victory Column in Tiergarten Park in the heart of Berlin.
He drew loud applause when he talked of a world without nuclear weapons and again when he called for steps to counter climate change.
Obama mentioned Iraq, a war he has opposed from the start, only in passing. But in discussing Afghanistan, he said, "no one welcomes war. ... But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO's first mission beyond Europe's borders is a success."
He referred repeatedly to the Berlin airlift, launched by the Allies 60 years ago when the Russians sought to isolate the Western part of the city. If they had succeeded, he said, Communism would have marched across Europe.
"Where the last war had ended, another World War could have easily begun," the presidential candidate said.
Now, he said, the enemy is different but the need for an alliance is the same as he cited terrorism and the extremism that supports it. "This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it," he said.
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