World Magazine and USA Today are reporting that the Senate is set today to take up a resolution expressing remorse over the failure to enact anti-lynching laws over the past few decades.
"A resolution that the chamber was likely to take up Monday voices regret for the Senate's unwillingness for years to pass a law stopping a crime that cost the lives of over 4,700 people, mostly blacks, between 1882 and 1968... In the past, efforts to pass such legislation fell victim to Senate filibusters despite pleas for its passage by seven presidents, among others, between 1890 and 1952."
One wonders how former KKK keagle Robert Byrd, senator from West Virginia will vote? (A little historical aside: it was Senator Byrd who conducted a 14-hour filibuster in an attempt to kill the 1964 Civil Rights Act.)
Both parties should be willing to get behind this resloution and begin to atone for the collective silence of a nation in the face of these hate crimes. While it can do nothing to restore the lives lost, perhaps it might give their families a little more peace.
Update: By a voice vote the Senate apologized for the inaction of the body in the past. Read about it here.
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