D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton often talks about how her great-grandfather, Richard Holmes, walked out of Virginia into the District. He was a runaway slave. He arrived in the city nine months before President Abraham Lincoln ended slavery in the nation’s capital.
Last week, when the U.S. House of Representatives passed Resolution 194, apologizing to African-Americans for slavery and the injustices of Jim Crow laws and pledging to prevent “human rights violations in the future,” I thought of Holmes and my own family’s history.
Norton was the last member of the Congressional Black Caucus to sign on as a co-sponsor of the resolution initiated by Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn.
“I think my great-grandfather would have truly appreciated it,” she tells me. “Collectively, black people will take some comfort.”
Initially, she was reluctant to sign the resolution, reflecting on the apology to Japanese Americans who suffered internment camps during World War II. Many of them were still alive to hear the government admit its atrocities.
“I see a profound difference between myself and Richard Holmes,” she continues. During her civil rights days with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Norton recalls, “all we wanted — action.” That’s what they got: passage of the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act and affirmative action.
Norton believes enforcement of those laws is the answer: “What leads to enforcement is pressure from elected officials — like Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain — and the American people.”
She worries that some may be misled by the apology, believing additional action — like reparations — will follow.
“That’s not going to happen,” Norton says, adding that Congress has decided to call a section of the national visitors center “Emancipation Hall.”
That may not be enough for reparations advocates. Those who want remuneration from whites forget the role some blacks played in the slave trade. During my radical, clenched-fist days, when I was rattling on about the injustices of the system and the treatment of my ancestors as slaves, my mother stopped me cold.
“Our people weren’t slaves,” she said. “We owned slaves.”
In 1830, the U.S. Census Bureau reported 3,777 households owned slaves. “Most of these Negroes lived in Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia,” noted Carter G. Woodson and Charles H. Wesley in their book “The Negro in Our History.” And, any student of history knows the role played in the trade by African tribal leaders.
Slavery is a complicated, knotted thing. Some people see purely black and white. But, it’s always been gray. Truth told, we are a country of Creoles.
There is power in forgiveness. Nelson Mandela and other South African leaders taught us about that. So, I accept the apology provided in Resolution 194. Equally importantly, on behalf of my ancestors and other blacks who benefited from the slave trade, I also offer my own.
Let the healing continue.
Jonetta Rose Barras, an author and political analyst, can be reached at [email protected].
