During a 1998 trip to Uganda, President Bill Clinton provided what many historians considered to be the first apology by the United States for its role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Speaking before a school in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, Clinton apologized for “European Americans” benefiting from the “fruits of the slave trade.” 

“And of course, going back to the time before we were even a nation, European Americans received the fruits of the slave trade,” Clinton said. “And we were wrong in that as well.”