Nebraska slavery apology could 'clear the air,' backers say

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By JoANNE YOUNG / Lincoln Journal Star

On an early December day in 1860, a little more than six years before Nebraska was granted statehood, two slaves — Hercules and Martha — were sold to the highest bidder on the streets of Nebraska City.

A month later, the Legislature passed an act that abolished slavery in the territory, over the veto of the appointed territorial governor, Samuel Black. He had vetoed the proposal the year before, also.

Monday, a full room at the Capitol heard a dozen people testify in favor of a resolution that would express “profound regret” for the state’s role in slavery and apologize for wrongs inflicted by slavery and its after effects.

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The resolution, introduced by Sen. Dwite Pedersen of Elkhorn, would encourage people to teach their children about slavery.

The Missouri Compromise, passed by Congress in 1820, had intended that Kansas and Nebraska would have no slaves.

But the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 reopened the controversy and people coming to Nebraska and stopping along the Missouri River brought slaves with them.

Six states — Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey, Virginia and Florida — have passed resolutions in the past year similar to the one introduced by Pedersen. Missouri is also considering doing so.

“Healing is what this is about,” Pedersen said during the hearing before the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee.

“I ask you to support this resolution because there are some people who will feel some healing from it.”

Robert Vestal of Omaha, who researched the slavery issue and asked Pedersen to introduce the resolution, said that coming from the health care field — he’s a nurse at the Douglas County Health Center — he knows there is a healing power in being able to say, “I’m sorry,” and in expressing regret.

Lela Shanks of Lincoln said her great-grandmother Hannah Mason McCrutcheon was born a slave in Tennessee in 1855.

She never talked about slavery to her great-granddaughter, but did talk about hearing Abraham Lincoln speak — one of the biggest events in her life — when she was a little girl, Shanks said.

“Words cannot express the emotion I feel, living long enough to testify at this historic hearing,” she said.

The acknowledgment would clear the air and provide an atmosphere in which honest racial healing and reconciliation can begin, Shanks said.

The resolution could provide administrators and teachers with the courage, information and permission to teach an inclusive history — a history not yet in textbooks — and thus prepare students for better understanding of their own history and for living in the larger multicultural world.

Leola Bullock of Lincoln emphasized the need for educators to tell their students that African Americans are one among many groups who have experienced slavery in the history of the world.

That fact is frequently omitted, and African-American children are expected to bear the burden of their ancestors being presented as the only human beings who have ever been enslaved.

Jane Erdenberger, an African-American history teacher at Omaha North High School, said people might say they shouldn’t have to apologize because their ancestors never owned slaves. But they should know there isn’t any white person in the U.S. that hasn’t benefited from the fact that slavery existed.

Shar’on L. Glenn told the committee she came to Lincoln 14 years ago and has had to address racism issues here.

To address the future, she said, the state must address the past.

R. Anthony Metz was the only person to testify in opposition to the resolution, urging the committee to kill it.

The extensive history included in the resolution fails to document the contribution of Sub-Saharan Africans in the capture and sale of other Sub-Saharan Africans into the Atlantic slave trade.

“Without this active and profitable role, the Atlantic slave trade could not have been possible,” he said.

It also fails to document the role of Nebraskans who served in the Union Army to “end the scourge of slavery.”

No apology is required from the scores of Nebraskans, Metz said, whose fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers shed their blood, losing life and limb, in their service to end slavery, and those who didn’t arrive in this country until after the Emancipation Proclamation.

“It’s not possible for us today to apologize for the deeds of those who lived 150 to 400 years ago,” he said.

Reach JoAnne Young at 473-7228 or jyoung@journalstar.com.