Nebraska state senators may get an opportunity to join a handful of other states that have expressed regrets or apologized for their role in slavery.
JoANNE YOUNG / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 7:00 pm
Nebraska state senators may get an opportunity to join a handful of other states that have expressed regrets or apologized for their role in slavery.
Nebraska would be the first state west of the Mississippi River to do so. It would join Virginia, New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina and Alabama. Other states — including Missouri and Florida — have broached the subject with their state governments.
Omaha Sen. Dwite Pedersen is sponsoring the Nebraska resolution introduced Thursday. He said his interest is letting people know the history of slavery in Nebraska and expressing regret for it.
“I don’t know anybody who doesn’t regret slavery,” he said. “My hope is that people in Nebraska get the history that slavery was here.”
Pedersen said people can’t apologize for something they didn’t do. But they can regret that it happened.
The resolution comes two days after Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia. Some have said it opened up the conversation on race like it hasn’t been since the Civil Rights era.
The resolution says the “Legislature expresses its profound regret for the state’s role in slavery, especially during its territorial period prior to statehood, and apologizes for wrongs inflicted by slavery and its after effects in Nebraska and in the United States.”
It also expresses its deepest sympathies and solemn regrets to those who were enslaved and their descendants, who were deprived of life, human dignity and constitutional protections.
The resolution seeks to encourage all Nebraskans to teach their children about the history of slavery and its effects, especially concerning modern-day slavery, so such tragedies will be neither forgotten nor repeated.
And it says the resolution shall not be used in or as the basis for any litigation.
Pedersen said a constituent in Omaha asked him to introduce the resolution after researching the role Nebraska played in slavery. The man brought reams of research to Pedersen’s office.
“I found it very interesting,” he said.
The research showed that when the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened lands west of the Missouri River to white settlement in 1854, it allowed settlers to decide for themselves whether slavery would be allowed.
Nebraska was at the center of turmoil over the slavery issue, with Iowa being a free state and Missouri a slave state. The Missouri Compromise had intended that Kansas and Nebraska would have no slaves.
Sara Crook, history and political science professor at Peru State College, said the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened the wound of slavery, bringing controversy and heated debate, and greasing the slippery slide into civil war. People coming to Nebraska, and those stopping along the Missouri River, brought slaves with them.
The first territorial Legislature passed a resolution prohibiting “negroes and mulattoes” from settling here.
In 1858, a legislator introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the territory of Nebraska. Three on the committee that dealt with it favored the bill and two regretted its introduction, fearing it was introduced for political ambition.
It’s unclear how many slaves or slave owners lived in Nebraska, but any reports cite low numbers compared with southern states. In 1859, William Taylor introduced a bill to prohibit slavery in the territory, saying, “There is no distinction in principle between holding one human being in bondage and 10,000.”
In 1860, Crook said, 12 slaves were reported in the Nebraska City region, and the Nebraska News, published there, was pro-slavery. J. Sterling Morton, she said, wrote flaming pro-slavery editorials.
The Nebraska Territory did not ban slavery until 1861, because the appointed territorial governor at the time, Samuel Black, the son of a Presbyterian minister, twice vetoed the bill in 1860 and 1861.
Crook said that as a historian, she believes it is important for Nebraskans to understand the state’s role in slavery, including its participation in the underground railroad, a network of safe houses used in the 1800s to get slaves to free states.
Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers said the fact that Pedersen introduced the resolution may cause it to have more impact than if he had.
The resolution will be referred to a committee for a public hearing, said Speaker Mike Flood. If it comes out of the committee, there’s a good chance it will be debated by the Legislature by the end of the session, he said.
Reach JoAnne Young at 473-7228 or jyoung@journalstar.com.