Updated at 12:30 p.m. with Senate vote WASHINGTON (CNN) - The
U.S. Senate on Thursday was scheduled to consider a resolution
apologizing to African-Americans for the wrongs of slavery. The
nonbinding resolution sponsored by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, is
similar to a House resolution adopted last year that
acknowledged the wrongs of slavery but offered no reparations.
Several states have passed similar resolutions, but the House
resolution was the first time a branch of the federal government
did so. Harkin's resolution "acknowledges the fundamental
injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery, and Jim
Crow laws," and "apologizes to African-Americans on behalf of
the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed
against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and
Jim Crow laws." Jim Crow, or Jim Crow laws, were state and local
laws enacted mostly in the Southern and border states of the
United States between the 1870s and 1965, when African-Americans
were denied the right to vote a