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Episode #2221
An Apology for Slavery
Brown:The North Carolina State Legislature recently passed a measure apologizing for the state’s role in slavery and its lasting effects. Many citizens are now wondering how far this will towards healing and how it might impact future legislative actions. We’ll explore these questions with two members of our general assembly next on Black Issues Forum.
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Brown: Good afternoon and welcome to Black Issues Forum. I am Natalie Bullock Brown. Following the lead of lawmakers in Virginia in April both chambers of the legislature passed measures apologizing for slavery. But before the resolutions passed passionate arguments about the merits of the measures abounded on both sides of the aisle. Today we are honored to have two members of the North Carolina General Assembly with us who will help to shed light on the vision behind the resolution, the significance of it and what caused so much discussion on the House and Senate floors. It is my pleasure to welcome Representative Larry Womble, a primary sponsor on the House resolution 1311 that “Expressed the General Assembly’s profound regret for the institution and lasting effects of slavery.” And we also have Senator Eddie Goodall. Senator Goodall supported the Senate resolution. Welcome, both of you to Black Issues Forum. I want to start off just by trying to understand a little bit about the vision behind the resolution and I am going to start with you, Representative Womble. What was it you were trying to accomplish by introducing the resolution and being a part of the sponsorship of it?
Womble: Well, first of all I want to thank those co-sponsors who signed on the bill with me when I decided to introduce the bill on the House side. There were many reasons why I wanted to do this and they are not in priority. One is we must set history straight. Number two we must tell the truth and be accurate. Number three although it is an ugly chapter in the state of North Carolina history it is still a chapter and it must be exposed and it must be taught and it must be done in the right way. The other reason of it is I was always taught when I was a little boy growing up, you be responsible for your actions. So the state participated in slavery, the state made money off of slavery, the state had laws about slavery. So it was the state government that did this so the state government should be responsible. And then another way—we are talking about one North Carolina. We must have a one North Carolina, not only in word but we must have one North Carolina in deed. And this is the first step down that long road to becoming a one North Carolina so we can heal. One of the things we must do is we first must admit that we did this and then we must heal and on the road to reconciliation.
Brown: And, Senator Goodall, why did you feel it was a good idea to support this resolution on the Senate side?
Goodall: Let me mention sections II and III of that bill and then come back to the direct apology for slavery. Section II had to do with asking institutions, encouraging institutions rather to promote racial reconciliation. In other words, making us, we are here now. We weren’t here then but we are here now so we can do that. And the third part was encouraging people to recognize the humanity of all human beings. Again, we are here now and we can do that.
But I support the section 2 of the bill which was the direct apology for slavery. And apology by the institution of the Senate of state government and that’s a difference. I got a lot of email from people saying, “Well, you can’t apologize for something you weren’t part of or I wasn’t part of.” And I thought through that. I tried to think through that and if I can just share a little bit about how I came to reconcile that and I have talked to Representative Womble about this. But people were saying they had a problem with it. They didn’t feel they were responsible for slavery and that therefore we shouldn’t make an apology. And I wondered myself why I felt—I felt some angst. Some uncertainty within about apologizing for something I didn’t do. It kind of goes back to when I had fights with my little brother and I was the bigger one so I always had to make the apology. And my wife is a psychology major at UNC-C in graduate school. And she explained that by saying that anytime we say something we may not mean, even if we kind of support it. If we are not—when I apologize for slavery I am not really apologizing because I have no idea or association with slavery. So that does give one some uncertainty. And she explained it and she said that was natural. I think what some people thought Representative Womble, is when they said that they were upset. They thought they might have guilt. And they were saying, “Well, why should I have guilt?” Well, they weren’t. They were just saying something they didn’t mean directly because they didn’t have the association. So when I though through that and understood that, that made me more comfortable and I have said this to several people, I said, “That’s why some people feel uncomfortable about it.” However, I am white so I have what they have that called invisible veil, my whiteness is not as apparent to me because in society my color doesn’t make as much difference as it might if one is black. And that blackness makes more of a difference. So a black person is going to look at this apology in a different context and that’s what I am recognizing and assuming because, of course, we have white and black sponsors but we supported that and I think that’s important. That’s a long answer but I wanted not to just vote yes and press the button. I wanted to think through that issue so I could explain myself very clearly.
Womble: The other thing we must consider, not because it’s the political decision to do, not because it’s a social decision to do and not because it is an acceptable decision. It was the right decision and right is right. And my grandmother who didn’t have but a third grade education always taught me right is right and right won’t wrong nobody. So it was the right thing to do. The other thing about it is is to give those people some comfort level who said I personally didn’t do this. But we are not saying that you as a person need to respond with an apology. We said the government, the General Assemble at that time did that. But General Assembly is not here. So those of us in this General Assembly and 2006 and 2007 and 2008, we must do the right thing to correct that thing that the old General Assembly do because who would want to have human beings in bondage? Who would want to make a profit off of human beings? Who would want to have people reap the benefits and yet still the slaves are the ones that were doing all the work because let’s be for real. Not too long ago people of your color would not be sitting in this studio and do an interview simply why? Because of the pigmentation of your skin. You are very capable, you are very able, you are very professional. But why should we be held back just because of the pigmentation of our skin? That’s what slavery has done and the vestiges of slavery are still living with us today even when not too long ago when we had what we call Jim Crow laws. Those laws are still with us today in an indirect way.
Brown: Well, let me get Senator Goodall back in here and I want to understand what—how can this resolution on both sides legislatively address the vestiges of slavery and of racism that Representative Womble is referring to?
Goodall: Well, I am not sure I can answer that. The first step sometimes in recognizing a problem is to write it down or to say it. Sometimes when you have a problem if you write the problem down that’s just the first step in solving it. And I think this is by having it in a document, an official document, it means a lot to a lot of people. So that’s a start.
Brown: And Representative Womble, what do you hope to see happen with this resolution, legislatively that could actually interact some of the vestiges situations?
Womble: Well, as I said before, this is just a first step. The apology, we first have to admit that we have done something wrong on a group of people and the state of North Carolina has finally admitted that we did something wrong on our people which had not done anything, they had not broken any law, they were not criminals and they were being held in bondage. So that is a big part. Because for so long we were living in a state of denial. Now we have admitted that we did it, we admitted that it was wrong and we apologized for us doing that. Now the apology is good. It’s the first step. It’s like what Nelson Mandela was doing in South Africa. Now we got to go down the road of healing. We got to go down the road of reconciliation. How do you do that? Try to correct these other things that was an outgrowth of slavery.
Brown: Well, let’ s get to that. Because we have a—there are several bills that are pending on both the House and Senate sides. One of them is House Bill 298 which deals with state contracts and slavery profits and it is an act that requires companies entering into contracts with state departments to examine their records for evidence of participation in or profit from slavery. Tell me a little bit about that and I would like to hear from both of you and what you think that might do.
Womble: That’s another one of my bills. House Bill 298 along with the apology bill. That bill was given permission to be read on the floor and it was assigned to a committee. That bill has been assigned to a committee but the speaker has held that bill up. And the only thing that bill does is that those companies, those agencies, those organizations who are doing business with the state, you got a contract with state you are getting state money, public money. And at the same time, how did you get started in this kind of business? We find out that many of those companies and organizations that are doing business with the state and got state contracts, they got started off the backs of slavery. So they are making profit off of that and yet and still they are using public money to continue that profit that they are making in that business. My bill just simply says if you are doing that then you ought to expose it. You ought to let it be known that you made your profit from it or either you have profited from it in the past. Some companies have already come forward and admitted that. Wachovia Banks for one example, has already. Chase Manhattan Bank is another one that has already come forward. I think the university system of North Carolina to some degree has said that. So that is just another step to make sure we rectify and correct and make sure this whole story be told. We are not only telling a part of the story. As ugly as the chapter is it is still a chapter and my friend, Senator Goodall, I must commend him for signing onto the apology bill. And I know it was not an easy thing for his to do. But at the same time it is the right thing to do.
Brown: Well, Senator Goodall, what do you think about House Bill 298 and what it might be able to accomplish?
Goodall: I am not as sure about that bill as I am about the slavery bill. In theory it’s saying the same thing. It’s saying the same thing for those companies that we did for the institution. But I don’t know what good that does. I don’t know where that energy goes and what’s produced from that. Obviously people managing the companies weren’t involved and the institutions probably all the corporations that were around earlier participated in it at least the vestiges of slavery if not slavery. So I just think it might create more wounds that are still healing over a period of time that you don’t want to forget the wounds. You and I understand the injury occurred. But I still think we can heal and I just disagree with my colleague that that would be the way to start to continue the healing.
Brown:Well, let me move on to another bill that is sort of in the—it’s definitely in the same vein. It has the same spirit as the House Bill 298. And this is—there are actually—there is Senate and a House bill dealing with sterilization compensation and these acts, one is Senate Bill 1368 and one is the House Bill 296. They provide compensation or they are designed to provide compensation to people who were sterilized through the state’s eugenic sterilization program which I understand took place between the years of 1920 and I believe as recently as 1974. I want to stay with you, Senator Goodall, what about this particular bill and its ability to possibly deal with some of the vestiges.
Goodall: Well, certainly there, we are talking about personal injuries and I am not a personal—I am not an attorney and don’t understand too much about personal injury law but we know that when people are harmed and victimized there is either criminal act or a civil charge or a criminal charge and you have to be accountable for that. So I am not—I apologize for not being as knowledgeable as I should be. And, boy, when I read that that was happening as late as the '70s I was shocked because I thought it was earlier. But I don’t know as much about that issue but there certainly is some more basis there for direct, again, injury as a result of that. And, again, I just apologize for not knowing enough about that. And the laws about how it might apply to a generation ago or, again, I guess these people are still living.
Womble:Yeah, some of them are still living. Out of 7,000, 3,00 still live.
Brown: Well, Representative Womble, I believe this is also another one of your bills. So talk about it. Tell us about it.
Womble: Yes, this is another bill that I have filed. To give you just a brief snapshot. Back in 2003 a professor by the name of Joanna Shawn [ph] was in the archives, by accident stumbled upon these records where North Carolina—because they were hidden away. Locked away. Nobody knew about it. That North Carolina did something that Communist countries very seldom do or either Third World countries as we like to say, sterilized its own people. And on top of that they were children. Ten, eleven, and twelve years old. North Carolina sterilized them. And that was done—my bill, when I found out about that I put a bill in 203 to take the law off the books. Strange as it was the law was still on the books, that the North Carolina could still come into your house, forcibly take you or your children out, sterilize you and bring you back. Many of those operations were not professional operations. Many of those operations were butchered and they still have got people who are walking around here now with their insides all messed up. North Carolina state government did that. And what they did is that, okay, we can come and take you or your child out of your house without your permission because of what they might become, because they might be feeble minded or they may be a drain on society or they are not from a certain society level. And as a result sterilized you and that means that your bloodline was stopped. A whole lot of people thought that that was a conspiracy, it was just an excuse to wipe out the black race, the African American race because if we could stop your bloodline, if we could kill you in the womb then there would be no more Johnsons, there would be no more Williams and your life history was stopped right there in the womb. Come to find out, that kind of mentality came from Hitler, came from Germany and they brought it over here first in 1907. But North Carolina participated really in 1929 and they had the first one in 1932, ’33. We have sterilized in the state of North Carolina alone almost 8,000 children and that was done from 1930s to the 1970s. So the law was on the book. First thing I had to do was take the law off the book and that was unanimous. I got the law off the book. North Carolina can no longer forcibly sterilize anybody. Now the next thing is those that you did sterilize you owe an obligation to them because you have destroyed their family, you have butchered them up and to me it’s like genocide. When you do a group of people like that. And that North Carolina was responsible, North Carolina should do something about it. So I out a bill, a second bill in. The first bill was to take the law off the book. The second bill was you must compensate, I don’t like the word reparations, but you must compensate these people for what you have done to them.
Brown: Now you entered this bill into the books in 2003?
Womble: No, the bill I entered in 2003 was to take the law off the books.
Brown: So how long has this bill--?
Womble: Now in 2004 is when I first put in the compensation bill. Again, that bill was hijacked also. They would not let that bill come to the floor. I must say to the governor’s credit, the governor was one of the first governors in this nation to issue a formal apology and that’s good. And we brought two of those victims in here, Ms. Jessie and Ms. Ramirez and the governor signed a bill and take the law off the books and apologized. The thing about the compensation bill is it provides money. Now there is no amount of money you can give these victims for what you have done. You have destroyed their families, you have destroyed the legacy. There is no more people to be born out of that family and then you committed genocide on these people for no reason. They had not broken any laws. They were children. So you ought to be responsible for compensating them. Now is there a dollar figure? Sure, I had to put a dollar figure in the bill. But most of the victims say no amount of money.
Brown: Well, let me ask Senator Goodall. There has been some talk and actually I believe that you spoke with Esther Vida [ph] on Legislative Week in Review about reparations for slavery. How do you feel about reparations or compensation for the victims of the sterilization act?
Goodall: Well, again, I think it’s a little different in that we have some general principles of statute of limitations in that crimes committed by others or after a certain period of time, from a practical standpoint, I guess a legal standpoints aren’t enforceable. Again, these people are still living so, again, I am not as familiar with what actually happened and of course there were some whites, too. I am not sure, I think there is a much smaller number as I understand it as I have read. A much smaller number. And so maybe they were targeting a race. Certainly the indigents, certainly at a minimum. But, again, I just don’t know about the subject. And I am not trying to avoid it. I just don’t know enough about the subject, what was actually done to say bluntly whether or not I think they should receive $50,000 or $10,000 or zero. I am not sure. I am just saying that is a recent—a relatively recent event. And the laws ought to apply to those people whatever the law is in that area.
Brown: Well, I want to let our viewers know that we will be—we will have the interview that Representative Womble and Senator Goodall participated in with Esther Vida on North Carolina Legislative Week in Review on our website. So if you are interested in checking that out it will be available. But I want to move on to another bill, it’s House Bill 752 which is designed to implement the 1898 commission report and it’s an act to implement recommendations of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission by establishing a commission to develop legislation for a restructuring and development authority provide incentives for business development of areas impacted by the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot and to increase minority home ownership in impacted areas. Now is this another one of your bills?
Womble: That bill is by Representative Thomas Wright out of Wilmington. If you know the history Wilmington was one of the first cities to have affluent blacks to live after the Civil War. As a matter of fact it was called the black Wall Street and they were architects, doctors, lawyers, ministers, educators. And they began to take positions in that city legally. But there were a group of people who were there didn’t think that they deserved it. So to make a long story short they had a riot and killed many of those people there in Wilmington and ran them out of town. In other words they committed murder. And took over those positions that those people, African Americans had rightfully won and worked for. And it was called the Wilmington Race Riot, another ugly chapter in the history of North Carolina. And as a result there was a special commission formed to address that race riot where many of those black people were killed and many of them—their property was just taken. I mean, they just took it over and as a result that is still lingering there. We need to get that cleared up. That bill has already been filed and it has been read and it’s been sent off to a committee.
Brown: So is the likelihood pretty—the likelihood that that bill will pass pretty high?
Womble: I am hoping and as another good friend of mine Jesse Jackson used to say, keep hope alive. So I am hoping that it will just like my sterilization bill, that money that I got in there, $172 million, I hope that that will pass one day and we are doing some things and I must give credit to Dr. Barbara—Ms. Barbara Pullen Smith, Department of Health and Human Services. For the first time in over four years we are getting some movement on that sterilization. On Tuesday, June 19th at 5:30 we are having a big unveiling of some of those commission recommendations. One, is that we have a display. We have a display that is going to be open for the first—no other state has done this in the entire United States relating to sterilization. And it’s going to be interactive like the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, those victims are going to be here on June 19th so you can feel them and talk to them and see them and shake their hand. And that display is going to be taking all across the state of North Carolina June 19th at the Museum of History at 5:30.
Brown: Okay. Well, Senator Goodall, I am going to give you the last word. I just would love to hear maybe what your constituents have been saying about some of these bills as they have become aware of them. And what they are urging you to do or not to do. How are they supporting you or what are they saying to you?
Goodall: Well, let me say with respect to what the Representative was just talking about I think this is a good example, Representative Womble, the Wilmington race issue of having the legislation because it has caused people to look at history. I was born in North Carolina but moved out and came back in high school and so I missed the North Carolina history but I am not so sure I would have learned it had I been there. So I have learned more about the race riots in 1898 than I have before, and learned it in the General Assembly. I think, Natalie, that I felt good after having passed the resolution, again, maybe not everybody agrees with me but I think it’s a positive thing, it’s a positive statement. There are things in the bill that say let’s go forward and let’s—the things I mentioned. So I feel very positive about it. There wasn’t too much contention in the General Assembly about it. There were some people out there that just weren’t close to us and not understanding exactly what we were trying to do that said don’t apologize for me. But we really weren’t. We were apologizing for the institution of the state government and it will sink in maybe and I don’t think it’s a big issue with the public. I think people are fine with it and I think we did the right thing as your grandmother said.
Womble: Yeah, my grandmother.
Brown: Right won’t wrong anyone, right?
Womble: Yeah.
Brown: Well, I would like to thank Representative Larry Womble and Senator Edward Goodall for sharing their time and perspectives with us. And if you would like to obtain a transcript of today’s show, please visit the Black Issues Forum website at www.unctv.org/bif. We would also like to hear your feedback and suggestions so send us an email or you can call the BIFline at 919-549-7167. Be sure to meet us back here each Sunday afternoon at 4:30 for more compelling conversation. For Black Issues Forum, I am Natalie Bullock Brown reminding you to be encouraged no matter what. Have a good one.
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