Lynching Roundup

None of the 13 remaining senators who haven't cosponsored the Senate's apology for lynching added their names to the bill on Friday, but that gives us an opportunity to look at a couple of other aspects of the issue. Even the Chicago Tribune, long known as a by-the-books rock-ribbed Republican newspaper, chided the anti-anti-lynching senators on its editorial page:

But even with its action Monday, there is something unsettling, something incomplete. The resolution was passed by a voice vote because some Southern senators didn't want to go on record apologizing for past sins of their people.

An expression of regret over lynching is controversial today?

When called on the carpet by The Tennessean in Nashville ("Sen. Lamar Alexander was one of 16 senators who did not join in when the Senate apologized for its failure to pass a federal law against lynchings."), Alexander was explicit in his refusal to sign on. He prefers to look forward, he says, and with that in mind, the day after Mary Landrieu originally introduced her resolution of apology, Alexander introduced his own resolution commemorating Black History Month (assuming, I guess, that there's no better way to look forward than remembering where we've been). Alexander collected 35 cosponsors, many of whom also joined Landrieu in cosponsoring the apology, but four months after the end of Black History Month, Alexander's resolution hasn't even struggled out of committee. Alexander's spokesperson told The Tennessean that the senator would've been happy to have voted for the resolution if it had only come up for a roll call vote. I guess he can blame his fellow senator from Tennessee, Majority Leader Bill Frist, for avoiding a roll call vote and forcing him into the anti-anti-lynching dark side.

Neither of the Republican senators from Mississippi, the state with the most recorded lynchings, were willing to cosponsor. Thad Cochran told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, "I don't feel that I should apologize for the passage or the failure to pass any legislation by the U.S. Senate." That's an explanation, I suppose, but in previous years he was happy to cosponsor bills apologizing for wrongs committed against American Indians and Japanese Americans. Presumably passing on the senator's reasoning, The Clarion-Ledger wrote, "The difference is the lynching resolution was not an apology on behalf of the federal government but just the Senate." So apparently Cochran is willing to apologize for the wrongs of some of the institutions of which he is a part but not others. The Hattiesburg American, calling this "a missed opportunity," also noted the disparity.

Frankly, we don't understand why Cochran and Lott - and 13 other senators - would forgo the opportunity to right a wrong that has hung like a dark cloud over this chamber for decades.

As individuals, Cochran and Lott are not culpable for actions committed years ago by their predecessors.

However, the institution which they now serve is culpable.

So why not join with the vast majority of senators who recognize this fact and endorse an apology?

Given Mississippi's deplorable history with respect to lynchings, it is deeply disconcerting that the Magnolia State's two U.S. senators chose not to support the resolution.

Trent Lott so far has made no comment one way or another, at least as far as I've been able to find. Of course, maybe he thinks that if only Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948, the Senate wouldn't have had to make an apology.

This would be a good place to note that anyone in or around Chicago can visit Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, a touring exhibition now on display at the Chicago Historical Society. These are the photos that Mary Landrieu saw in the book Without Sanctuary that inspired her to develop her apology resolution in the first place.