However, I am very proud to stand here with my colleague from Virginia and to note that the other Senator from Louisiana, a Republican, stands with me. We are united in our support of this resolution to offer the sincere apology to try to bring to light the facts about lynching, to encourage people to seek the truth.

   I said earlier today people are entitled to their own opinions. But they are not entitled to their own facts. And the facts about this terrible domestic terrorism and rash of terrorism stand today and will not be pushed aside. It is with humility but with pride that I support and put forth before the Senate today, with the Senator from Virginia, this resolution.

   The junior Senator from Louisiana is an original cosponsor of this resolution, as are a number of sons of the South. Furthermore, in Louisiana's legislature in Baton Rouge, a very similar resolution passed today. Thus, the people of Louisiana can truly say we are trying to open a dialogue, and bring closure to a bitter history.

   This is a particularly important step for the South. For while lynchings occurred in 46 of the 50 States, and people of all races were affected, it would be a mischaracterization to suggest that this was not a weapon of terror most often employed in the South, and most often against African Americans. That is why I am so glad to be joined in this endeavor by the junior Senator from Virginia, Mr. Allen. He has been instrumental in getting us to this point of consideration, and I truly appreciate his hard work and dedication to our joint effort.

   It is also important to acknowledge the bravery of those who took personal risks long before this day in opposition to lynching. First and foremost, we must acknowledge the pioneering journalism of Ida B. Wells. Though personally threatened with death, Ms. Wells continued to document these outrages before justice, so that future generations might know the history of this era. It should be noted that it was her example that led other women, such as Jane Adams, to join in her fight against lynching. In fact, women, generally, are viewed as having played a major role in the antilynching campaign.

   There was tremendous political courage shown in Georgia. Georgia was the first State to adopt antilynching legislation in 1893. Yet, the State continued to experience a disproportionate share of lynching attacks. However, starting with Governor Northen in 1890, several of Georgia's Governors fought lynch violence in their State resolutely. In many cases it came at personal cost. Gov. William Atkinson, having left the Governor's mansion, personally challenged a lynch mob of 2,000 people in his home town. It is a record of political leadership upon which Georgia can now proudly reflect.

   Another great voice in the antilynching crusade was Congressman George White of Tarboro, NC. He was the last former slave to serve in Congress--ending his congressional career in 1901. He introduced an anti-lynching bill to stem the rising tide of violence, with 107 attacks having occurred in 1899. While his bill was defeated in the House of Representatives, he initiated one of its first political considerations.

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   Because of the courage of these and other individuals, by the 1930s public opinion had turned against lynching. In 1938, a national survey showed that 70 percent of Americans supported the enactment of an antilynching statute. Even in the South, at least 65 percent of these surveyed favored its passage. In short, even if southern Senators had the political latitude to endorse Federal antilynching legislation, most seemed to be too mired in personal prejudice to accept that fact. Where these southern Senators were concerned, justice was mostly deaf, but never color blind.

   In closing, I would like to acknowledge several members of my staff: Jason Matthews, Kathleen Strottman, Nash Molphus, Sally Richardson, and many others, who have helped, along with others, put this resolution before the Senate today.

   I want to end with one of the most moving comments that I read in the book ``Without Sanctuary,'' as I have read excerpts from publications and magazines and newspapers about this situation, and have been reading them now for months on this issue. It is taken from McClure's Magazine, in 1905, by Ray Stannard Baker, who wrote about one of the lynchings--I think it was of a Mr. Curtis. I will submit that for the RECORD. He says:

   So the mob came finally, and cracked the door of the jail with a railroad rail. The jail is said to be the strongest in Ohio, and having seen it, I can well believe the report is true. But steel bars have never yet kept out a mob; it takes something much stronger: human courage backed up by the consciousness of being right.

   Mr. President, the Senate was wrong not to act. It was wrong to not stand in the way of the mob. We lacked courage then. We perhaps do not have all the courage we need today to do everything we should do, but I know we can apologize today. We can be sincere in our apology to the families, to their loved ones, and perhaps now we can set some of these victims and their families free and, most of all, set our country free to be better than it is today. However great it is, we can most certainly improve.

   I yield the floor for my colleague, Senator Allen, from Virginia.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.

   Mr. ALLEN. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of the resolution of apology that Senator Landrieu of Louisiana and I have submitted. I thank the Senator from Louisiana for her leadership on this matter. It has been a pleasure to work with her on this and other matters, but this is undoubtedly the most historic.

   I got involved in this because I received a letter from Dick Gregory. I know Members of the Senate received thousands of letters and e-mails and phone calls. He asked me to join with Senator Landrieu last year on this. He was signing this letter on behalf of Dr. E. Faye Williams, Martin Luther King III, Dr. C. DeLores Tucker, and others. But he asked me. He said:

   I respectfully ask you to serve as an original cosponsor of the Landrieu resolution. ..... We realize life will go on and your world will not be affected if you choose to do nothing.

   That struck me as: Well, I am going to choose to do something. He asked me to sponsor this on the Republican side ``because it is the right thing to do.''

   That says it all, really, when we see an affront to the basic principles that were enunciated in the spirit of this country in the Declaration of Independence. When we seceded from Britain, we talked about freedom, liberty, and justice, trying to constitute that here in this country, fighting for so many years to free ourselves from the monarch to construct a free and just society, with freedom of religion, freedom of expression, due process of law, equal protection, as well as the rule of law.

   In so many of those key pillars of a free and just society, when one looks at what happened with the lynchings, the torchings, the whippings to death of people because of their race, because of their religion, because of their ethnicity, the cold-hearted hatred of it, and the countenance of it--and the fact that this wonderful Senate, with these historic desks where you can pull out drawers and see some of the great minds, the great orators of our history who had argued magnificently and inspiringly things on this Senate floor--you see there were times in our history when Senators ended up looking the other way. They did not take a stand. They turned their eyes, they turned their heads when something positive could have been done to disapprove, deplore, and obviously pass a law to make lynching a Federal crime.

   This Chamber is part of our representative democracy. We are to represent the ``Will of the People.'' We are also to represent those foundational principles of our country. Unfortunately, that has not always occurred.

   Daniel Webster, standing in the Old Senate Chamber, told his colleagues in 1834 that a ``representative of the people is a sentinel on the watchtower of liberty.'' Indeed, the Senate has been a great watchtower of liberty. Many individuals have been outstanding orators, brilliant men and women in the world's greatest deliberative body. Unfortunately, this August body has a stain on its history, and that stain is lynching. Americans died from hangings, from whippings, from a torch, from evil hearts outside of this Chamber.

   Three-fourths of the victims of these injustices--and these have been documented and researched by the respected archives of the Tuskegee Institute--were perpetrated against African Americans. Mr. President, 4,749 Americans died by lynching, whipping, torturing, and mutilation, starting in 1882. Many times these lynchings were not lone acts by a few white men. Rather, they were angry gangs, as Senator Landrieu talked about. They were occasions, they were events, mobs who were whipped into frenzies by the skewed mentalities of what is right and what is wrong.

   These cruel and unjust acts are so contrary to the rule of law, due process, and equal protection that we pride ourselves on in the United States. Again, three-quarters of the victims were African Americans. But this hatred also was perpetrated against those who are

   Asian, primarily Chinese; against American Indians; against Latinos; against Italians; and against people who are Jewish; and others who found themselves unprotected.

   Mr. President, Senator Landrieu and I, as well as my colleagues who are joining us right now in the Chamber--Senator Kerry and Senator Pryor--are rising this evening to make history, to try to right history. We are standing to give our heartfelt and formal apology, not for what anybody here presently in the Senate had done, but what this body, this continuous body, failed to do in the past. And it is an apology to all the victims and descendants of those who were lynched, who were whipped to death, who were torched to death, who were mutilated to death.

   Many of the victims' descendants are currently watching in our gallery. This is a somber, not happy time but also one of reflection. It is one of the failures of the Senate to take action when action was most needed. It was a time where we were trying to make sure all Americans had equal opportunity. However, that clearly was not the case.

   Senator Landrieu showed those photographs. These were vile killings. They captivated front-page headlines. They drew crowds with morbid curiosity and left thousands and thousands, mostly African Americans, hanging from trees or bleeding to death from the lashing of whips. By not acting, this body failed to protect the liberty of which Daniel Webster spoke.

   One of those who suffered this awful fate was an African American named Zachariah Walker, from Coatsville, VA. In 1911, Walker was dragged from a hospital bed where he was recovering from a gunshot wound. Accused of killing a white man--which he had claimed was in self-defense--Walker was burned alive at the stake without trial.

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   The Senate, of course, failed to pass any of the nearly 200 antilynching bills introduced in Congress during the first half of the 20th century. Three bills passed the House of Representatives, but they were filibustered on the Senate floor. In addition, seven Presidents had asked that such laws be passed.

   One might ask: What impact would such a Federal law have had? Would that have saved all 4,749 people who were lynched, torched, mutilated, or whipped to death? Probably not in all cases because some had occurred before such bills were passed.

   However, it would have sent a message, as it was read in newspapers across the land--whether in small towns, big cities, or in the country--that as a nation, we must stop such horrendous injustices being perpetrated on people, that we stand for the rule of law and equal protection and due process. By the Senate not acting, guess what message was sent. It sent the message that there are some people who may not think this is a good idea, that the Senate apparently condones it because they failed to act, notwithstanding the request of Presidents and the passage of such bills in the House of Representatives.

   Why was Federal legislation needed? Because out of these 4,749 injustices of lynching, torching, and whipping, only 1 percent were prosecuted. In many cases, local authorities were complicit and involved in these cruel acts of injustice. Virginia was one of the States that actually passed an antilynching law which means that while there were 100 such lynchings, torchings, and burnings--and 100 is too many--compared to other States in the South, that was less. I have learned a lot since we introduced this bill. North Carolina's Governors, in the early 1900s, protested against such mob violence in their State and, therefore, they had less than in other States.

   Another reason I got involved is to carry on the tradition of a man named Champ Clark, a Senator from Missouri whose son was actually one of my mentors when I first became involved in organized politics. He moved to the Charlottesville area when I was Governor, and I appointed him to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors. Sadly, he died a few years ago.

   I found that his father, Senator Champ Clark of Missouri, posted photos--similar to those Senator Landrieu had--in our cloakrooms, of mutilated bodies. I will read from a document entitled, ``The U.S. Senate Filibusters Against Federal Anti-Lynching Legislation: The Case For A Formal Apology.'' It states:

   Unlike in 1935, when senators killed anti-lynching legislation in just six days, the 1937-38 filibuster took six weeks. One reason: in April 1937, a Mississippi mob, in collusion with local law enforcement, removed two African Americans from their jail cells, whipped them with chains, gouged out their eyes with ice picks, and put them to death with acetylene blowtorches. Senator Champ Clark of Missouri posted photos of these victims' mutilated bodies in the Senate cloakroom with a caption, ``There have been No arrests, No indictments and No convictions for any one of the lynchers. This is NOT a rape case.

   One month later, a mob in Georgia, consisting partly of women and teenage girls, forced its way into a funeral home and seized the body of a lynched twenty-four-year-old African American. After dumping the body into the trunk of a car and carrying it through town in a horn-blowing motorcade, the mob took it to a baseball field and burned it.

   Horror-struck by these incidents, Senators sought to invoke cloture. If nothing else, they recognized that not only were African Americans in high lynch states at risk, but their own constituents were unprotected if they were black and traveling through these areas. Sadly, after courageously battling on the Senate floor for six weeks, they abandoned their effort to obtain cloture.

   Six weeks with all this and no action. Historians will no doubt disagree as to a single reason why Senators blocked antilynching legislation in the 1920s through the 1940s. My desire is not to get into motivations. Regardless of their reasoning, one reason that I can see from all this is that there is no reason. There is no rationale. They were clearly wrong. They turned their eyes. They turned their heads. That is why it is so important that we set aside these hours to apologize for this lack of action by the Senate--because there was no reason. There was no tolerance. There was an acceptance and a condonation of vile, hate-filled activity.

   Thankfully, justice in our Nation has moved forward and left such despicable acts history. In ignoring the protections of our Founding Fathers, that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, the Senate turned its back on our foundational principles of justice and freedom.

   I look around the Chamber and note that all of us serve with a great deal of honor and integrity, and many have throughout our history.

   As Ephesians teaches us: All things that are reproved are made manifest by light. This apology has been a long time in coming.

   I thank my colleague, Senator Landrieu, for her tireless efforts in getting this resolution agreed to. I thank also leader FRIST for making the legislation a priority and taking time on the Senate schedule to recognize the significance of the moment.

   I thank the cosponsors. We have nearly 80 cosponsors and will most likely have more by the end of the day. They recognized the importance of a resolution and knew that the Senate owed an apology to the victims of lynching, their families and descendants. I also thank James Allen, as Senator Landrieu has, for his authorship of ``Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America,'' for bringing to us these horrendous, but important, issues and making us react, recognizing how violent

   and hate-filled they were.

   I also thank Janet Langhart Cohen and Mark Planning for their spirited leadership and teamwork in getting support for this resolution. I want to share with my colleagues some excerpts from Ms. Cohen's comments.

   While some members of the Senate question why so many of us have been seeking the passage of this official expression of apology at this time, the real question is why the Senate action was not forthcoming decades ago.

   This is important for us to understand the meaning for those who are descendants of victims of lynching and torture and whipping.

   She continues:

   Consider the scope and depth of the crimes committed against humanity: more than four thousand men and women were hung from trees, many of them disembowled, their limbs and organs amputated, and then set on fire. These heinous acts ..... were designed to terrify African American citizens, remind them that they have fewer rights and protections than animals, and drive them from their land--all while serving as entertainment for white society.

   The point is, this was to intimidate people.

   Ms. Cohen says that she comes to the Senate today--she is in the gallery with many other descendants--for many reasons. She writes:

   As a Black woman, as the spouse of a former Senator, and as one who had a family member lynched, I need to bear witness to an act of decency that has been deferred, indeed filibustered, for far too long.

   We know she is here with many others and recognize that it has been filibustered far too long.

   She also states that:

   It's important to remind the American people about the evil chapters in our history. It is the reason we construct museums in Washington and beyond, to hold up for all to see how capable we are of descending into the heart of darkness. It's important for us to look back into the past so that we can pledge never again to allow racial hatred to consume our ideals or humanity.

   President Bush, in his second inaugural address, stated:

   Our country must abandon all habits of racism because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time.

   She concludes with these statements:

   An apology, I concede, will do nothing for the thousands of people who perished during what has been called ``the Black Holocaust.'' It cannot repair the battered souls of their survivors. It is, after all, only a symbolic act. Our symbols, however, the Eagle, Old Glory, Lady Liberty, to mention but a few, are but short hand narratives of who we are as Americans.

   It is through an acknowledgment of the Senate's abdication of its duty to protect and defend the rights of all American citizens that, perhaps, we can begin to understand the pain and anger that still lingers in

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   My friend and mentor, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said that ``the arc of history bends toward justice.''

   Today, as the Senate Members cast their historic votes, that arc dips closer to its destination.

   Signed, Janet Langhart Cohen.

   Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full letter be printed in the RECORD.

   There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

   June 13, 2005.

   First, I want to commend Senators George Allen and Mary Landrieu for their leadership in introducing Senate Resolution 39 and for their persistence in bringing it to a vote today. I also wish to express my profound gratitude to Mark Planning who has been indefatigable in his quest for the passage of this measure.

   While some members of the Senate question why so many of us have been seeking the passage of this official expression of apology at this time, the real question is why Senate action was not forthcoming decades ago.

   Consider the scope and depth of the crimes committed against humanity: more than four thousand men and women were hung from trees, many of them disemboweled, their limbs and organs amputated, and then set on fire. These heinous acts, carried out and protected under the claim of ``states rights'' were designed to terrify African-American citizens, remind them that they had fewer rights and protections than animals, and drive them from their land--all while serving as entertainment for white society.

   Picnics were even held by white communities so that those who claimed to be decent, law abiding citizens could witness and rejoice in the mutilation of those whose ancestors had been ripped from their homeland, separated from their families, sheared of their identities, brought in chains to America, and sold on the auction block as sub-human chattels.

   It is inconceivable that any person of reason or conscience, of any faith, Christian or non-Christian, could possibly tolerate such barbarism, such a display of pure evil. But people did, of course. They tolerated it and sanctioned it, not during the Dark Ages, but during my lifetime. And those who sanctioned it were not uneducated barbarians; they included men who held positions of office and honor at all levels of government, including the United States Senate. The parliamentary delaying tactics that currently are the subject of so much debate took place in the nation's Capital, on the floor of this hallowed institution.

   I have come to the United States Senate today for many reasons. As a Black woman, as the spouse of a former Senator, and as one who had a family member lynched, I need to bear witness to an act of decency that has been deferred, indeed filibustered, for far too long.

   I am told that some members of the Senate are not prepared to support this measure because they think that an official apology is too trivial, meaningless and irrelevant to the times in which we live.

   The passage of time can never remove the stain of institutionalized terrorism from our history or permit any public official to dismiss the pain of those who have lost family members to the savagery of lynch mobs as something unworthy of the Senate's agenda and deliberations.

   It's important to remind the American people about the evil chapters in our history. It is the reason we construct museums in Washington and beyond, to hold up for all to see how capable we are of descending into the heart of darkness. It's important for us to look back into the past so that we can pledge to never again allow racial hatred to consume our ideals or humanity.

   In his Second Inaugural Address, President Bush stated that, ``Our country must abandon all habits of racism because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time.'' These are noble words and they deserve to be acted upon as well as invoked.

   Finally, let me say that this Resolution is but a first step in the process of educating the American people about our history; of not allowing this part of our past to be reduced to a footnote, or glossed over and air brushed into oblivion.

   An apology will not erase the criminality that was once considered a cultural or regional privilege. An apology does not purport to serve as an absolution for the sins of the past.

   An apology, I concede, will do nothing for the thousands of people who perished during what has been called, ``the Black Holocaust. It cannot repair the battered souls of their survivors. It is, after all, only a symbolic act. Our symbols, however, the Eagle, Old Glory, Lady Liberty, to mention but a few, are but short hand narratives of who we are as Americans.

   It is through an acknowledgement of the Senate's abdication of its duty to protect and defend the rights of all of America's citizens, that, perhaps, we can begin to understand the pain and anger that still lingers in the hearts and minds of so many who have been deprived of the equality promised in our Constitution.

   My friend and mentor, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that, ``The arc of history bends towards justice.''

   Today, as the Senate members cast their historic votes, that arc dips closer to its destination.
JANET LANGHART COHEN.

   Mr. ALLEN. Mr. President, I am proud that this resolution will pass tonight. The Senate is going to be on record condemning the brutal atrocities that plagued our great Nation for over a century.

   I will close with the words of our resolution:

   Whereas, an apology offered in the spirit of true repentance moves the United States toward reconciliation and may become central to a new understanding, on which improved racial relations can be forged. Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the Senate--

   (1) apologizes to the victims of lynching for the failure of the Senate to enact anti-lynching legislation;

   (2) expresses the deepest sympathies and most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching, the ancestors of whom were deprived of life, human dignity, and the constitutional protections accorded all citizens of the United States; and

   (3) remembers the history of lynching, to ensure that these tragedies will be neither forgotten nor repeated.

   My colleagues, I ask you to join all of us in examining our history, learn from history, never again sit quietly, and never again turn one's head away when the ugly specter of racism, antisemitism, hate, and intolerance rises again. It is our responsibility to stand strong for freedom and justice.

   In the future, I am confident that this Senate will perform better than it has in the past. We will protect the God-given blessings of all people to life and liberty, regardless of their race, their ethnicity, or their religious beliefs. The Senate can do better; we have done better tonight. But the real measure of what we have learned when such acts occur in the future is, will this Senate rise and condemn it to protect those God-given liberties? I know that Senator Landrieu and I believe the Senate will rise appropriately.

   Mr. President, with that, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the previous agreement, the Senate now proceed to the vote on the pending resolution; I further ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding adoption of the resolution, the remaining time under the previous agreement remain available for Senators who wish to make statements, provided that any statements relating to the resolution appear prior to its adoption in the Congressional Record.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. BENNETT). Without objection, it is so ordered.

   Mr. ALLEN. I thank the Chair.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the resolution.

   The resolution (S. Res. 39) was agreed to.

   The preamble was agreed to.

   Mr. ALLEN. Thank you, Mr. President.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.

   Mr. KERRY. What is the status of the time? Is it under control, or is it just open?

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia and the Senator from Louisiana control the time.

   Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I will be happy to yield to the Senator from Massachusetts in just a moment. He has been very patient. As a cosponsor of the resolution that just passed, it is a privilege and it is appropriate for Senator Kerry to be one of the first Senators to speak upon its passage.

   I wish to just mention very briefly, because I am not sure he is going to be able to stay with us much longer, Mr. James Cameron has been with us all day. Mr. Cameron is 91 years old. He lives in Marion, IN. In 1930, when he was 16 years old, a mob dragged him from a cell at Grant County Jail and put a rope around his neck. He was accused of a murder and a rape. He was nowhere around when it occurred. His associates, Abe Smith and Thomas Schipp, were both lynched that night. A man in the crowd spared him by proclaiming that he, in fact, was innocent and should be let go. He then went on to live an extraordinary life without bitterness, with a lot of love. He has been married for 67 years, has 4 children and multiple grandchildren. Senator Evan Bayh, who serves in this body--when he was Governor of Indiana, he pardoned Mr. Cameron. But he

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   I yield the floor to Senator Kerry.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts is recognized.

   Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I start by thanking Senator Landrieu and Senator Allen for their leadership on this effort and for all those descendants of families who have been absolutely extraordinary in the way in which they relived their pain, brought it to the public view, kind of laid their hearts out on the table in a very real and emotional way--that has been a wonderful part of this process--and the way in which the book Jimmy Allen put together has helped to unleash a pain that was never lost, never forgotten by anybody, but never quite had a place to play itself out--until this public effort that is being made by the Senate.

   There is no small irony, I suspect, in the fact that the Senate is here sort of making good on what the Senate failed to do. I personally am struck by even, at this significant moment, the undeniable and inescapable reality that there are not 100 Senators as cosponsors. Maybe by the end of the evening there will be, but as we stand here with this resolution passed by voice vote, there are not.

   Moreover, all the people in the Senate and the press understand how we work here. It is critical that we take the step we are taking and have taken, but at the same time wouldn't it have been just that much more extraordinary and significant if we were having a recorded vote with all 100 Senators recording their votes? We are not.

   So even today, as we take this gigantic step, we are also saying to America that there is a journey still to travel. I don't want to diminish one iota--and I don't mean to because I believe what is happening here today is so significant, but at the same time, it has to give all of us a kind of kick in the rear end to get us out there to do that which is necessary, which gives fuller meaning to the words that are going to be expressed here and have been expressed here--most important, to give fuller meaning to the emotions that have been laid bare for all of America to understand better by the families who have come here to share this with us.

   I also join not just in thanking Mr. Cameron and Ms. Johnson, and others, but Janet Langhart, who is here with our former colleague and the former Secretary of Defense, Bill Cohen.

   We certainly appreciate her commitment to this effort and the meaning of this to her and to all of the families who have come here together.

   It is pretty incredible to think about it. Lynchings really replaced slavery. They came in the aftermath of slavery, around the 1880s. Between the 1880s and 1968--I have to pause when I think about that because I was already a young officer in the military. I had left college. I remember the early part of the 1960s devoted to the civil rights movement, the Mississippi voter registration drive. We were still recording lynchings during that period of time, but I did not know it, not in the sense that we know it today.

   I thought I knew history pretty well, but I will tell you, until I saw this array of photographs which then sparked my curiosity to read more about it, I had always thought, like most Americans, that a lynching was just slinging a rope over a branch of a tree and that was it. The story is so much more gruesome than that, so much more dark and horrendous as a moment in American history that it is really hard to believe it happened at all in our country, which is another reason it is so important that we are taking this step to remember.

   We have seen revisionism in almost every part of history, including the Holocaust. So it is good we are taking this step today, and it is good we have these photographs now brought together as a compilation of history, and it is good that the Senate is taking this effort tonight.

   It is extraordinary to think that 99 percent of the perpetrators of lynchings escaped any reach of the law whatsoever. It is incredible to think that almost 5,000 people are recorded as incidents, and how many are not recorded? How many went without the local authorities in each of those communities--who were already complicitous in what happened, standing by, permissive, turning away from basic human rights--how many of those incidents were not recorded?

   A lot of us have read a lot about World War II and the Holocaust and other moments of history where there is a knock on the door and life changes. But you have to stop and really think what it was like in all but four States in our country, not just for African Americans but for new people, for folks who had come here from other places to live the American dream. In some cases, they were not knocks, they were just angry mobs screaming and yelling with torches and running rampant through a household, dragging out people screaming. In other cases, there was a pretext, more polite, but it was never polite in what it ended up as.

   Lynchings were not just lynchings; they were organized torture. They were incidents of kinds of torture that defied imagination, about which you do not even want to talk, the kinds of things that any decent society ought to stand up against. People were literally tortured for sport in front of people, and crowds would cheer--bedlam. Children were brought to be spectators. Some of these photographs show kids standing there with their eyes wide open and adults standing beside them, who were supposed to be more responsible, glued to the horror they were witnessing.

   In the first half of the last century alone, in the 20th century, over 200 antilynching bills were introduced in the Congress--200. Three times, the House of Representatives passed antilynching legislation. Seven Presidents asked for this legislation to be passed. The Senate said no.

   So it is important that we are here today to apologize. Some people wonder what the effect of an apology is. We can understand that question being asked. This is sort of a day of reckoning for us as a country, it is a moment for the conscience of our country to be listened to by everybody. It is an embarrassingly and unforgivably late moment in coming, but we are addressing a stain on our history, and we are working to heal wounds across generations. I believe that is important. Some people might try to diminish that, but the very lack of unity I mentioned earlier, in fact, goes to show why this apology is so important and why we all have to keep moving in this direction.

   No words, obviously, are going to undo the horror of those 5,000 Americans losing their lives. No apology is going to just wipe away the memories of Mr. Cameron and others, though they have shown a greater graciousness of understanding than others even at this moment.

   The fact is that this resolution can be one more step in the effort for all of us to try to get over the divide that still exists between races and as a result of Jim Crow in this country, but only if we face the truth. It is the Bible that reminds us that it is the truth that sets us free. And so it is that we have to embrace it, commit ourselves to putting our hearts and our actions where our words have now preceded us. This should be an important step forward, but, frankly, it will only do that if we do not stop here.

   The truth is that it is not enough to face the horror of

   lynchings if we then just walk out of here and consciously turn away from legally separate and unequal schools in America. It is not enough to decry decades of refusing to use the force of law against lynchings if today we refuse to use the force of law to tear down the barriers that prevent people from voting, barriers in the economy, divisions in the health care system that works for too few of those who are in the minority in America.

   It is only by reconciling the past that we have to understand where we have to go in the future and get there. I remind my colleagues to remember the words of Julian Bond when he dedicated that beautiful, simple memorial in Montgomery, AL, to those who gave their lives for civil rights. He said it was erected as much to remember the dead as it was for those young people who cannot remember the period when the sacrifices began, with its small cruelties and monstrous injustices, its petty indignities and its death dealing in inequities. There are many too young to remember that from that seeming hopelessness, there arose a mighty movement, simple in its tactics, overwhelming in its impact. That is why we have to remember the period

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   We will never erase what Mr. Cameron or Mr. Wright and too many others went through, but we certainly can honor the legacy of these civil rights heroes and the martyrs who came before us by doing right by them and by the country. I hope this resolution will help us do that.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?

   Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I yield such time to the Senator from Illinois as he should use.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.

   Mr. OBAMA. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of this resolution. Before I make any further remarks, I would like to recognize Doria D. Johnson, and thank her for coming. She is from Evanston, IL. Ms. Johnson is the great, great-granddaughter of Anthony Crawford, a South Carolina farmer who was lynched nearly 100 years ago for the crime of being a successful Black farmer. I am sure that this day has special meaning for her, and for the other family members of those who were impacted by these great tragedies of the past. I thank her and others for being here today.

   Since America's darkest days of Jim Crow, separate but equal, fire hoses, church bombings, cross burnings and lynchings, the people of this great Nation have found the courage, on occasion, to speak up and speak out so that we can right this country's wrongs, and walk together down that long road of transformation that continues to perfect our Union. It is a transformation that brought us the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act; a transformation that led to the first Black Member of Congress, and the first Black and White children holding hands in the same playground and the same school; a transformation without which I would not be standing here speaking today. But I am. And I am proud because, thanks to this resolution, we are taking another step in acknowledging a dark corner of our history. We are taking a step that allows us--after looking at the 4,700 deaths from lynchings, the hate that was behind those deaths, and this Chamber's refusal to try and stop them--to finally say that we were wrong.

   There is a power in acknowledging error and mistake. It is a power that potentially transforms not only those who were impacted directly by the lynchings, but also those who are the progeny of the perpetrators of these crimes. There is a piercing photographic exhibit in Chicago right now that displays some of the lynchings that occurred across the country over the past two centuries. These photographs show that what is often most powerful is not the gruesome aspects of the lynching itself, nor the terrible rending of the body that took place. No, what is most horrific, what is most disturbing to the soul is the photographs in which you see young little White girls or young little White boys with their parents on an outing, looking at the degradation of another human being. One wonders not only what the lynching did to the family member of those who were lynched, but also what the effect was on the sensibilities of those young people who stood there, watching.

   Now that we are finally acknowledging this injustice, we have an opportunity to reflect on the cruelties that inhabit all of us. We can now take the time to teach our children to treat people who look different than us with the same respect that we would expect for ourselves. So it is fitting, it is proper, and it is right that we are doing what we are doing today.

   However, I do hope, as we commemorate this past injustice, that this Chamber also spends some time doing something concrete and tangible to heal the long shadow of slavery and the legacy of racial discrimination, so that 100 years from now we can look back and be proud, and not have to apologize once again. That means completing the unfinished work of the civil rights movement, and closing the gap that still exists in health care, education, and income. There are more ways to perpetrate violence than simply a lynching. There is the violence that we subject young children to when they do not have any opportunity or hope, when they stand on street corners not thinking much of themselves, not thinking that their lives are worth living. That is a form of violence that this Chamber could do something about.

   As we are spending time apologizing today for these past failures of the Senate to act, we should also spend some time debating the extension of the Voting Rights Act and the best way to extend health care coverage to over 45 million uninsured Americans. We should be considering how we can make certain that college is affordable for young African-American children, the great, great-grandchildren or the great, great, great-grandchildren of those who have been wronged. These are the ways we can finally ensure that the blessings of opportunity reach every single American, and finally claim a victory in the long struggle for civil rights.

   Today is a step in the right direction. Today's actions give us an opportunity to heal and to move forward. But for those who still harbor anger in their hearts, who still wonder how to move on from such terrible violence, it is worth reflecting for a moment on one remarkable individual: Mamie Till Mobley.

   Mamie Till Mobley's child Emmett was only 14 years old when they found him in the Mississippi River, beaten and bloodied beyond recognition. After Ms. Mobley saw her child, her baby, unrecognizable, his face so badly beaten it barely looked human, someone suggested that she should have a closed casket at his funeral. She said: No, we are going to have an open casket, and everybody is going to witness what they did to my child.

   The courage displayed by this mother galvanized the civil rights movement in the North and in the South. And, despite the immensity of the pain she felt, Mamie Till Mobley has repeatedly said: I never wasted a day hating. Imagine that. She never wasted a day hating, not one day.

   I rise today, thanking God that the United States Congress--the representatives of the American people and our highest ideals--will not waste one more day without issuing the apology that will continue to help us march down the path of transformation that Mamie Till Mobley has been on her whole life, and that the people in attendance in the gallery have been on for generations.

   I am grateful for this tribute, and I am looking forward to joining hands with my colleagues and the American people to make sure that when our children and grandchildren look back at our actions in this Chamber, we do not have something to apologize for.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.

   Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I join my colleagues today to talk about one of our Nation's darkest periods, a stain in history we would rather forget but that we cannot ignore. While White mobs committed 4,742 hangings, floggings and burnings of African Americans, the Senate watched indifferently, failing to pass any of the 200 separate bills before it to make lynching a Federal crime. S. Res. 39, expressing the Senate's apology for failing to adopt antilynching legislation, is long overdue. I express my sincere apologies and regret to the families in Arkansas and the Nation, especially to the victims and their descendants, that this body failed to help at a time when they needed it most.

   I hope that acknowledging these grave injustices of the past will help begin to heal the wounds that exist today. Even more so, this acknowledgement should serve as a lesson that government must step in to help foster racial reconciliation, ensure the mob mentality never returns, and protect those who are most vulnerable.

   The Senate can start by continuing to advance civil rights and equality, and work to close the divide that continues in our neighborhoods, schools and workplaces. I am afraid that if we don't start truly addressing inequities we will look back once again at the Senate's inaction with disdain and remorse.

   Most of the worst offenses of lynching occurred in the south and Arkansas was no different. Between the years

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   Of course, statistics don't have a face, they don't feel pain, nor do they hold memories. But people and families all over Arkansas do, and they remember these crimes and the Senate's inaction to protect them.

   In March 1892, a reporter from the Christian Recorder reported the chaos and hopelessness occurring throughout the state:

   There is much uneasiness and unrest all over this State among our people, owing to the fact that the people all over the State are being lynched upon the slightest provocation; some being strung up to telegraph poles, others burnt at the stake and still others being shot like dogs.

   In the last 30 days there have been not less than eight colored persons lynched in this State. At Texarkana a few days ago, a man was burnt at the stake.

   In Pine Bluff a few days later two men were strung up and shot, and this too by the brilliant glare of the electric lights. At Varner, George Harris was taken from jail and shot for killing a white man, for poisoning his domestic happiness.

   At Wilmar, a boy was induced to confess to the commission of an outrage, upon promise of his liberty, and when he had confessed, he was strung up and shot. Over in Lonoke County, a whole family consisting of husband, wife and child were shot down like dogs. Verily the situation is alarming in the extreme.

   There were few honest press accounts of such lynchings, a problem that continues to trouble historians today as they put together the pieces of this period. Most Arkansas press accounts were no different. Lynchers were considered heroes, officers conniving, and the accused guilty.

   A case in point:

   In 1919, Arkansas would be home to a terrible racial injustice--the so-called Elaine Race Riot.

   According to sketchy accounts that have been pieced together by historians, in September 1919, black sharecroppers met to protest unfair settlements for their cotton crops from white plantation owners. Local law enforcement broke up the union's meeting, and the next day a thousand white men, and troops of the U.S. Army, converged on Phillips County to put an end to the black sharecroppers' so-called ``insurrection''.

   The number of African-American deaths from this lynching is disputed, ranging from 20 at the low end to 856 men and women on the high end.

   The details of the Elaine Race Riot of 1919 have never been formally written down, but Mayor Robert Miller of Helena, AR remembers them vividly.

   At the time, Mayor Miller's four uncles were preparing for a hunting trip. Three of them had traveled to a town near Elaine, Helena, AR, for this special occasion, which turned tragic when a mob saw the brothers with guns in hand, and assuming they were part of the ``insurrection,'' all four were immediately killed.

   Of the anti-lynching legislation we are considering today, Mayor Miller says, ``It won't change what happened, but at least it's a good thing, a movement in the right direction.''

   A 2000 article from the Arkansas Times reports on Arkansas' most high-profile lynching and the lasting impact it has had on families in Arkansas today.

   In May 1927, a mentally retarded black man named John Carter was accused of attacking a white mother and daughter. Upon his capture near Little Rock a mob of 100 quickly gathered and prevented police from taking him to Little Rock, where police would protect him from being lynched.

   After hanging him from a utility pole, the mob dragged John Carter's body through the city, and burned it in downtown Little Rock at 9th and Broadway.

   The Arkansas Times article recounts a conversation that occurred 30 years later, in September 1957 of a mother talking to civil rights pioneer Daisy Bates about the John Carter lynching. The mother had this to say:

   I am frightened Mrs. Bates. Not for myself, but for my children. When I was a little girl, my mother and I saw a lynch mob dragging the body of a Negro man through the streets of Little Rock. We were told to get off the streets. We ran. And by cutting through side streets and alleys, we managed to make it to the home of a friend.

   But we were close enough to hear the screams of the mob, close enough to smell the sickening odor of burning flesh. And, Mrs. Bates, they took the pews from Bethel Church to make the fire. They burned the body of this Negro man right at the edge of the Negro business section.

   The woman speaking to Daisy Bates was named Birdie Eckford. Her daughter Elizabeth, one of the Little Rock Nine, would walk through an angry, threatening crowd the following day to claim her right to an equal education at Little Rock Central High School.

   Little Rock Central High School today reminds us of some of the darkest days during the civil rights movement. As a former student, however, I can tell you that it also represents hope and achievement.

   The year 2007 will mark the 50th anniversary of the desegregation process at Little Rock Central High School. Last Friday, I spoke with seven members of the Little Rock Nine to tell them that we are closer to funding an adequate visitor center and museum in time for his landmark anniversary.

   Minnijean Brown Trickey, one of the Nine, said this Visitors' Center will serve many purposes, but what struck me was her assurance that the Center ``is an opportunity for healing.''

   Today's resolution offers similar opportunities. It allows us to remember the past, begin healing from that past, look at how far our Nation has come to address equality and discrimination and rededicate ourselves to acknowledging how much further we must go from here.

   I yield the floor.