Sent: Tue 3/27/2007 8:09 AM
To: Gregg, Perry
Subject: Maryland Apologizes for Slavery
Perry,
The following link is to an article about Maryland's formal apology for slavery and its propagative effects on the descendants of slaves.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/26/slavery.maryland.ap/index.html
Points for reflection: If we consider the 1965 Selma, Alabama crisis as the symbolic end of the slavery/Jim Crow era, then 346 of the 388 years (1619 to 2007) African Americans have lived in the United States there was slavery or de jure racial segregation.
In my judgment, an apology is less important than a thorough teaching and understanding of the history of that period of enslavement and racial segregation which covered essentially 90% of the time African Americans have been in this land.
Best regards,
David