Obama on slavery: 'Capacity for cruelty still exists'
President Obama slowly walked across the grounds of Cape Coast Castle, a slave outpost in Ghana where hundreds of thousands of Africans were shipped as human cargo to a life of bondage in the United States, South Africa and the Caribbean.
Obama's recent trip to Ghana and the slave-shipping outpost comes on the heels of last month's apology by the U.S. Senate about slavery. The Senate passed a nonbinding resolution that "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." Obama called it a "historic" resolution at the time.
The issue of apologizing for the past has prompted some heated discussion. In an interview that has gone viral on the Internet, Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews," blasts Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee for backing such an apology.
Katrina Browne, a descendant of wealthy Northerners, said she always thought slavery was confined to the South, until she began digging through her own family's history. She learned that her family, the DeWolfs, sailed ships from Bristol, Rhode Island, to West Africa, trading rum for African men, women and children in the late 1700s to early 1800s.
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Obama's recent trip to Ghana and the slave-shipping outpost comes on the heels of last month's apology by the U.S. Senate about slavery. The Senate passed a nonbinding resolution that "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." Obama called it a "historic" resolution at the time.
The issue of apologizing for the past has prompted some heated discussion. In an interview that has gone viral on the Internet, Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews," blasts Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee for backing such an apology.
Katrina Browne, a descendant of wealthy Northerners, said she always thought slavery was confined to the South, until she began digging through her own family's history. She learned that her family, the DeWolfs, sailed ships from Bristol, Rhode Island, to West Africa, trading rum for African men, women and children in the late 1700s to early 1800s.