FILM REVIEW: The Woman King

It's been quite awhile since I saw a movie in the theaters, but last weekend I saw two of them! The husband and I intended to see Bros opening weekend with another gay couple but when it turned out they couldn't see it until Sunday we decided to go see The Woman King on Saturday, since it had stellar reviews and was only available in theaters. I'm glad we did!

The Woman King is a star vehicle for Viola Davis, the most Oscar-nominated Black actress of all time (and winner of the 2016 Best Supporting Actress for Fences). However, it is also a rarity among studio films, with a predominantly Black female cast. The movie is about the legendary Agojie, the "virgin African Amazons" who were an all-female army in the West African kingdom of Dahomey during the slave era. The film features John Boyega (The Force Awakens, Small Axe), Thuso Mbedu (The Underground Railroad), Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim, Jordan Bolger and Hero Fiennes Tiffin. The last actor plays Santo Fereirra, the main white character in the film, a slaver from Brazil who is working with the enemies of the Dahomey to buy and ship captured Africans into slavery in the Americas. He arrives with his interracial friend Malik played by the pulchritudinous Jordan Bolger, who is the son of a Dahomey mother and white father.

Of course any film about slavery is effused with violence, but in this case the violence is mainly done by the Black female characters in the film (the Agojie).  The film is set in 1823 and makes clear that both the Dahomey and the Oyo participated in the slave trade, by selling captured African combatants to the slavers. However in the movie, Davis' character, Nanisca, the head of the Agojie decries the practice to King Ghezo (played by Boyega) and argues the Dahomey could and should trade palm oil with the white man instead. The primary conflict in The Woman King is between the Kingdom of Dahomey and the Oyo Empire, who are much larger and to whom the Dahomey pay tribute to. Dahomey refuses to pay tribute and the two nations go to war, with the smaller Agojie army using the superior tactical and strategic prowess of Davis' General Nanisca to eventually become victorious. However, during the main Oyo-Dahomey battle in the movie some of the main Agojie characters we have been following (played by Lynch and Mbedu) are captured and taken to be sold into slavery. Mbedu's character (Nawi) is bought by Bolger's character (Malik) in order to rescue her. (The two had their "meet-cute" moment earlier in the film when Nawi finds Malik bathing in a nearby waterfall and takes his clothes which for me was a highlight of the movie because Malik is phyne!!)

Although being told explicitly by her king not to go and rescue her captured Agojie soldiers, Nanisca goes anyway and along with her most loyal supporters basically destroys the town/port where slaves were being bought and sold and then transported across the Atlantic.

Overall, The Woman King is a well-done, action film (I think I saw someone call it a "a Black female Gladiator or Braveheart") with exceptional performances by Davis and Mbedu. It is exceedingly violent, almost graphically so, since almost all the combat is hand-to-hand with sharp, bladed weapons, a few primitive  guns and some gunpowder-based explosions. Despite the action genre, there is real emotional relationships depicted between many characters, like Nawi and Malik, Nawi and Nanisca, and Nanisca and Amenza (played by Atim). It's one of the best times I have had at the movies in years!

Title: The Woman King.
Director: Gina Price-Bythewood.
Running Time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence, some disturbing material, thematic content, brief language and partial nudity.
Release Date: September 16, 2022.
Viewing Date: October 2, 2022.

Writing: A-.
Acting: A.
Visuals: A.
Impact: A+.

Overall Grade: A (4.0/4.0).

Star Rating:  ★★★★½☆  (4.5/5.0).

WATCH: Ta-Nehisi Coates' Opening Statement in Reparations Congressional Hearing

BOOK REVIEW: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

This was my first audiobook. My husband and I listened to it on our anniversary vacation in Hawaii (Kauai and Kona).

The narrator is Bahni Turpin and she is quite impressive. She provided individual voices for each of the characters and her vocal inflections communicate the nuances of the story and made the book a delightful experience. I would probably "read" another audiobook by her from an author I was ambivalent about just because she was the narrator! (Yes, she is that good.)

I'm not sure I'm a fan of the audiobook experience overall. I feel like I did not have as continuously engaged an experience with the audiobook as I would have had if I had read the book in either "dead tree" or electronic form. But it was fun to share the experience with my hubby. There were some scenes and plot points that my husband asked me about that I missed but as a whole the book was the source of many thoughtful and interesting conversations, which is one of the key reasons to read, in my humble opinion.

All that being said, The Underground Railroad  is very effective at depicting the horrors of slavery and illustrating the toxic effects of white supremacy and legal racial subordination on both Black and White people. There's an especially affecting scene when the ramifications of harboring a fugitive slave in a upside-down version of North Carolina become chillingly clear.

Another thing that comes across is how difficult life was back then without the modern technological advances we are now used to (in 2017); I'm not talking about fancy inventions like iPhones and electric cars and the Internet, but basic necessities of modern life we almost always take for granted like antibiotics and anesthesia and electricity. 

The Underground Railroad also points out all the different ways that people's humanity is degraded by the various horrible jobs (slave catcher, slave boss, overseer et cetera) that they are forced to undertake in order to survive. This is true of the black people and the white people in the book.

Although its calling card is the fact that the "metaphorical" Underground Railroad we have heard of in history books is a real thing in the book, to me this was a minor point, and even a bit silly. The primary selling point of The Underground Railroad is its depiction of slavery (even in a fictionalized, heightened form).

The Underground Railroad is also a compelling (and action-packed) story about what happens to a number of slaves named Cora and Cesar.


Title: The Underground Railroad.
Author: Colson Whitehead.
Paperback: 320 pages.
Publisher: Doubleday.
Date Published: August 2, 2016.
Date Read: January 17, 2017.

OVERALL GRADE: A (4.0/4.0).

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Underground Airlines by Ben Winters

Ever since I read Ben Winters' pre-apocalyptic mystery-thriller The Last Policeman trilogy (The Last Policeman, Countdown City and World of Trouble) last year I have been something of a fanboy of this speculative fiction author. I was VERY psyched when I learned that his first book published after The Last Policeman was going to be called Underground Airlines and set in an America with an alternate history where slavery persists to the 21st century and based around a modern analogue of the Civil War-era Underground Railroad. 

Underground Airlines is out now and clearly has an incredibly compelling premise. The alternate history is based around a seminal event which bifurcates Winters' fictional timeline from ours: the assassination of President-elect Abraham Lincoln in 1861 and the subsequent "grand compromise" which defuses the tension between the states that in our timeline led to the Civil War. The ratification of five constitutional amendments have the effect of maintaining slavery because they allow every state in the Union to determine its slaveholding status, and includes a fiendishly clever clause which prevents the enactment of any future amendment to the Five Compromise amendments, cementing slavery into the fabric of our nation forever.

Most familiar historical events that occurred in our timeline (e.g. 9/11, Michael Jackson, Franklin D. Roosevelt) also occurred in the timeline of Underground Airlines but there are some fascinating (and horrifying) ways that the absence of the Civil War from our past has warped the timeline presented in Underground Airlines. 

Interestingly, it's not the entire South which has legalized slavery (or the preferred term "Person Bound to Labor") in the modern era. Slavery is alive, well and bureaucratized in the Hard Four: Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Carolina (North Carolina and South Carolina are reunited).

While Underground Airlines has an amazing premise, it also has a VERY complicated protagonist. He is a former slave named Victor who is now working (via coercion) for the U.S. Marshal's Service as an undercover agent to locate escaped slaves in the North and return them to involuntary servitude. Victor is a very problematic character (and in my mind, not very sympathetic). [This may be a feature of main characters in Ben Winters novels--the titular cop in The Last Policeman is also an anti-heroic figure.] Victor's circumstances are almost excessively complicated; he is in Indianapolis, Indiana looking for an escaped slave named Jackdaw when he runs into a troubled young white female with an adorable young African-American son whose future becomes entangled with his. Through the machinations of the (somewhat convoluted) plot, Victor becomes a double agent and perhaps  even a triple agent as he gets sucked into a particular situation that involves searching for a "mcguffin" which could potentially have a devastating impact on the rotten institution of slavery. However, to do so requires Victor to travel to the Hard Four which leads to some of the most harrowing and pulse-pounding scenes in the book.

Overall, despite my misgivings and issues with the main character, the setting of the book provides author Ben Winters with multiple opportunities to include mordant, thought-provoking commentary about race, class and history in our society which elevates Underground Airlines above the multitude of other media sources of entertainment which compete for our attention but ultimately fail to resonate as strongly with the conscience and memory of the reader.

Title: Underground Airlines.
Author: Ben H. Winters.
Paperback: 336 pages.
Publisher: Mulholland Books.
Date Published: July 15, 2016.
Date Read: September 27, 2016.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY:B+.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A-.

Happy Juneteenth! Today is the 150th Anniversary of June 19, 1865

The official flag of Juneteenth

June 19th or Juneteenth as it is more commonly known, is the day the African-American community celebrates freedom, in commemoration of the day in 1865 when slaves in Galveston, Texas finally got the word about the end of the civil war and that they were emancipated. (Too bad they didn't have the Internet back then, because this was more than 30 months, two-and-a-half years, after President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863.)

Today is the sesquicentennial (150th) anniversary of Juneteenth. Of course, the Wall Street Journal decided today was the perfect day to publish an editorial declaring that institutional racism no longer exists in America:

Amid the horror of Charleston, it is also important to note that the U.S., notably the South, has moved forward to replace the system that enabled racist killings like those in the Birmingham church. 

Back then and before, the institutions of government—police, courts, organized segregation—often worked to protect perpetrators of racially motivated violence, rather than their victims. 

The universal condemnation of the murders at the Emanuel AME Church and Dylann Roof’s quick capture by the combined efforts of local, state and federal police is a world away from what President Obama recalled as “a dark part of our history.” Today the system and philosophy of institutionalized racism identified by Dr. King no longer exists. [emphasis added]

What causes young men such as Dylann Roof to erupt in homicidal rage, whatever their motivation, is a problem that defies explanation beyond the reality that evil still stalks humanity. It is no small solace that in committing such an act today, he stands alone.

And so it goes.

Which Flag Is Offensive To Republicans: Gay Pride or Confederate Pride?

A poll of potential Republican primary voters by Public Policy Polling asked this group about the relative acceptability of the Confederate flag (a.k.a. "The Stars and Bars") versus the Gay Pride flag (a.k.a. the Rainbow Flag) and the results were somewhat disturbing:

Q3 Do you think high school students should be
allowed to wear confederate flags to school, or
not?
Think they should............................................ 43%
Think they should not...................................... 37%
Not sure .......................................................... 19%

Q4 Do you think high school students should be
allowed to wear gay pride flags to school, or
not?
Think they should............................................ 28%
Think they should not...................................... 57%
Not sure .......................................................... 15%

Q5 Do you think it’s more appropriate for high
school students to wear gay pride flags or
confederate flags to school?
Gay pride flags................................................ 9%
Confederate flags ........................................... 38%
Not sure .......................................................... 52%  

It is somewhat bizarre to juxtapose these two symbols since the Stars and Bars is a symbol of racism and oppression and enslavement of African-Americans while the Rainbow flag is a symbol of the diversity of sexual expression.

Or, as openly gay (and Black) journalist Jonathan Capehart puts it:

Folks, the Confederate flag is no better than a Swastika. It is a symbol of white supremacy, hate and oppression that has no place in American political discourse. That Kanye West wants to co-opt the rebel banner is as noble as it is futile. Meanwhile, the rainbow that is the gay pride flag symbolizes inclusion and acceptance. Oftentimes, usually in other countries, the words “pace” or “peace” can be found emblazoned on it. The rainbow flag is the very antithesis of the Confederate flag. That the latter is deemed more acceptable than the former is deplorable.

It is NOT a coincidence that the state flag of  Mississippi still contains the stars and bars of the Confederacy, while the state flag of Arkansas contains motifs (white stars on blue diagonal stripes) which come from the stars and bars. Both Florida and Alabama have official state flags which retain the X shape from stars and bars. There have been long-standing and ongoing controversies over public displays of the Confederate flag.

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God

FILM REVIEW: 12 Years A Slave

The film 12 Years A Slave has been getting a lot of attention from critics and moviegoers, primarily for its incredibly realistic depiction of slavery, and the fact that it is based on a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story of Solomon Northup. Northup was a free Black man from New York who in 1841was kidnapped and transported to the South against his will, somehow survived 12 years as a slave and then published a book detailing what happened to him. Black British filmmaker Steve McQueen discovered the incredible story and decided to make his 3rd feature film an adaptation of Northup's book into a movie starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as Northup and sports a cast with celebrated white actors Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Paul Dano and Benedict Cumberbatch. Another key character in the book is a female slave named Patsey played by Lupita Nyongy'o.

The Other Half and I were able to see 12 Years A Slave at our new favorite theater (Arclight Cinemas in Pasadena) recently. We both agreed with the enthusiastic reactions from the people at rottentomatoes.com (96% critics, 93% audience) and disagree with critics who call the film extremely difficult to watch. There are some scenes which are extremely intense but the film is very well paced and the screenplay cleverly splits the story in such a way that it begins with Northup in bondage in Louisiana but then quickly shifts to show his life as a prosperous Negro gentleman with a wife and two young kids.

From the title of the film we know that Northup survives, but since we don't know what indignities and deprivations he suffers in slavery there is still significant suspense in the audience as we watch the film. And the fate of every other Black person in the film is subject to the whim (no matter how deranged, prejudiced or arbitrary) of any White person in the film.

Additionally, as a Black person, the sonic assault of the use of the n-word is somewhat disturbing, especially coming out of the mouths of so many recognizable (and well-liked) actors like Paul Giamatti, Cumberbatch, Dano and Fassbender.

Despite that aspect of the film, the overall experience of sitting in a theater and watching a visual representation of what slavery was actually like unspool before you for roughly two hours is incredibly rewarding and educational simultaneously. I hesitate to use the word obligatory, but for people who are genuinely interested in issues that involve race, going to see 12 Years A Slave is an edifying and virtuous act, and that is meant as a compliment to the film and the filmmakers.

Title: 12 Years A Slave.
Director: Steve McQueen.
Running Time: 2 hours, 13 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated R for violence/cruelty, some nudity and brief sexuality.
Release Date: October 18, 2013.
Viewing Date: November 16, 2013.

Writing: A.
Acting: A.
Visuals: A+.
Impact: A+.

Overall Grade: A+/A (4.16/4.0).

Celebrity Friday: Mariah Carey Plays A Field Negro in The Butler

This photo of Mariah Carey playing a slave working in the fields in openly gay director Lee Daniels' latest movie, The Butler, is causing a stir on Twitter and other social media online. Carey and Daniels have worked together before, in the Oscar-winning (and controversial) Precious, for example, where again Mariah played against her  image as a diva, to good reviews. The Butler is about the story of Eugene Allen, who was a butler in the White House serving 8 presidents of the United States.

Actually, I am happy about the controversy because it alerted me to the existence of the film, which has a jaw-dropping cast including Oprah Winfrey, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Forest Whitaker, Terence Howard, John Cusack, Vanessa Redgrave, Robin Williams, Melissa Leo and many more. It also has a pretty strong trailer:


This looks like it might be a must-see next Fall!

FILM REVIEW: Django Unchained

Quentin Tarantino is an infamous bad boy of Hollywood, with an unconventional and hyper-violent style that suffuses his films. He usually writes and directs his films and appears in them as an actor as well. He won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Pulp Fiction in 1995 and Christoph Waltz won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 2010 for Inglourious Basterds.

Tarantino is also well-known as a huge student of film and an aficionado of various (often obscure) movie genres, which he often likes to re-interpret and combine in his creations.  Inglourious Basterds is both a revenge fantasy, a Holocaust film and a comedy. (See my review here.)

Ever since it was announced that Tarantino would be following up Basterds with a film about slavery called Django Unchained, fans of his work (including myself) have been highly anticipating the result. Tarantino has long been unafraid to confront race in his films, and non-white actors have often played important roles in his films. There were various rumors about who would play the title role of the ex-slave who carries the film and becomes partners with a foreign-born white bounty hunter who kills American white slaveowners. Various names like Idris Elba (Prometheus, Stringer Bell on The Wire), Will Smith (Men in Black) and Michael K. Williams (Omar on The Wire) were considered but Django was eventually played by Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx and a particularly villainous slaveowner was played by Leo Dicaprio.

Also appearing in the film are a nearly unrecognizable Samuel L. Jackson as a "House Slave" who closely identifies with his slaveowner named Calvin J. Candie played by Dicaprio, Kerry Washington as Django's wife named Broomhilda and Waltz as the central character of the German bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz.

The story is set in the antebellum South where a German-born dentist (played with relish by Waltz) is making a living as a bounty hunter finding fugitives who are wanted "dead or alive." Since he finds slavery distasteful and treats black people as people and not property, Shultz usually kills the white slaveowners he finds. He connects with Django at the beginning of the film and enlists the slave for assistance in identifying and killing a trio of slaveowners called the Brittle brothers. Django is amazed one can get paid for killing white people and enthusiastically accepts an offer to join forces with Shultz as a bounty hunter ("Kill white people and they pay you for it? What's not to like?")

After an amusing and deadly encounter with the Ku Klux Klan (who are led by the unlikely comedy duo of Jonah Hill and Don Johnson) the two bounty hunters spend a winter together tracking, finding and killing white slaveowners and then Django wants to go rescue his wife from the Mississippi planation called CandieLand where she is located. Shultz realizes how dangerous this is and agrees to accompany Django on his quest to rescue Broomhilda, especially once he learns that she speaks his native language of German, which he has not heard in years and greatly misses.

I don't want to reveal any more of the plot but to say that the film does become a typical Tarantino bloodbath and there are very disturbing depictions of the inhumanity of slavery, especially various punishments such as a Black man being torn apart by dogs, attempted castration (that includes a quite memorable scene of full frontal nudity featuring Jamie Foxx) and a woman locked naked in a "hot box" buried six feet underground.

(A quick note to the potential viewer of the film: the word "nigger" is used almost continuously through the film. I lost track of how many times it is uttered by both black and white characters after counting about 50 occurrences. One thing I did notice about the word is that when it is pronounced with a Southern accent it sounds exactly like the "nigga" that appears in many rap songs. The fact that Tarantino is white and the creative force behind a film suffused with racist acts and dialogue has been a source of controversy.)

Overall, I think Django Unchained is more effective and rewarding an experience than Inglourious Basterds, although that may have more to do with the more intense emotional resonance I have with slavery than with the Holocaust. Both films are over-the-top, blood-soaked pulpy entertainments, but I connect with Tarantino's desire to address sensitive topics through genre films and believe he has done an excellent job. I look forward to seeing what his next film in this series.

Title: Django Unchained.
Director: Quentin Tarantino.
Running Time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated R for strong graphic violence throughout, a vicious fight, language and some nudity.
Release Date: December 25, 2012.
Viewing Date: December 28, 2012.

Writing: A.
Acting: A-.
Visuals: A.
Impact: A+.

Overall Grade: A (4.0/4.0).

Happy Juneteenth! Should It Be A National Holiday?

Today is Juneteenth, the day that African Americans have been celebrating the news of the Emancipation Proclamation and the legal ending of involuntary servitude (a.k.a. slavery) in the United States since 1865.

I was unaware until today that there is a campaign to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. I am very well aware that there is only one federal holiday (Independence Day on July 4th) between Memorial Day at the end of May and Labor Day on the first Monday of September. That's pretty rough going for people like me who work for the Federal Government.

Today  U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) introduced legislation to have the federal government recognize Juneteenth:

June 19, shortened to the unique date Juneteenth, has become the symbolic anniversary of the freeing of the slaves. The Juneteenth Independence Day observance would be similar to Flag Day or Arbor Day; institutions would not be closed, but the event would have national recognition.

"By observing this day, our nation will honor the role that Juneteenth has played in African American culture in Texas and throughout the country, and it will remind us that, in America, we are all blessed to live in freedom," Hutchison said in an e-mail.

Hutchison's staff, not authorized to be quoted by name, says the legislation is not controversial and they do not expect any opposition.

The bill is another step in a movement to bring Juneteenth into prominence. Forty-one states have passed bills establishing a state observance of Juneteenth, almost half of them since 2007.

On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers landed at Galveston, Texas, to declare that the Civil War had ended and that all enslaved people were free. General Order Number 3, as it's known, was read by Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger. The declaration came more than two years after President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which he issued Sept. 22, 1862, to take effect Jan. 1, 1863.

Hmmm, well I am glad that the process for federal recognition is moving along.

VIDEO: U.S. Senate Passes Slavery Apology

You'll recall that I told you on Thursday that the United States Senate was considering a resolution to apologize for slavery, just in time for Juneteenth. Well, the video of the debate is now available:



Hat/tip Joe.My.God

US Senate Apologizing For Slavery

Just in time for Juneteenth (which is tomorrow, June 19th), the United States Senate is debating Senate Concurrent Resolution 26, which apologizes for slavery:

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

Apologizing for the enslavement and racial segregation of African-Americans.

Whereas, during the history of the Nation, the United States has grown into a symbol of democracy and freedom around the world;

Whereas the legacy of African-Americans is interwoven with the very fabric of the democracy and freedom of the United States;

Whereas millions of Africans and their descendants were enslaved in the United States and the 13 American colonies from 1619 through 1865;

Whereas Africans forced into slavery were brutalized, humiliated, dehumanized, and subjected to the indignity of being stripped of their names and heritage;

Whereas many enslaved families were torn apart after family members were sold separately;

Whereas the system of slavery and the visceral racism against people of African descent upon which it depended became enmeshed in the social fabric of the United States;

Whereas slavery was not officially abolished until the ratification of the 13th amendment to the Constitution of the United States in 1865, after the end of the Civil War;

Whereas after emancipation from 246 years of slavery, African-Americans soon saw the fleeting political, social, and economic gains they made during Reconstruction eviscerated by virulent racism, lynchings, disenfranchisement, Black Codes, and racial segregation laws that imposed a rigid system of officially sanctioned racial segregation in virtually all areas of life;

Whereas the system of de jure racial segregation known as `Jim Crow', which arose in certain parts of the United States after the Civil War to create separate and unequal societies for Whites and African-Americans, was a direct result of the racism against people of African descent that was engendered by slavery;

Whereas the system of Jim Crow laws officially existed until the 1960s--a century after the official end of slavery in the United States--until Congress took action to end it, but the vestiges of Jim Crow continue to this day;

Whereas African-Americans continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow laws--long after both systems were formally abolished--through enormous damage and loss, both tangible and intangible, including the loss of human dignity and liberty;

Whereas the story of the enslavement and de jure segregation of African-Americans and the dehumanizing atrocities committed against them should not be purged from or minimized in the telling of the history of the United States;

Whereas those African-Americans who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow laws, and their descendants, exemplify the strength of the human character and provide a model of courage, commitment, and perseverance;

Whereas, on July 8, 2003, during a trip to Goree Island, Senegal, a former slave port, President George W. Bush acknowledged the continuing legacy of slavery in life in the United States and the need to confront that legacy, when he stated that slavery `was . . . one of the greatest crimes of history . . . The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times. But however long the journey, our destiny is set: liberty and justice for all.';

Whereas President Bill Clinton also acknowledged the deep-seated problems caused by the continuing legacy of racism against African-Americans that began with slavery, when he initiated a national dialogue about race;

Whereas an apology for centuries of brutal dehumanization and injustices cannot erase the past, but confession of the wrongs committed and a formal apology to African-Americans will help bind the wounds of the Nation that are rooted in slavery and can speed racial healing and reconciliation and help the people of the United States understand the past and honor the history of all people of the United States;

Whereas the legislatures of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the States of Alabama, Florida, Maryland, and North Carolina have taken the lead in adopting resolutions officially expressing appropriate remorse for slavery, and other State legislatures are considering similar resolutions; and

Whereas it is important for the people of the United States, who legally recognized slavery through the Constitution and the laws of the United States, to make a formal apology for slavery and for its successor, Jim Crow, so they can move forward and seek reconciliation, justice, and harmony for all people of the United States: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That the sense of the Congress is the following:

(1) APOLOGY FOR THE ENSLAVEMENT AND SEGREGATION OF AFRICAN-AMERICANS- The Congress--

(A) acknowledges the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow laws;

(B) 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; and

(C) expresses its recommitment to the principle that all people are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and calls on all people of the United States to work toward eliminating racial prejudices, injustices, and discrimination from our society.

(2) DISCLAIMER- Nothing in this resolution--
(A) authorizes or supports any claim against the United States; or
(B) serves as a settlement of any claim against the United States

The US House of Representatives also formally apologized for slavery in July 2008.

For Black Gay people, we can celebrate Juneteenth AND LGBT Pride simultaneously at a Jordan/Rustin Coalition BBQ this Sunday, June 21st. Hope to see you there!