Charleston city council adopts resolution apologizing for slavery

The city council in Charleston, S.C., has voted to adopt a resolution apologizing for slavery.

The Charleston City Council, in a city once home to a key slave trading port, voted by voice to approve the resolution, which denounces slavery and further apologizes for the city’s role in the slave trade and in the Jim Crow era.

The two-page bipartisan resolution has been in the works since August and recognizes the role of slavery in the city’s development and enumerates the atrocities of slavery.{mosads}

“The institution of slavery did not just involve physical confinement and mistreatment,” the resolution reads.

“It also sought to suppress, if not destroy, the cultural, religious and social values of Africans by stripping Africans of their ancestral names and customs, humiliating and brutalizing them through sexual exploitation, and selling African relatives apart from one another without regard to the connection of family, a human condition universal among all peoples of the world.”

The resolution arrived on the same day as “Juneteenth,” which is a holiday that marks the announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas on June 19, 1865.

Updated at 10:41 p.m.