New Jersey's Resolution 270

Rather quietly, with little fanfare, on January 7, 2008, the 212th legislature of the State of New Jersey passed Resolution 270, 29 - 2, apologizing for slavery, becoming the fifth state and the first Northern state to do so, following Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia.
 
The resolution states that in 1804, New Jersey passed a gradual emancipation law that required that all children of enslaved women remain as servants to the owner of his or her mother until the age of twenty one.
 

New Jersey enacted a law in 1786 prohibiting the importation of enslaved persons into the state however, abolition of slavery in New Jersey did not occur in the state until 1846.
New Jersey had one of the largest enslaved populations within the Northern states. 
 
Resolution 270 reads, in part:
 
WHEREAS, After emancipation from 246 years of slavery, African Americans soon saw the political, social and economic gains made during Reconstruction dissipated by virulent and rabid racism, lynchings, disenfranchisement of African American voters, Black Codes designed to reimpose, subordination of African Americans, and Jim Crow laws that instituted a rigid system of state sanctioned segregation in virtually all areas of life and lasted until the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and
 
WHEREAS, Throughout their existence in America and even in the decades after the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans have found the struggle to overcome the bitter legacy of slavery long and arduous, and for many African Americans the scars left behind are unbearable, haunting their psyches and clouding their vision of the future and of America's many positive attributes; and
 
WHEREAS, Our nation acknowledges the crimes and persecution visited upon other peoples during World War II lest the world forget, yet the very mention of the broken promise of "40 acres and a mule" to former slaves or of the existence of racism today evokes denial from many quarters of any responsibility for centuries of legally sanctioned deprivation of African Americans of their endowed rights or for contemporary policies that perpetuate the existing state of affairs ....
 
With the permission of all of my relatives and ancestors who sought peace and solace in this life's walk, I pray that as one who remains behind on this plane of existence, I will continue to keep you in my memories, knowing all you endured to allow me to be here.
 
For my mother, I say ASHÉ! (It is so!)
For my father, I say, ASHÉ!
For my sister, I say, ASHÉ!
For my cousins, I say, ASHÉ! 
For my aunts, I say, ASHÉ!
For my uncles, I say, ASHÉ!
For my grandparents, ASHÉ!
For my great aunts and uncles, ASHÉ!
For my great grandmother, ASHÉ!
For my great, great, grandmother, ASHÉ! 

For all of my relatives whose names were known and are unknown to me, in Africa and in the Diaspora,

ASHÉ!