The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed a resolution apologizing for enslaving African-Americans in U.S. history.
The non-binding resolution sponsored by Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat from Iowa, is similar to a House resolution adopted last year that acknowledged the wrongs of slavery but offered no reparations.
The House will have to vote on the issue again because the composition of House has changed after last November's congressional elections.
The resolution, passed the Senate on a voice vote, " 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."
Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enacted mostly in U.S. Southern and border states between the 1870s and 1965 that denied African-Americans the right to vote and other civil liberties, as well as legally segregated them from whites.
Several U.S. states have passed similar resolutions, but the House resolution passed last year was the first time a branch of the federal government did so.