Leon County commissioners will issue an apology for the county’s history of slavery.
At the county’s annual retreat on Monday, commissioners unanimously agreed to the apology coming out this year, Tallahassee and Leon County’s joint bicentennial. The resolution was a last-minute addition to the meeting agenda for Tuesday.
Commissioners Rick Minor and Brian Welch shared their support for the resolution to “acknowledge some of the bad things in those 200 years.”
“As we’re looking at some of the great strides of our community, there’s progress, but there has not been an apology,” said Commissioner Bill Proctor, who introduced the resolution, after the meeting. “We’ve done a lot to bring people together but we’ve never said ‘I’m sorry.’ “
Proctor’s call for an apology comes as Tallahassee’s First Presbyterian Church unveiled a plaque on Sunday apologizing for that church’s history of racism. And he noted how Congress has issued several resolutions throughout the years issuing apologies for the enslavement of African American people.