Also, for those who might say that the USA has never made any formal apology, see this excerpt from an article about a formal apology that the US Senate finally made in 2005:

Senate apologizes for failure to pass anti-lynching law
By Robert Marus
Published June 14, 2005


"The United States Senate has offered a belated apology for something it repeatedly failed to do: Stop a century of lynchings that killed thousands of African-Americans and other minorities.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, white mobs would hang or otherwise murder minorities or immigrants accused of real or imagined offenses, almost always without being prosecuted and predominantly in the South.

In an acknowledgement of that history, the Senate's chief sponsors of the anti-lynching resolution, passed June 13, were two white Southerners -- Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and George Allen (R-Va.) -- who were joined by 78 co-sponsors.

"Without question, there have been other grave injustices committed in the noble exercise of establishing this great democracy," Landrieu said, introducing the bill on the Senate floor. "However, there may be no other injustice in American history for which the Senate so uniquely bears responsibility. In refusing to take up legislation passed by the House of Representatives on three separate occasions and requested by seven presidents from William Henry Harrison to Harry Truman, the Senate engaged in a different kind of culpability."

The voice vote means no objection to the bill was recorded. However, while most Southern senators signed on as co-sponsors, six did not. They were Republicans Richard Shelby of Alabama, Thad Cochran and Trent Lott of Mississippi, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, and John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.

The bill itself cites 4,742 reports of lynchings in the United States between 1882 and 1968. The practice was particularly pronounced around the turn of the 20th century. Opinion polls by the 1930s showed large majorities of the public -- even in the South -- supported making lynching a federal offense. But on all three occasions, Southern senators blocked the House bills from floor votes. They claimed making lynching a federal offense would infringe on states' rights...

The resolution also noted the practice was not limited to the South, or to African-American victims. According to a survey by the Tuskegee Institute, there were documented lynchings in all but four states. In addition, the victims included not only African-Americans but also Jews, Italian immigrants, Latinos, Asians and American Indians.

The anti-lynching resolution comes amid renewed attention to the race-related crimes of the civil-rights era. Earlier this year, federal officials announced they would reopen the investigation into the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American from Chicago who was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he was accused of whistling at a white female store clerk.

On the day the Senate passed the resolution, the trial opened for a reputed Mississippi Ku Klux Klan member who allegedly was involved in the famous murder of three civil-rights workers near Philadelphia, Miss., in 1964."


http://www.abpnews.com/379.article