''The Legislature expresses its profound regret for Florida's role in sanctioning and perpetuating involuntary servitude upon generations of African slaves,'' said the resolution, sponsored by black lawmakers.
Democratic Sens. Larcenia Bullard of Miami and Arthenia Joyner of Tampa sobbed during the reading of the resolution and the recounting of the slave codes passed by the Territorial Council in 1822 and struck down in 1868 -- three years after the Civil War ended.
''I knew the facts, but to hear it put in those terms, I just fell apart,'' Joyner said. Said Bullard: ``I felt a pain that wouldn't go away.''
After the measure passed on a voice vote without opposition in the Senate, where President Ken Pruitt wanted no discussion or recorded vote, the House did the same. House Speaker Marco Rubio thanked both Pruitt and the black caucus for bringing up the resolution.
The measure stops short of calling for reparations for descendants of slaves, though Republican Gov. Charlie Crist said after the vote that he was open to the idea ``if we can determine descendancy, certainly.''
Crist, who attended the floor vote, said, ``Florida is sorry for the past transgressions and unfair treatment and in some cases just gross inequity as it exists toward members of the African-American community.''
Are there still inequities today, considering that about half the state's prison population of 96,000 is black, while only about 16 percent of the state's total population is black?
''That's hard to determine. You have to analyze these on a case-by-case basis,'' Crist said. ``Whether or not there have been injustices in a case based upon race must be determined by the facts of that case.''
Rep. Joseph Gibbons, a Pembroke Park Democrat, said the incarceration rate ``is a vestige of slavery . . . When you don't have opportunities, you turn to other things . . . you get frustrated and don't want to participate in the system.''
He said fellow black lawmakers ''aren't going to fall into that trap'' about reparations because the resolution wasn't ``about people wanting to get paid.''
Legislators in Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia have recently issued formal apologies for slavery, and New Jersey became the first northern state to apologize in January, according to The Associated Press.
The curator of Florida's historic Capitol, former state house clerk John Phelps, read legislators a history of the slave codes in Florida and listed statistics showing the importance and brutality of the slavery in the state.
Phelps said that, according to an 1855 Senate journal, the state had nearly 111,000 residents, 44 percent black. And of Florida's $49 million in property value at the time, 55 percent was in slaves.
Phelps singled out a letter written by Gov. Richard Keith Call to a Northerner in the hopes of explaining the Southern mindset over slavery to avert the Civil War.
Of blacks, Call wrote: ``Here was an animal, in the form of a man, possessing the greatest physical power and the greatest capacity for labor and endurance. . . . A wild barbarian, to be tamed and civilized by the discipline of slavery.''
Call was a personal aide to future President Andrew Jackson when the general launched the Seminole Wars and made Florida a territory, in part to ensure that slaves escaping from Georgia had no safe haven to the south.
Phelps ticked off the various lashings -- 39 in some cases and a lethal 100 in others -- that slaves would suffer for being accused of robbery, burglary or for simply walking around with a pass from his or her white master. Those convicted of rebellion were executed. Seven slaves together without a white person couldn't travel public roads. Slaves who gave false testimony could have their ears nailed to posts and were whipped publicly.
Jacksonville Sen. Jim King, a Republican and past Senate president, said he didn't know about the specific horrorsand supported the resolution. But he acknowledged that some lawmakers might be uncomfortable with the resolution because it could lead other groups to push for reparations.
''What about the American Indians? They were killed and shoved into a corner of places like Oklahoma,'' King said. ``What about the treatment of Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II?''
For many, the resolution is ''too little, too late. But it's better than not recognizing at all that black slaves built Florida,'' said Marvin Dunn, retired psychology professor and researcher of black history in Florida.
Dunn said the state ''wouldn't dare'' approve reparations that would put dollars into black residents' bank accounts. Such a move would be unwieldy and unrealistic, he said.
Adora Obi Nweze, president of the Florida NAACP, said she embraced the resolution as a step that needed to be taken.
''Those who suffered are not here to hear the words,'' she said. But ``the descendants of those who were enslaved deserve to hear the words uttered that it did exist.''
Miami Herald staff writer Andrea Robinson contributed to this report.
Audio | Interview with Florida Curator John Phelps
