Expert:

Dr. Robert Engs, professor of history, University of Pennsylvania

Credentials:

Member of Penn's History Department since 1972; research focuses on the postbellum era, specifically the responses of freed people and white Southerners to emancipation

Author of  "Freedom's First Generation: Black Hampton, Va., 1861-1890" and "Educating the Disfranchised and Disinherited"

Former co-chair of Penn's Afro-American Studies Program; regularly lectures at historically black colleges

Quote:

"A resolution apologizing for Georgia's role in the slave trade would be just another example of this age of making apologies without

taking real responsibility.  It costs nothing to apologize and accomplishes nothing.  Its just another grand gesture."