WASHINGTON (AP) - The House on Tuesday issued an unprecedented apology to black Americans for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow segregation laws.

"Today represents a milestone in our nation's efforts to remedy the ills of our past," said Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich., chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

The resolution, passed by voice vote, was the work of Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen, the only white lawmaker to represent a majority black district. Cohen faces a formidable black challenger in a primary face-off next week.

The apology comes approximately 388 years after the first arrival of African slaves in the US colonies in 1619, 354 years after slavery for life was made legal in the US, 143 years after the formal end of slavery in 1865, and some 40 years after the end of formal Jim Crow segregation in 1968, and just 97 days before the country elects its first black President.

According to Republicans in the House, they would have preferred to wait just a little longer until "conditions on the ground" improved, but saw the apology as not so much an "apology" but a generalized time horizon during which, should conditions improve, an apology might be considered. But they insisted there would be no timetable for the apology to be delivered. Some House members wondered what would happen to all the good slavery jokes they had stockpiled.

In other news, John McCain showed remarkable consistency with his support of an anti-affirmative action ballot measure in  his home state of Arizona. Just another in the long line of measures he has supported like the one to strike down the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, both the Arizona state holiday and federal holiday. (Although he said in New Orleans recently, "My friends, that was a mistake," before dancing awkwardly with elderly black female members of a church group and quilting circle. And he appeared at the NAACP's national convention in Cincinnati, before launching into his latest round of false attacks against his opponent, the first African-American to become a nominee for President. About his appearance before the NAACP, he said in front of a group of elderly white veterans, "My friends, that was a mistake. That was a doozy.")

The House really did apologize today, another mile marker in a long journey many thought they wouldn't live to see. Unfortunately, those to whom the apology is truly owed -- who lived and died under slavery, and most those who lived and died under Jim Crow -- are not here to receive the apology first hand.