Following a long campaign by actor Kirk Douglas, the Senate today passed a formal apology for slavery.

The 92-year-old film icon, who played a slave in 1960's 'Spartacus,' has been asking Congress for a formal apology for slavery for years, including collecting signatures on his MySpace page.

In April, Douglas wrote on his MySpace page: "As I told you quite some time ago, in my last book Let's Face It, I wrote about the importance of our country showing the world that we are capable of humility by making an apology for our behavior towards African-Americans before and after the Civil War. I think this action is more important right now."

The resolution passed by the Senate reads, in part, that Congress "acknowledges the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow laws," and "apologizes to African-Americans on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow laws" and "expresses its recommitment to the principle that all people are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and calls on all people of the United States to work toward eliminating racial prejudices, injustices, and discrimination from our society."

The writers of the bill noted that "Africans forced into slavery were brutalized, humiliated, dehumanized, and subjected to the indignity of being stripped of their names and heritage," and also pointed out, "the system of slavery and the visceral racism against people of African descent upon which it depended became enmeshed in the social fabric of the United States."

The bill, passed one day before the celebration of the liberation of enslaved African-Americans on June 19, 1965, will now go before the House of Representatives.