Staff report

SALISBURY — Healing and dialogue will be the focus Sunday as people gather to discuss the 1906 lynching of three African-American men in Salisbury.

Nease Gillespie, John Gillespie and Jack Dillingham were awaiting trial in the murder of a Rowan County farmer and his family when an angry mob stormed the jail, dragged the men away and hanged them before a crowd of onlookers.

It’s a dark chapter of local history that many don’t know or would like to forget.

The Actions in Faith and Justice Community Program has been planned to commemorate, acknowledge and attempt to learn from the hanging — one of the nearly 4,000 lynchings that took place across the South in the Jim Crow era.

The program will be held in two parts, starting with a session from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Salisbury Civic Center, 315 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. S.

The session starts with a welcome, interfaith prayers, and proclamations from the cities of Salisbury and East Spencer.

The Rev. Stuart Taylor of the Salem Presbytery Peace and Justice Task Force will give the statement of the occasion.

Triple Threat Dance Co. will perform, and music will be presented by Teresa Moore-Mitchell, Hall’s Chapel Primitive Baptist Church and Livingstone College.

The dialogue part of the program will include representatives of The Truth, Healing and Equity (THHE) Commission — Ashley Love, Mike-O Martelli and the Rev. Anthony Smith.

Guests taking part in the dialogue include Dr. Claude Clegg, who spent his childhood in Salisbury and is UNC’s Lyle V. Jones distinguished professor of African, African-American and diaspora studies. He is also author of “Troubled Ground: A Tale of Murder, Lynching, and Reckoning in the New South,” a book sparked by his study of the Salisbury lynching.

The other guest participant is Dr. Seth Kotch, UNC assistant professor of digital humanities in the Department of American Studies. Kotch directs the UNC Red Record, a website that documents lynchings in North Carolina.

Moore-Mitchell will close the program with “Amazing Grace.” Then Community Voices will lead the audience in a trolley ride sing-along as they travel to a site believed to be near where the lynching took place, the corner of North Long and Gillespie streets. There, a service will be held that is open to all people, regardless of faith.

The day’s events were sparked by Salem Presbytery’s Peace and Justice Task Force, which was involved in a service to commemorate the 1870 lynching of Wyatt Outlaw, Graham’s first African-American town commissioner.

It was suggested that a similar event be held in Salisbury as Salem Presbytery met here in the spring. With input from the Ministerial Association and others, organizers decided to make it a communitywide event on the anniversary of the hanging — Aug. 6.