Editor’s note: This letter from University of North Carolina history Professor Claude A. Clegg III, who lived in Salisbury as a child, is written in support of a Resolution for Reconciliation first presented in August and recently revised by the group Actions in Faith and Justice. It is addressed to the Salisbury City Council.

By Claude A. Clegg III

I write in support of the Resolution of Reconciliation that is being submitted to you for consideration by the local group Actions in Faith and Justice.

As both a native of Salisbury and the author of a book on the city’s history, I am gratified to learn that the Salisbury City Council is considering ways to better acknowledge the history of the region as well as to chart a path forward toward addressing lingering inequities that continue to exist.

Recognizing a tragic episode in the history of a town as well as its aftereffects is no small matter. It requires an honest reckoning with the very identity and trajectory of a people that can sometimes unearth past events and actions that trigger contemporary pain and antagonisms.

However, the goal of such an endeavor is not simply to bring visibility to this history and its implications but to understand them and interpret their meaning.

In making good-faith efforts to recover and analyze the past, we do no disservice to the present or living individuals. On the contrary, we engage in humane, courageous acts of communal introspection and individual self-reflection in hope of better understanding who we are and how to avoid the pitfalls of past tragedies.

That is, we are blessed with the hindsight of the present for the purpose of reading and learning from the past. Consequently, we should not shun such opportunities to study and deploy the lessons of history to comprehend the present and prepare for the future. Such engagement with bygone people, events and developments is the only way to build knowledge and to advance human societies and cherished values.

In acknowledging the tragedies of 1906 and other periods, the Salisbury community actually positions itself at the vanguard of history, looking squarely at its past in order to envisage the next horizon.

Many places across the country and indeed around the world have not been able to stare their own history in the face and discern what it may say about their present and future possibilities. To do so is a noble thing; it reveals a willingness to seek wisdom and to cultivate peace, even if the immediate cost of doing so appears daunting.

In the long arc of history, we do not tend to remember or to reward those who avoid unpleasant truths or who seek to bury them in denial and indifference.

Instead, we more often remember those who stand firm on principle and the side of right, even when doing so may require some temporary discomfort. This is the essence of the kind of leadership that the citizens of Salisbury call upon the City Council to provide — that is, to not only lead when there is unanimous consensus but to lead when there is uncertainty and hesitation regarding the way forward.

You should take heart that you are not alone in this; you have well-wishers and supporters in your midst, along with those of us who optimistically observe your work from afar. You have the opportunity to serve as a model for other communities — and there are many — that have endured similar tragedies, divisions and injustices but fervently wish to do something different, something better.

Again, it is an admirable resolution and charge that you contemplate, an opportunity to utilize the lessons of history to serve the higher aims of the present. I wish you all the best of success in this initiative, and many others do as well.

Claude A. Clegg III is the Lyle V. Jones Distinguished Professor in the department of African, African-American and Diaspora studies in department of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He wrote the book “Troubled Ground: A Tale of Murder, Lynching, and Reckoning in the New South,” which looks at lynchings that occurred in 1906 in Salisbury.