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The Daily Tar Heel

Opinion: A ceremony for the segregated should be held in the fall

Earlier this year, a slight kerfuffle played out in the pages of local media outlets, including this one, about the installation of a marker in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery honoring African-Americans buried in unmarked graves there.

A marker honoring those persons was installed without much public input or notice. Some objected to town government. The marker was removed.

In early March, Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger said she hoped a decision about a potential new marker would be made in May, after public input.

Respectfully, this editorial board asks that any ceremony around the introduction of a new marker be done as conspicuously and publicly as possible.

In the past several years, this campus has witnessed important and controversial discussions around historical memory, the impact of historical injustices on our present and who shapes narratives about history. But since the UNC Board of Trustees introduced a 16-year moratorium on renaming buildings on campus, and the North Carolina General Assembly passed a law banning the relocation or removal of historical monuments, the organizing actions that led to those productive conversations have been cut short.

As more students who witnessed these discussions prepare to graduate, we are reminded of the unfortunate effects of a lack of institutional memory among UNC’s student body.

It is therefore the responsibility of those permanently located in town to keep these conversations alive. If a new marker is installed, wait until fall to install it, and try to make a ceremony around it prominent. It is from learning from our past that we understand our present.

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