Let me take you back to that day in 1986 when the Rev. Willie Wilson of the Union Temple Baptist Church led a protest against an Asian market owner who had supposedly disrespected an African-American customer. The alleged affront involved the owner of a grocery in Ward 8 refusing to serve a customer who he suspected of stealing.

Wilson — then and now an important religious leader — urged a boycott of the store. He said that if he and his people had not forgiven the shopkeeper, “we would have cut his head off and rolled it down the street.”