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Today's Editorial Board meeting was entirely agreeable ... which isn't an entirely good thing. But who doesn't agree that a bridge collapse is a terrible disaster?

We take the same view of the 1898 Wilmington race riot, which the state Senate addressed yesterday and the House may consider today.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of official apologies for the evils of the past. To me, they aren't particularly meaningful because they don't come from anyone with personal responsibility for the events in question. But others on our board see it as accepting institutional accountability. Today's legislature is institutionally the same as the legislature of 1898, so it is appropriate for it to apologize for its misdeeds of long ago.

At any rate, the Senate didn't really apologize. Apparently it was easier to get all members on board with a statement of "profound regret," and our board is satisfied with that.

Why does it matter? This is an acknowledgment of one of the most shameful episodes in North Carolina history. The term "race riot" doesn't come close to explaining what happened. It's more accurately described as an armed insurrection or coup d'etat. The democratically elected municipal leaders in Wilmington were driven out of office by armed gangs in a carefully planned and executed quasi-military operation. This was done by white supremacist Democrats at the expense of Republicans and African Americans.

The success of this campaign in Wilmington inspired a white supremacy movement across the state and eventually the South, ushering in the Jim Crow era. By 1900, blacks and white Republicans were largely kept from the polls by violence and intimidation. In effect, the Wilmington coup negated the result of one election and altered the outcomes of all those to come for the next seven decades -- more than regrettable.

The legislature commissioned an extensive study of this dark chapter in our history, and now it owes some sort of statement. Your view? Is an expression of regret sufficient? Or unnecessary? What more, if anything, should be done?