I was standing onstage at the University of Puget Sound, preparing to give a talk about anti-Chinese violence in the American West, when a man I’d never met stepped up beside me. He was introduced as a member of the Tacoma City Council. Without preamble, he turned to the audience—and then to me.

“I tell my kids reconciliation begins with an apology,” he said. “On behalf of the city of Tacoma, I am sorry.”

Maybe he meant the apology for the room. But it landed on me.

In November, 1885, the white residents of Tacoma, Washington Territory, drove out their Chinese neighbors. It took only hours. Armed with clubs and pistols, vigilantes went door to door, herding more than three hundred men, women, and children through the streets and out of town. As the forced march began, rain started to fall. Two of the expelled died of exposure; the rest made their way to Portland by foot or rail. Days later, arsonists returned to burn what was left of Chinatown. No one came back. For decades, anyone who tried was run out again. That history was the subject of my talk. It was why I had come to Tacoma.