Nearly 53 years after she was heckled by a mob of white students while integrating Harding High School in 1957, Dorothy Counts-Scoggins next month will get a public apology from one of the people in the crowd that day.

Woody Cooper, who still lives in Charlotte, will join Counts-Scoggins June 10 for the public dedication of a “Garden of Forgiveness” inside Freedom Park.

The garden and dedication will mark the end of a three-year community engagement project known as the “Campaign for Love & Forgiveness.” Inside the garden will be a “Red Bench of Love.”

According to an announcement today, Counts-Scoggins and Cooper will be the first to “experience the bench” as he issues an apology.

Although Cooper admits to being in the crowd on Sept. 4, 1957, he said he did not shout any derogatory comments, spit on Counts or throw any objects, as some did.

Still, he has said in recent interviews, his presence in the mob has left him with feelings of guilt.

Beverly Dorn-Steele, community outreach director at WTVI, said the Garden of Forgiveness will be a “healing place.” The public television station is part of a group of community organizations known as the “Red Bench Ambassadors. Since January 2007 the Ambassadors have sponsored a series of community conversations around issues of love and reconciliation.

“Charlotte’s Garden of Forgiveness will be a place for our mothers to experience love instead of grief; our fathers to experience hope instead of anger, our teens to experience peace instead of violence, our leaders to experience reconciliation instead of payback, and our seniors to experience joy instead of bitterness,” Dorn-Steele said in a statement.

Earlier this month, Harding High School, now predominately black, renamed its library in honor of Counts-Scoggins.

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