SIM, or Serving in Mission, an international mission organization, has taken a step of reconciliation: apologizing for a past policy that excluded African-American missionary candidates from its ranks.

In a “Together as One” statement, SIM USA director Steve Strauss recently wrote words of apology. “We knew that, in the past, some American mission agencies had not welcomed African-American missionary candidates,” wrote Strauss, whose organization is based in Charlotte, N.C. “As we examined our archives, we discovered that we were one such agency.”

His words followed an apology statement adopted by the SIM USA board last summer, which said the practice was “adopted to comply with the wishes of the colonial governments which then controlled the African countries where SIM worked.” The practice, an unwritten policy, ended in 1957.

Strauss read the statement of apology, which called the practice a “sinful exclusion of our African-American brothers and sisters from a potential avenue of ministry,” at a January meeting at Columbia International University that was focused on reconciliation.

“At this public apology, I washed the feet of three African-American church leaders as a symbol of SIM’s repentance,” he wrote.