A Black dog walker in San Francisco had his house set on fire a few weeks after he said he was getting racist threats in the mail. His parents were stuck upstairs when the fire broke out on Tuesday, and firefighters had to go get them. He wasn’t home at the time.
Police said they are looking into the packages as possible hate crimes, but they haven’t found a suspect yet.
Terry Williams, the walker, said that he found two packages with racist threats against him at the row house he lives in with his parents. One was on April 26 and the other was on May 5.
“Gangster, thug, and other bad words about Black people were written on a plastic bag,” Williams told KGO-TV, an ABC station in San Francisco. He said that there was a picture of himself with racist slurs written on it and a toy animal with racist slurs written on it like a noose around its neck.
Williams got a call about the fire while he was meeting with city leaders on Tuesday to talk about the packages.
Luddie Williams, Williams’ 81-year-old father, said that his 79-year-old wife Carolyn smelled smoke in the living room early Tuesday morning. Soon, the room was on fire.
The dancer Luddie Williams told the online news site The San Francisco Standard, “I don’t know what happened.” “All I wanted to do was get my wife and I out of there.” They were taken to a hospital.
“An item in the fire building that is not related to the fire or the investigation but did need to be made safe,” said Jonathan Baxter, captain of media relations for the San Francisco Fire Department. “The bomb squad was called as a precaution.” Baxter also said that the thing might not have been a bomb, but he didn’t say what it was.
They are one of a kind because they have lived in the city’s Alamo Square area since the 1970s.
Over the past few decades, development, high housing costs, and other factors have pushed Black people out of San Francisco and away from their neighborhoods.
The U.S. census says that the number of Black San Franciscans has gone down from 10.9% in 1990 to 5.7% in 2021. A decision from the 2020 San Francisco Human Rights Commission said that Black people are the only racial group whose numbers have gone down in the city every census since 1970.
The study also found that nine of the top ten causes of death are more common among Black people in San Francisco.
Jackie Brown told NBC News, “I could see it coming.” She was born in San Francisco and moved to Atlanta and then to Charlotte, North Carolina, more than ten years ago. “I didn’t leave because I was afraid, but I didn’t feel as safe in my own town as I had.” It’s getting too pricey. Of course, Black people also feel like they are not wanted there.
Williams told The Standard that he had been called racist names while walking his own dogs or the dogs of his clients in the area. But things have gotten much worse in the last few weeks.
Still, Williams and his family have a lot of support from people in the area. More than $73,000 has been raised on GoFundMe to “Help Terry Keep His Family Safe After Hate Crime.”
The Rev. Amos Brown, head of the San Francisco NAACP, said that the racist attacks on Williams should be a “tipping point” for the city. “We need more good people on board to make things hard for bad people.”
Williams could not be found for comment, but he did tell The Standard that he was set on one thing: “They want me to run.” “I’m not going to run.” I was raised better by my grandpa, and I learned better from my great-uncle and my dad. It makes me stay and fight even more. “I’m not leaving.”
