Terry Williams, a Black dog walker and Alamo Square resident who received a threatening package on his doorstep last month featuring racial slurs and a doll with a noose around its neck, received another package this weekend featuring racist cartoons and Ku Klux Klan images.
“Pure race whites rules the globe against uppidy & ignornat Sambo n—s! [sic],” wrote the sender in a package addressed to Williams.
It continued with a photo of Williams and more threats: “We will continute to exterminate you n— slaves! [sic]”
The package, which was dropped off at Williams’ home on Sunday morning, contained a doll with a noose around its neck and a toy grenade, Williams told Mission Local on Monday. The incident was first reported by the San Francisco Bay View.
“The exact same thing, it’s a little more graphic,” said Williams, 49, comparing the contents of the package and the message to the first one he received. “Basically, ‘Alamo Square is for white people, get out, n—.’”
Last week, Mission Local published a story about the first racist package Williams received on his doorstep in late April, which also included a caricatured black doll with a noose. The San Francisco Police Department said at the time that it was investigating the incident as a hate crime.
It is unclear whether the same person delivered both packages. The police did not respond to a request for a comment on the latest incident.
“You see stuff like that on TV, you see videos — I never expected in my life I would see some shit like that at my doorstep, in 2024 San Francisco,” Williams said, echoing what he said last week. “Now you did it the second time, you’re escalating … I don’t know. I’m just worried for my family, now.”
Williams said he and his family, who live in separate units at the same address, have been looking out for each other: He has been keeping up with his younger nephew’s whereabouts while he is out in the neighborhood, and is trying to convince his elderly parents to go up north with his uncle for a while.
Alamo Square sits adjacent to the historically Black Fillmore and the greater Western Addition neighborhoods and, like those areas, saw an exodus of Black residents in the 1960s as the “urban renewal” projects and rising costs of living pushed residents out of their homes through the mid 20th century. Within just a few blocks of Williams’ home sit the African American Art and Culture Complex, Ida B. Wells High School, which is named for the prominent civil rights leader and investigative journalist, and Third Baptist Church, a historically Black church and designated San Francisco landmark.
But these names and sites mean little to the experience of the dwindling Black population that remains in the neighborhood. The blocks surrounding Alamo Square Park are more than 55 percent white, and about 10 percent Black, according to census data.
“It’s been in the DNA of the body politic of the state of California … they’ve dolled it up, dressed it up, put lipstick on the pig or so they say,” said the Rev. Amos Brown, the head of the local NAACP chapter and the Third Baptist Church, referencing California’s lesser-known history of anti-Blackness. “There’s an epidemic of hate … and outright meanness to Black folks in this town.”
The state attorney general’s latest report on hate crimes shows that the most prevalent reported hate crimes in California are targeting Black people, and those crimes increased 27 percent between 2021 and 2022, when the last report was published. In that same time frame, anti-Asian hate crimes decreased 43 percent.
Brown said that like Williams, the church has faced its share of hateful acts, and that his congregation stands with Williams against the racism that he said persists in San Francisco.
Supervisor Dean Preston, who represents the area and lives in the neighborhood, said in a statement that locating the perpetrator is “urgent,” to ensure Williams’ and his family’s safety. He requested more police visibility on the Williams family’s block, which he said Police Chief Bill Scott agreed to.
“I remain concerned for the safety of Terry and his family in light of horrific racist threats delivered to his home,” Preston said. “This type of vile harassment and intimidation is totally unacceptable and should never be tolerated in San Francisco.”
As he spoke to Mission Local on Monday, Williams was still out at the park, walking one of his three rottweilers and another neighborhood dog. As he strolled his neighborhood, he would pause the interview to excitedly call out to other dogs he knew.
“A lot of dogs, they come say hi to me,” Williams would say cheerily after the interruption.
Despite his concerns, and his efforts to move his parents somewhere safer, Williams said he won’t be driven out.
“I’m not leaving. That’s what they want me to do,” Williams said. “And if I’m about to do that — they won.”
A fundraiser to support Williams and his family, put on by his neighbors or, as he puts it, “guardian angels,” is ongoing here.
Person in pics in SF BayView articles appears to be a woman. She’s off her fucking rocker.
Terry’s a helluva a nice guy. Alamo Square off leash area can be cliquey, but Terry don’t roll like that. Nice to see Preston gave him a G.
Wow some white pus-fulled turds should go back to living under a rock. Sheesh…. 🙄
That doll is a called a “golliwog.” (You could look it up.) I wonder if it’s the same one I saw for sale awhile back at that store called “Stuff”? By the way, The Golliwogs was the original name of the the band which would gain fame as Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Used to live close to the drummer in the early 70’s. He gave my other neighbor (a kid) drum lessons and some kit (fyi the kid was half black and half american indian).
It’s really wonderful to see Terry (the victim) get this kind of support in the face of cowardly back stabbing / bullying.
Terry is a good dude. Use to be his neighbor. Police will catch the trash human doing this.
City Campus, Stage 1?
Is this an example of the Grays of the network state showing out against the blues in what they now claim as their own turf, exclusively for whites, Chinese and South Asians?
cops should stake this house out.
In many countries, there’s a community vigilance, where groups of neighbors would take turns doing a community watch on rotating shifts so a community member like this who is so integral to the neighborhood would be protected. We need that in this country if cops are not taking these kinds of threats seriously.