The first incident involved a voicemail sent from a Germantown man, and the second was an anonymous typed letter sent from the Greenville area.
“We cannot take any of these things lightly. It’s the world that we live in today,” said Derrick L. Foward, president of the civil rights organization, who shared the hate mail and voicemail tonight during a press conference held at the local NAACP office in downtown Dayton.
The first hate message was a voicemail left in late February by a man in Germantown. It referenced the homicide of Brittany Russell, a Middletown mother found shot to death in her car in Dayton while her baby was in the back seat. The man’s voicemail contained racial slurs, and said “monkeys on the west side acting like a bunch of caged animals.” The man, who reportedly owns a business, invited the NAACP leaders to call him back, which they did but did not receive a return call, Foward said.
The local office last week received an anonymous typed letter from the Greenville area, which referenced a recent car commercial for SVG Motors that featured Foward. The letter said “black people not welcome in Greenville” and to “send the blacks back to Africa.”
A Jefferson Twp. firefighter resigned after he posted comments to Facebook deemed “clearly racist in nature” regarding the same commercial.
“The commercial had zero, zero to do with the NAACP, but it did bring out some of those same people who harbor the hatred in their hearts,” said Foward, who called the recent hate messages “disturbing” and said he is concerned for the safety of the organization’s volunteers.
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FIRST REPORT
The Dayton Unit of the NAACP has called a press conference tonight to address hate mail.
Officials said they will release hate mail and hate voicemail they have received during the press conference held at the NAACP office in Dayton.