Neighbors to Rally in Support of Black SF Man Who Received Racist Threats

Terry Williams is a born-and-raised San Franciscan — he’s called Alamo Square home his whole life. But on Sunday, he found a package containing racist slurs, death threats and a doll painted in blackface outside his house, telling him to “get out.”

“They said they’re going to exterminate me, eradicate me, that I don’t belong in this neighborhood,” said Williams, 49. The essence of the message, he said, was, “It’s not a Black neighborhood no more — get out of here, you don’t belong here.”

The doll had the words “Get out of the Alamo Square district” on the front, as well as a small plastic grenade and Ku Klux Klan imagery.

It was the second threatening package left at Williams’ home in the last two weeks; early on April 26, he found the first, which also contained a doll painted in blackface — a racist caricature of Black people stemming from 19th-century minstrel shows — with a noose around its neck, racist slurs written on the doll and printouts of racist imagery.

Since then, Williams said life has been more stressful for him and his parents.

“I see it in my mom; she’s smoking cigarettes,” Williams said. “And it’s just little things like she’ll tell me, ‘Where are you going? You call me when you get where you’re going.’”

On each occasion, Williams called the police, who came and retrieved the packages. Officers are investigating both incidents as potential hate crimes but are “unable to confirm that these incidents are connected,” a San Francisco Police Department spokesperson wrote in an email.

Supporters plan to rally in Alamo Square Park at 10:30 a.m. Saturday to “raise awareness” of the racist threats against Williams and pressure police to prioritize the investigations, Williams’ neighbor Katrina Queirolo told KQED.

“I hope they do their job, but in my opinion — what I’ve been through with SFPD and my history with trying to report stuff and get stuff handled for Black people — they don’t do it,” Williams said.

After Williams found the first doll, Queirolo started an online fundraiser to “install a great security system (with cameras)” and “help take some financial pressure off the family during a very difficult and scary time,” according to the GoFundMe page. The fundraiser had more than $10,000 by Wednesday.

“When it happened, I think myself and quite a few other neighbors were, obviously, absolutely horrified,” Queirolo said in an interview. “It’s such a disgusting thing that someone would have this much hatred and also just extremely scary that they could be in our neighborhood.”

Williams runs a dog walking business and said he has had racist and unfriendly encounters with dog owners and residents over the years.

“I’ve been called n— a few times, countless times. I had a lady call the police on me up here before, tried to say my dogs attacked her and her 18-pound yorkie. She called the police on me, tried to get me arrested three times for assault and battery,” Williams said. The San Francisco Bay View, a local Black newspaper, reported the alleged 2021 incident.

Williams said he wanted the woman to be charged under the CAREN Act, a local ordinance against racially biased 911 calls and was concerned to find months later that no report had been filed. San Francisco police did not immediately respond to questions about the incident.

The Rev. Amos Brown, president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP and pastor of the Third Baptist Church near Alamo Square, said it’s important to keep in mind the neighborhood’s history when discussing racist acts.

“Take note that this area has been gentrified. Here in Western Addition, the Old Fillmore, the Harlem of the West,” Brown said. “Black folks were pushed out under that so-called redevelopment program that was started in 1948.”

Brown added: “That was not about redevelopment, urban renewal — it was about Black removal.”

On Sunday, Williams showed up at Third Baptist Church “to find refuge in the midst of his trauma,” Brown said. The church prayed for him, and Williams spoke passionately about what he had experienced, Brown said. Williams said he hadn’t planned to speak when he went to the church but felt moved to.

“There have always been different acts of injustice and discrimination against Blacks in this city,” Brown said. He mentioned a recent incident at Lakeshore Elementary School in which a white parent threatened a 10-year-old Black child and said he’s received many calls from parents of Black children about racist incidents at San Francisco schools in recent weeks.

“San Francisco is not as progressive and liberal as it claims to be.”