Anonymous Hate Note Tries To Frighten Alabama Couple — But Community’s Response Is Inspiring

A couple received an anonymous note than can only be described as a hate letter at their Homewood, Alabama, business last Saturday — but the response of their community has been so supportive that they’ve turned what could have been a frightening incident into an uplifting one.

“At first I kind of thought it was a joke, then I was a little bit concerned for the safety of my family,” said David Shaw, who with his wife, Wani, operates an Italian ice shop in the Birmingham suburb, population 25,000.

This is David with his wife and family.

And here is what the letter said to the dad of three.

“David

It is hard to imagine a Birmingham boy leaving and bringing back a black wife.

You need to move to California where that is SOP.

Or go back to Woodlawn.”

“I never experienced anything like that so I didn’t really know how to respond,” David told a local media outlet.

Anonymous hate notes have become sadly common recently. A family in Lindenhurst, New York, received a similar note just last month.

The Shaws started their business, Magic City Sweet Ice, out of a push cart, and did so well that in April, they opened a permanent location in a storefront on the west side of Homewood.

Everything was going fine — and then the racist letter showed up in the mail. At a loss for what to do, David decided to expose the anonymous hater, and poke some fun at the person, whoever it was. So he took to his Facebook page.

“I posted it because there was no way I could communicate with the person,” David told the AL.com news site. “There was no return address, no name. This was the only way I could communicate.”

Here’s the response that David put up on his page.

“1) I LOVE my beautiful black wife and everything about her, (most everything about her). Our love for one another is far deeper than skin color.

2) We won’t be moving to California, or God willing, anywhere else anytime soon.

3) You got the address wrong

4) Woodlawn?”

The post has already received nearly 500 “shares” and dozens of positive comments.

“I would say someone needs to write an open letter to this idiot, but honestly he or she is living so far in the past I doubt they even have internet access,” one typical commenter quipped.

David says that he struggled with whether he should even tell his wife about the letter, but when he finally did, she just laughed.

“She’s a very strong woman from West Africa,” David said. “She has been through a lot more than a little letter.”

“Hey, we aren’t going to California,” Wani Shaw joked, to AL.com. “There’s a drought there! That’ll put us out of business!”

The couple says that the note has, if anything, actually helped their business — there was “a party at our store” after he made the letter public, David says.

Wani put the potentially scary experience in perspective.

“Whoever wrote that letter is in the dying minority,” she said, offering her thoughts on the anonymous hate note.

“We don’t deny that past, but we don’t relive it. We’re part of a generation that knows better. And wants more.”

[Images via WFLD-TV]