‘Do not take it lightly’: Lawnside residents meet, discuss response to racist graffiti incident

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Dozens of community members gathered at Lawnside Borough Hall on Saturday to discuss and process the racist graffiti spray painted on resident Dawn Hines’ backyard fence and discovered Nov. 7.

“This is not just another crime, another case on the prosecutor’s desk,” said Lloyd Henderson, president of the Camden County East NAACP, which organized the town hall with the Lawnside Homeowners/Community Organization.

Community members said they are concerned over how the case is being handled and whether a suspect will be charged in the hate crime, officially categorized as a bias incident by the state of New Jersey. Others shared their fears that the incident, which came just two days after Donald Trump was elected president, will be followed by other racially-motivated attacks.

“Where is the outrage? Where is the urgency? Where is the justice?” Henderson asked, while calling out city officials for not organizing a community meeting in response to the incident. Mayor Mary Ann Wardlow, who was in attendance, said local officials are doing their best to support Hines and borough residents.

Hines shared her story of that day’s events and the aftermath. She said she moved to Lawnside because of its importance to Black history and what the town meant to her as a place of support and community.

“If you read exactly what was on my fence and it did not touch your heart, you’re not human,” Hines said. “You’re not human, if that did not affect you in any kind of way. I have many people who have reached out to me, all nationalities, because it touched them. This is something that if I’m going to be the spokesperson, I’ll be the spokesperson. This is something that I’ll keep talking about, if it’s going to bring all types of cultures together and everybody unite as one, because it’s a movement.”

Capt. William Plenty of the Lawnside Police Force told the crowd that local and county police, along with the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office and the state Attorney General’s Office, are investigating the case and are seeking to ensure Hines and all Lawnside residents feel safe.

“We’re pursuing every avenue possible,” Plenty told WHYY News.

Ervin Mears, representative of the homeowners organization, said Lawnside’s significance as a historically Black borough, first established in 1926, makes it even more important to address the hate crime swiftly as a “cohesive group.”

“This land is 1.5 square miles,” Mears said. “[It] was created so that free slaves would have a place to raise a family in safety, and they kept it secluded so that no other outside oppressors would come in and, I guess, destroy it.”

From that history came the borough’s original name, Free Haven.

“The most important thing is that this land was accepted as being sacred, and that’s the way I look at it,” he said. “This land is sacred. So every day I get up and walk around, I’m stepping on sacred grounds,” he said.

Christopher Gilmore, a Lawnside resident since 2001, came to Saturday’s meeting with his wife. He said he wanted to connect with other community members in the aftermath of the incident to be better prepared to defend against racially-motivated attacks in the future.

“Hopefully we have support systems,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it comes from my own kind or other people, but we need to have those types of dynamics erected within our communities so that we can try to keep these racial disparities to a minimum, because it seems that they’re about to grow.”

Gilmore said he plans to join the neighborhood town watch, which other community members and the police captain discussed at the meeting.

The Lawnside Town Watch Association meets at 10 a.m. on the second Saturday of every month at Lawnside Borough Hall.

Qawi Austin, a neighbor of Hines, has lived in Lawnside for 24 years. He said he and the neighbors on his block are “close-knit,” and work hard to look out for one another and keep each other safe. But he said he hopes that there are more coordinated, community-wide responses that come out of Saturday’s meeting.

“I’m looking to see our community leaders take the lead on leveraging the energy that was here to organize and activate for sustainable outcomes,” he said.

Hines and a representative from Embracing Race – The Conversation said they plan to hold a vigil at Hines’ fence in the coming days.

“I don’t want anyone in here to take it lightly. Anybody who’s looking at me now listening to my story, do not take it lightly. We all have to come together,” Hines said. “We have to love each other, we have to have unity. We have to support each other. And if we gotta start town watches, I’ll be there. But we have to protect ourselves.”