Second incident of racist graffiti in Wilmington

Another car in Wilmington was spray painted with, “KKK,” “White Power,” and other racist graffiti.

The car was parked on Tatnall Street between 7th and 8th Streets near downtown Wilmington, the same block where a community mural and artwork are on display. In addition to the hate graffiti, all four tires were slashed.

A passerby saw the hate graffiti and called Allied Local Emergency Response Team. ALERT is a grassroots community response team affiliated with the YWCA Delaware. The organization responds to meet the needs of residents after incidents of injustice. Kristin Bricker, with ALERT, said a team replaced the tires on the car and cleaned up the spray paint.

“Anyone who spray paints, ‘KKK,’ and ‘white power,’ onto a car that has a child seat strapped to the back seat is a special kind of evil,” Bricker said. 

Cornell Garvin owns the bookstore at the corner of 7th and Tatnall Streets. He said he saw the car this morning around 10 a.m. and that detectives from the Wilmington Police Department were investigating.

“It’s a sad thing, but it’s more shocking to me that someone would write that on a car in this neighborhood, especially in this neighborhood,” said Garvin, who described the neighborhood as largely African-American.

WHYY has called and emailed police spokeswoman Sgt. Stephanie Castellani requesting more information. We are still waiting to hear back.

This is the second time a car was tagged with racist graffiti. Three weeks ago, another car was vandalized with white supremacist and anti-Semitic graffiti in the city’s Woodlawn section.