What one Black couple in South Carolina reported as a long-running campaign of stalking and harassment escalated into a living nightmare over Thanksgiving weekend when they left their home to find a cross burning “about eight feet from our fence,” they told a local station last week.
“We were speechless because we’ve never experienced something like that,” Monica Williams told WMBF on Wednesday.
She and her husband, Shawn Williams, called the police, who arrested a white couple in the neighborhood and charged them with second-degree harassment. Both posted bail the next day and are awaiting trial, according to online records.
ADVERTISEMENT
Horry County Police Chief Joseph Hill called the incident “appalling and unacceptable” in a statement. “Such hate and harassment will not be tolerated in Horry County,” he said, adding that the suspects would be prosecuted “to the full extent of the law.”
But the Williamses told police they fear that Worden Butler, 28, and Alexis Hartnett, 27, may yet “escalate their behavior beyond cross burning,” according to an incident report obtained by USA Today.
“They were out the next day,” Monica told WMBF. “So now, what are we to do? Live next to a cross-burning racist who’s threatened to cause us bodily harm? We feel that not enough laws are in place to deal with this, and there needs to be some accountability.”
South Carolina and Wyoming are the only states in the country without a law allowing harsher punishments for crimes determined to be motivated by hate for a victim’s identity, whether race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender. A statewide hate crimes bill has repeatedly stalled out in the Republican-led South Carolina Senate over the past three years, according to the Associated Press.
The incident across from the Williamses’ yard led to renewed calls by civil rights and South Carolina leaders for a hate crime bill to be passed into law.
The NAACP has said it plans to launch an investigation into the matter. “This here renews our efforts,” a Conway task force member told WMBF. “I just hope that we [can] be resilient and come together because, certainly, this has opened old wounds for those who have lived through the Jim Crow era.”
Marvin Neal, the vice president of the South Carolina State Conference NAACP, said the organization believed it had been “on the road” to a hate crime bill after the 2015 Charleston shooting that killed nine Black churchgoers. “But here we are again.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Charleston Jewish Federation, the Alliance for Full Acceptance, and Mother Emanuel AMEC echoed calls for a hate crime bill to be adopted, with the latter three groups demanding elected officials “take a strong stance against racism and… actively work toward fostering communities of inclusivity, tolerance, and respect” in a joint statement to WPDE.
The Williams told My Horry News that they had bought property in Conway, a small city about 15 miles away from Myrtle Beach, two years ago, intending to use it as a retirement home. As far as they could tell, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood.
Butler, who was accused by police investigators of erecting the cross “in full view” of the Williamses’ home, used the N-word liberally, Monica Williams told WMBF.
“He chased off our surveyors,” she added. “He’s chased off people from the water and sewer department.”
Shortly before the cross burning, police wrote in their incident report, Butler had taken to Facebook to post a picture of the Williamses’ mailbox and their address. He wrote that he was “summoning the devil’s army and I don’t care if they and I both go down in the same boat,” according to police. “I’m about to make them pay.”
Hartnett was no better. She told the Williamses that she had “killed a Black woman in the past” and would do it again, according to arrest warrants obtained by WPDE. As police spoke to her in the wake of the cross burning, according to the incident report, Hartnett continued to yell racial slurs at her neighbors. The epithets were reportedly captured on police body cameras.
Hartnett also faces an additional charge of third-degree assault and battery.
The incident “just shows that we still have this underlying problem that needs to be addressed and has never been properly addressed,” Brandon Fish of the Charleston Jewish Federation told WCIV.
“As our state lawmakers consider laws to limit the amount of history that can be taught in our classrooms,” he continued, “we try to remind people that some history isn't over yet and we can’t move past it until our state makes a strong statement that this kind of behavior is unacceptable in South Carolina in 2023.”
