A black family in Florida decorated the exterior of their home with posters of their twin daughters to celebrate their graduation from high school.
On Thursday, the family found an anonymous racist letter in their mailbox demanding that the posters be removed.
“Don’t you think that’s enough? It’s time to get those horrible posters of that fat and ugly black girl out of your house,” the letter said. “What a disgrace to the neighborhood. In fact, your entire offspring is a disgrace to the neighborhood. Consider moving to a ‘chapel’ of your kind. Your neighbors are watching over you!”
The father, David Sproul, told NBC News in a phone interview Tuesday that he was surprised by the letter.
“I would say it was cold blooded because it was aimed at children. Even if it wasn’t about race, doing something like that to a child, saying something like that to children is terrible,” he said.
Sproul said that he and his family, including twin daughters Xanah and Xarah, have lived in the Timber Creek Plantation neighborhood in Yulee, about 25 miles north of Jacksonville, for five years and have never experienced anything like it.
Sproul’s wife Toya shared the letter on her Facebook page calling the anonymous writer “coward.”
“Racism is alive but we are not afraid! This appeared in my mailbox today,” he wrote in a post on Thursday.
Sproul said he let his daughters read the letter when they got home that same day, and that the girls “didn’t let it bother them.”
“They realized that the person who wrote it didn’t even know them, so they instantly ignored it,” he said.
The family filed a police report with the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office. A department spokeswoman said the incident is under investigation.
“We at the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office do not tolerate racism and hate crime in our county,” Sheriff Roy Henderson said in a statement. “This is not characteristic of Nassau County and we will continue to investigate this incident. We are proud of the accomplishments of the Sproul twins and hope to get to the bottom of this soon.”
The family does not let the letter lessen their pride in the twins’ accomplishments.
Xanah and Xarah, who want to become doctors, will attend Saint Leo University in Florida for the prior medicine program, Sproul said, adding that they have both received scholarships from a local program in which they were involved.
“Although they are very successful young people and they work very hard … at the same time, this did not happen to two successful young men. This happened to two young black women,” Sproul said. “The person who did this didn’t know they had any accomplishments, didn’t know their work ethic in any way. This happened to two humans, and it shouldn’t have happened at all.”
A parade is planned for Xanah and Xarah on Thursday, according to a Facebook event page that has generated more than 360 responses. And Sproul said the family has received messages of support from people around the world, including the Netherlands, Ireland and New Zealand.
“The positivity that came out of something so negative is really good to see,” he said.
