Black dog walker house set on fire after racist threats

Source: SERGEY BOBOK / Getty

Add “walking dogs for a living” to the list of things that we cannot do while being Black.

A Black man in San Francisco nearly lost both his 79-year-old mother and 81-year-old father to a targeted hate crime attack according to an NBC News report. Terry Williams says he had been receiving racist threats via packages that were delivered to his home, once on April 26 and again on May 5.

“It was a plastic bag that had ‘Gangster,’ ‘thug’ and other negative words about Black people on it,’” Williams told KGO-TV, an ABC San Francisco affiliate. Inside the bag, he said, was a photo of him with racial epithets written on it and a stuffed doll with a noose around its neck and racist vitriol scrawled across it.

On May 21, 2024, Williams’ parents say they began to smell smoke in the house and before they realized what was happening, the entire living room was ablaze.

In speaking to The San Francisco Standard, the professional dog walker said that he had experience other incidents of racism recently such as name calling but never did he think things would escalate to this degree.

“They want me to run. I’m not going to run. My grandfather raised me better; my great-uncle and my dad taught me better than that. It makes me stay and fight harder. I’m not going nowhere.”

Rumble, Black man, rumble. As a result of this story, an outpouring of support has washed over Terry and his family. A GoFundMe titled “Help Terry Keep His Family Safe After Hate Crime” has already amassed $73,000.