Opinion ID: 623947
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Count 3: The HUD plaintiffs

Text: In 2007, African-American tenants of a Virginia Beach, Virginia, apartment complex were pursuing a claim of racial housing discrimination against their landlord through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The claim had been reported in the media, and the formal complaint, which included the names of the plaintiffs, was available on HUD's website. In May 2007, White mailed packages to numerous tenants involved in bringing the complaint, most of which were addressed to adult tenants or simply to Resident. One package, however, was sent to the address of Tasha Reddick and was addressed to Reddick's two minor children, who were both under the age of nine. Each of the packages sent to the African-American tenants at the apartment complex included a letter and a copy of a White's neo-Nazi magazine. The letter, which was printed with a letterhead containing a swastika, was addressed to Whiney Section 8 Nigger and included the subject line Re: Your complaint against Henry LLC. The letter read: Dear Nigger Tenant: I read today of your complaint against James Crocket Henry and Henry LLC. I do not know Mr[.] Henry, but I do know your type of slum nigger, and I wanted you to know that your actions have not been missed by the white community. For too long, niggers like you have been allowed to get one over on the white man. You won't work. You won't produce. You breed and eat and turn the world around you into a filthy hole, but you won't do anything to earn or deserve the life you live. Niggers like you are nothing new. All of Africa behaves as you dowith the difference that, there, there is no white man to exploit, only brutal niggers [sic] dictators to give the lot of you the kind of government you deserve. You may get one over on your landlord this time, and you may not. But know that the white community has noticed you, and we know that you are and will never be anything other than a dirty parasiteand that our patience with you and the government that coddles you runs thin. White signed each letter, Bill White, Commander, American National Socialist Workers' Party. The enclosed magazine displayed a large swastika on the cover with the word The Negro Beast emblazoned on the front. Two of the tenants, Tiese Mitchell and Reddick, testified at trial that they were frightened by the letter and immediately packed up their belongings to take their children to stay with relatives for several days. They understood the letter to mean that they should stop pursuing their lawsuit and that, if they did not, they would be in danger of harm. About two weeks after mailing these letters, White bragged on his radio show that he had given the plaintiffs in the HUD lawsuit a little bit of spooking with the haints. He explained that the Klansmen after the Civil War would appear in robes to make African-Americans believe they were being pursued by the ghosts of Confederate soldiers so that, as White put it, the niggers got so terrified that they wouldn't vote, they wouldn't do anything. Referencing the mailing to the HUD plaintiffs, White continued, that's kind of what we've done here.