A South Carolina library named after a victim of the 2015 Charleston church massacre has been defaced with racial slurs.
According to news reports, staff at the Cynthia Graham Hurd Library arrived on the morning of March 13 to find racist graffiti painted on the walkway, columns and walls. The spray-painted messages targeted Black women, police, gay women and the government.
“We were disappointed to see that someone would deface a cherished public institution such as our library,” Charleston County Library spokesperson Natalie Hauff told WCSC-TV, a Charleston-based CBS affiliate.
The building was named after Cynthia Hurd, who was the library’s manager at the time she and eight other congregants of the Mother Emanuel AME Church were killed on June 17, 2015, according to the Associated Press. Their murderer, Dylann Roof—a self-proclaimed White supremacist—has been sentenced to death for the slayings.
The library was among several local buildings defaced with racist slurs and other epithets during the weekend of March 11 and 12.
“I don’t understand it,” Charlie Stricklin, a frequent library patron, told WCSC. “With all the problems going on in the world… You don’t need to do this. This is not necessary.”
