Historical Black Museum In Florida Spray Painted With Racist Graffiti
Source: Google Maps / Historic Oviedo Colored Schools Museum
Racism is rearing its ugly head in Florida this week as a historical Black museum was vandalized and defaced with racist symbols.
According to WESH, on Sunday, the Historic Oviedo Colored Schools Museum in Seminole County was defaced with hate symbols. Officials said the museum’s walls were spray-painted with the odious “SS lightning bolts” and other derogatory language.
“Kinda brings tears to your eyes when you hear something like that,” said Kirk Hill, a longtime Oviedo resident told WESH. “It moves you.”
The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office said it painted over the graffiti and that a full investigation is underway, but the act was a slap in the face to the community.
“It is disheartening to see racist graffiti on this historic structure,” deputies told WESH. “Especially since Monday marks the holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King.”
The museum officially responded on its Facebook page, calling the act a “hate crime.”
“Whoever did this committed a ‘hate crime’ by placing the symbols and speech on a church, the St. James A. M. E. Church,” the Facebook page read. “We contacted the African Methodist Episcopal Diocese’s attorney who checked with Bishop Zanders. He requested that the FBI be notified. This has been accomplished. We filed a report with the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office.”
According to Fox 35, a $1000 reward is being offered to anyone who has information on who might have spray-painted racial slurs.
The museum’s president, Judith Smith, also shared her reaction to the racist graffiti.
“It didn’t shock me, that wasn’t it. You know why it didn’t shock me? Because we have been through so much just trying to get this project off the ground,” Smith told WESH.
She continued, “It’s like you’ve been working, working, working, and so I looked at it, ‘OK, it’s another problem,'” Smith said.
Smith and the community have spent the last five years working to restore the museum, which recently received a grant from the nonprofit Florida Humanities.
The building is rich in history and tradition. It was once part of the Gabriella Colored School, which at its inception in 1918, was part of a collection of approximately six colored schools within the Oviedo area: Oviedo, Kolokee, Gabriella, Wagner, Geneva, and Chuluota.
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