By Lindsey Bever, washingtonpost.com
A Kansas grandmother said she is worried about her biracial grandchildren after she received a racist letter saying they were not welcome in the community.
Nancy Wirths, 49, told NBC affiliate KSNW that she pulled an anonymous note from her mailbox Monday in northern Wichita from someone who claimed to be a disgruntled neighbor forced to flee his home.
“My wife and I have lived in this area for many a year,” it read. “We have noticed that there are some black children at your residence. Maybe you are running a daycare or these are your children. In either case, we have put our house for sale.”
“This neighborhood does not need any blacks in it,” the letter said. “There is a reason for the saying, ‘The other side of the tracks.’ That is where these people belong. You have done a great disrespect in this neighborhood by not thinking of your neighbors.”
Wirths told The Washington Post on Wednesday that she has nine grandchildren, ranging in age from 3 months to 10 years, and that six of them are black. She said she does run a day care, but it mainly consists of her own grandchildren.
Wirths said when she saw the letter addressed to “residents,” she thought it was a promotional mailer — then was shocked when she saw what it had to say.
“I’m reading it and I’m like, really? Then I reread it, and I just kept getting madder and madder,” she said. “I was like, ‘Why are you picking on my grandkids?’ ”
“I thought it was a joke; I thought I was somewhere else reading a story,” Wirths told CBS affiliate KWCH. “I guess I never thought this was real, the hatred for people in the world. I mean, because I try to teach my grandkids to love everyone no matter their color and this kind of throws a total wrench in that.”
Late last month, a mother in Seattle said she received a racist letter riddled with racial slurs targeting her and her mixed-race children.
It reportedly said: “U and all these n—— need to leave this country that’s ours! One day your kids will get what they deserve being on this land. F—— n—— lovers! White lives matter f—— n—– lovers!”
The note ended with the words: “Go Trump!”
“My kids are going to get what they deserve?” Stephanie Endres, the mother, told Fox affiliate KCPQ. “That doesn’t sit right for me.”
Police were investigating it as a hate crime.
Wirths told KSNW earlier this week she hopes it “never happens to anybody else.”
“It’s a shame that they’ve taken the innocence away from the children,” she said.
Now, Wirths told The Post, she is “a little wary” of letting the children play outside unless she is right there watching them.
“I don’t know who these people are,” she said. “Are they going to stop at the letter?”
Wichita police spokesman Charley Davidson told The Post that authorities are “actively investigating the legitimacy” of the letter and working to determine whether a crime has been committed. He did not say what crime that might be.
But police told KSNW that the author could be charged with disorderly conduct.
“I hope they are found,” Wirths told The Post. “I think they need to be accountable for what they did.
“If you’re so proud of what you had to say, you should have signed the letter or come to the door.”
Wirths said she was surprised to see firsthand that some people’s thinking has still not evolved.
“I didn’t know that Wichita was divided like that — that ‘black people need to live on the other side of the tracks,’ ” she said. “Where is that exactly?”
“I don’t teach that to my grandkids,” she added. “I teach them love everyone — not just black people or white people.”
