Nazi graffiti incident near Oviedo raises questions about confronting hate

Warning: This article contains graphic language and material that may be upsetting to readers, including Nazi graffiti and a racial slur. Oviedo Community News’ editorial team spent time weighing how to display such sensitive material. Read an in-depth editor’s note about that decision. This is also addressed in our Ethics Policy.

UPDATED with new investigation information at 11:47 a.m. Thursday.

The weekend of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday — a day Oviedo marks with an annual parade and festivities — an act of vandalism called “deeply disturbing and disgusting” shook the community.

Along the white exterior walls of one of Oviedo’s most historic landmarks, the former Gabriella Colored School and St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church, which is now the site of what will be the Historic Oviedo Colored Schools Museum in Jamestown, lighting bolt SS marks and the words “Fuck you, Nigge” were written in large, dark red letters.

The Anti-Defamation League calls the SS bolts a “common white supremacist/neo-Nazi symbol.”

HOCSM’s Facebook post after the incident.

“We’ve got anti-Semitic and we have anti-Black,” Oviedo Mayor Megan Sladek said. “I mean, what is wrong with these people?”

Judith Dolores Smith, president of the museum’s board of directors, was on her way to get an oil change for her car Sunday morning when she was alerted to the vandalism, and immediately went to the site — which is technically located in unincorporated Seminole County and not in Oviedo city limits, but has an Oviedo address at 2170 James Drive — to see it for herself. And she knew what it was as soon as she laid eyes on the graffiti, calling it a “hate crime” on the museum’s Facebook page. 

“I don’t know if I could imagine it happening [prior to it actually happening],” Smith, whose Oviedo roots go back to before its founding as a city in 1925, said. “We’ve had incidents [in Oviedo’s past], but to have them do it on a church, I don’t remember anyone doing it on a church. It becomes a hate crime when you do it on a church.

”Whoever wrote that should be ashamed,” she said. 

Smith reported the incident to not just the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office, but to the FBI as well. By press time, OCN had not heard back from the agency after submitting an information request. 

UPDATE: The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office has announced it has launched a felony criminal mischief investigation into the incident.

“We ask that if anyone has information about this incident, please call the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office at (407-665-6650) or Crimeline at (800)423-TIPS,” a SCSO spokesperson said in the announcement.

“I don’t know if the person [or people, who did it] realized they were doing something that could end them up in jail,” she said. “It disturbed me.”

As news of the incident spread, Oviedo residents were feeling similarly.

While perched in front of laptops at Craft & Common coffee shop, 20 Alexandria Blvd. in Oviedo, UCF seniors Lisa Barra and Camila Campos discussed what they saw on local broadcasts.

“It’s hard to believe that people still, with those ideologies and beliefs, are living in your community,” Barra, who lives in Oviedo, said. “You hear about it other places, but you don’t think — you’re out in your community every day, you don’t really see that present.

“When you see it like that, it’s like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that’s actually happening here.’”

The disbelief was echoed by Sladek.

“Holy smokes, what on earth? I am speechless,” she said. “I can’t believe somebody would do that here. I really can’t.”

Not surprising for some

The feeling of surprise was not unanimous among city officials, however. 

City council member Natalie Teuchert, who is Jewish, said she has received “threatening anti-Semitic emails, being an elected official,” but has not seen something like this before.

“In the 20-plus years I’ve lived here, I haven’t seen anything spray painted or anything like that,” she said. “So that’s a new one for us.

“I did not find it shocking [that it happened],” she said. “I found it deeply disturbing and disgusting.”

Leaders in Oviedo’s Black community similarly were not surprised that it occurred.

For Kathy Hunt, president of Oviedo Citizens in Action, Inc. (OCIA), it was only a matter of when, not if, hate speech would be so publicly pronounced in the Oviedo area.

“We [have been] sitting back and we are just saying that, ‘OK, everything is just peachy, peachy peachy,’” she said. “But when is it going to happen? And so we should not be surprised that it did.”

Similarly, William Jackson, lifelong Oviedo resident and member of Improving Oviedo Neighborhoods (ION), said he knew those hateful thoughts were still pervasive.

“Racism, hatred, bigotry and some other words that denote negative feelings toward another person because of their race, creed or color [are] still active and prevalent in our society,” he said.

“Those words represented something, but the action that they took to make those words is what hurts me the most,” he said. “They had to think about what they were going to do, when they were going to do it, how they were going to do it and what it was going to represent. … The action that they represented is what’s harmful to me.”

How a community heals

In the midst of the vandalism, how does a city like Oviedo recover? How does it heal?

What city officials, community leaders and residents agree on is it starts with the people of Oviedo.

“I think it is really important to stand up and say we don’t agree with that,” Teuchert said. “Hate is not welcome here or in our neighboring communities.”

Teuchert said she quickly reached out to the museum to check if they were OK, and if they needed help. Sladek spoke about the incident in front of hundreds of attendees at Monday’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day festival.

“We all just need to say we’re not going to tolerate it and we’re going to stand with the people who are being belittled,” Sladek said.

“What a jerk move.”

While Teuchert supports a proactive, full-throated response in terms of city messaging, Sladek doesn’t “want to elevate the stature of the criminal and keep talking about it,” and would rather follow the lead of the Black community and local organizations, such as the museum, OCIA and ION.

Leaders of those organizations, however, said they do not want to be solely relied on to lead.

“I don’t represent the opinion of every other Black person in the community,” Jackson said. “We cannot lower this to a Black and white issue.

“I think the city should be a part of the lead,” he said. “They have the resource and assets to say, ‘let’s have a public meeting on this, or let’s bring this issue up.’”

Jackson clarified that while the city can provide the large forum, it is up to individual community members to start and have the conversations.

Smith, who has previously served on Oviedo’s City Council and ran for mayor in 2023, however, said that bringing the community together after this incident does not start with city officials or even local advocacy groups, but with individual neighbors joining each other.

“I don’t want the city determining anything,” she said. “What I do want is the citizens who have a moral compass to do something, determine what’s right.”

Hunt said he sees the responsibility of bringing people together falling on “pastors and community leaders, political and non-political leaders, parents, all of those, I think, we need to come together, have conversations and highlight that we are more alike than we are different.”

Hunt said that at OCIA’s next meeting the group will discuss if and how they want to respond and get involved, even though she hopes positive action is taken by community members even before that.

Events like the MLK festival are a good start in bringing the community together, but some think even more can be done.

Following the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the ensuing protests, Hunt worked with the local Black Lives Matter group to peacefully march at Oviedo on the Park and give a speech, and with Oviedo Police Chief Dale Coleman to build a stronger relationship between the police and the community through town hall meetings. 

“We talked about things and gave him food for thought,” Hunt said. “If hearts are broken, what do we do? Let’s try to heal the hearts and understand and figure out that we are standing united.”

Hunt and Jackson both said they would like to see regular town hall-style events where people can speak freely and openly in front of the community.

“For example …Martin Luther King Day, that’s one of the only times that we really sit down and communicate with each other, one time a year,” Jackson said. “That’s not enough. Quarterly is not enough. That’s something we have to do on an ongoing basis to keep a relationship strong and vital in our community.”

Barra and Campos said they would like to see even more events that celebrate diversity and unite the city’s residents on a regular basis.

And while healing may not be easy, it can happen.

“We’ve got a challenge above us that’s beyond one person,” Jackson said. “You can’t put it on the government. You can’t just put it on the local groups. You can’t just put it on individuals. We have to collectively want to solve these problems.”

In speaking about this, Jackson remembers a famous quote by Dr. King: “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

“We’ve got to stand on that,” Jackson said.

“I’m emotional, but not when it comes to taking care of business. If I have something to do, I take care of that and I cry later on. And I haven’t had time to cry.”

-Judith Dolores Smith

What happens next?

In addition to joining together, Smith feels that finding out who spray-painted the words will be a start to healing.

“Somebody knows who did it. We’re living in a society where people feel they don’t have to snitch, even though it may be wrong,” she said. “We need a punishment. If not, we are doomed. If not, you will have everybody doing what they will.”

Others agree that finding closure is important. 

“I feel like if people see that the perpetrators, if these kinds of crimes get off and aren’t really punished, it’s easy to think that they can get away with the same kind of unjust behavior,” Campos said. 

If the person or people who spray-painted the words happens to be an Oviedo resident and not an outside agitator, Teuchert made it clear that they do not represent the city’s values.

“No matter where they live … they’re not one of us,” she said. “You can live in a community and not be part of it. And if you act like that, you’re clearly not part of your local community. You’re acting on your own accord.

“We don’t accept that here.”

Smith said she can’t let the incident distract her work toward the opening of the museum, which she hopes will occur in 2025, but does not yet have a set date. 

“I don’t have time to be emotional. I have a project to complete. No one is going to stop me,” she said. “This is my life … in a couple of months maybe I’ll have an emotional feel for this. 

“I’m emotional, but not when it comes to taking care of business. If I have something to do, I take care of that and I cry later on,” she said. “And I haven’t had time to cry.”

Want to contact your elected leaders and weigh in on this topic? Find their contact information here. Have a news tip or opinion to share with OCN or an idea for a way to unify the community? Do that here.