The anonymous email arrived on a Saturday afternoon, its message jumbled, misspelled, in capital letters. It was not addressed to a specific individual at the Birmingham Islamic Society. Rather, its hateful message was directed at African-Americans, Mexicans and Muslims in general.
Three words stood out: “run or die.”
About 10 miles away, the telephones on the campus of the Levite Jewish Community Center rang four times in six weeks with bomb threats, the third call resulting in the evacuation of children just after morning prayer at the day school.
The interfaith threats were enough to prompt the introduction of a bill in the Legislature expanding Alabama’s hate crime law to include threats against religious institutions and schools.
“We know the story of threats and fear,” said Rodger Smitherman, the Democratic lawmaker who sponsored the bill and whose wife was friends with one of the four girls killed during the 1963 church bombing there. “No one should have to live with being afraid.”
