NAACP leader targeted by KKK, harassed with Confederate flag

After claiming to have received death threats by a group she believed to be the KKK, local Florida NAACP chapter president Evelyn Foxx found a Confederate flag on her lawn Monday morning, according to Gainesville police.

66-year-old Fox claimed that she left her house at 6:30 a.m. to go for a walk when she found the flag lying in her front yard.

“When I walked out, it was just laying there,” Foxx told The Gainesville Sun.

Foxx's friend, Meg Niederhofer told the newspaper that she initially thought the flag to be an American flag, draped in the grass, but when she approached it to pick it up, found out that it was a Confederate flag instead.

Foxx and Niederhofer immediately called local law enforcement when they realized what it was.

Leading up to the incident, Foxx said that she had been the victim of harassing phone calls in the middle of the night, from callers she claimed to belong to the Ku Klux Klan.

“I’m just a little shaken,” Foxx said. “The phone calls are one thing, but when someone actually comes to my house to do that ... ”

Niederhofer added, “I think it’s one more effort to intimidate people who stand up for civil rights. And you think those days are long gone and this proves they’re not.”

A spokesperson for the Gainesville Police Department told the newspaper that they are in the process of determining whether or not the flag left in Foxx's yard constitutes a hate crime charge.

“We’re looking into it and if we find someone responsible for it, then they could potentially be charged with a crime,” the spokesperson said.

Foxx told News 6 that she refuses to be intimidated.

“I think the tactic is to scare me enough, try to frighten me enough, bully me enough where I would just shut down and not say anything, but that will not work,” Foxx said. “When I see the Confederate flag in my yard, or when I see it flying anywhere, I think of what happened to African-Americans in the years past, slavery and all the slaves that were killed.”

Despite being harassed for nearly eight months, Foxx claimed that she refuses to stop standing up for what she believes in.

“I'm not going to stop doing,” Foxx said. “I am not going to resign as president of the NAACP. I am going to keep fighting the fight for people who can't fight for themselves.”