MEMPHIS, TN (localmemphis.com)–The Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center is on guard.
This, after a letter threatening to blow up the center and harm employees at the Cooper-Young building.
The FBI and Memphis police are taking the threat seriously.
The longtime director of the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center, Will Batts, says they’ve received hate mail and negative phone calls before.
Batts says those communications are usually made up of name calling and slurs, but this threat was different. He says this threat was more specific, in the form of a letter and dropped off in the mailbox on the front porch of the organization’s Midtown bungalow.
A surveilance video, not available to media and submitted as evidence, shows what appears to be a 40 to 50-year-old male walking up to the building holding a coffee cup around 10:40 p.m. the night before and dropping an envelope with a swastika on it in the box.
A line on one of the four pages read, “keep pushing your agenda and we’ll start picking you off one by one and bombing your community centers.”
But the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Center will continue its work. Residents in the Cooper-Young community were disappointed to hear about the threats.
“I hate that it happened. That’s very sad,” said one resident.
“We all felt a little unsettled. We love this place. We still come into work everyday since we got this. We will continue to do that. We take our jobs very seriously. We’re all very passionate and dedicated to this work,” said Batts.
For 25 years, the Gay and Lesbian Center has served as one of the only safe spaces for the LGBT community in the Mid-South.
Batts says the organization is talking about increasing security around the center and for upcoming events.
Floyd Speed 