African American man charged with anti-black graffiti that shook Eastern Michigan University

Eddie Curlin (Michigan Department of Corrections)

Last fall and in the spring, the otherwise quiet campus of Eastern Michigan University was hit by three ugly incidents of vandalism targeting blacks that rocked the community.

The first came in September, when “KKK” was sprayed in red, white and blue paint on the wall of a dormitory, along with a threatening racial slur telling blacks to “leave” the school in Ypsilanti, about 11 miles southeast of Ann Arbor.

Then, on Halloween, the same ominous hate message using the n-word and ordering blacks to leave showed up on another building, this one right next to the campus’s monument to Martin Luther King.

“It really has rocked our community,” Judith Kullberg, an EMU political scientist and president of the faculty senate told The Washington Post. “In this whole context of a very tense presidential election it has raised anxiety here considerably.”

In the spring, a third racist message was left in a men’s restroom stall.

Coming as other campuses were being hit by similar acts of what appeared to be hate vandalism, the incidents sparked protests and made national news.

On Tuesday, the university was shaken again when police announced that a 29-year-old black man, a former student, had been charged with all three crimes.

The suspect was identified as Eddie Curlin, a student at the school from 2014 to 2016, currently serving a one-to-five year sentence on an unrelated charge of receiving and concealing stolen property, according to a university statement.

Curlin was arraigned in Washtenaw County District Court on charges of malicious destruction of property, identity theft and using computers to commit a crime. A preliminary hearing is set for Nov. 9.


Eastern Michigan student Mikea LaPierre, left, holds a sign in protest of racist graffiti found on campus in Ypsilanti, Mich., in 2016. (Ann Arbor News via AP)

EMU’s chief of police, Robert Heighes, did not explain the motive of the suspect, except to say that “it was not driven by politics and it was not driven by race. It was an individual item done by one individual,” he told the campus newspaper, the Eastern Echo.

Campus police noted that they had committed more than 1,080 hours of time to investigating the incidents, with the help of the FBI and the Michigan State Police, among others.

“To know that it was a person of color is hurtful,” a black student, Jaiquae Rodwell, told the paper. “As a black student, to know that another black person is using the N-word in a negative way is embarrassing.”

The arrest was one of several around the county over the past year in which an apparent act of racism or anti-Semitism was traced not to a hate group but to a suspect belonging to the targeted minority.

In December, for example, an African American member of a historic black church in Greenville, Miss., was charged with setting fire to it, and writing “Vote Trump” on the outside of the building.

In March, an American-Israeli Jewish man was arrested in connection with a series of bomb threats aimed at Jewish community centers in the United States and elsewhere.

To judge from news accounts at least, such cases are still relatively rare. Most arrests and convictions for hate-related crimes of violence or vandalism follow the traditional pattern.

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