American Tobacco Campus security footage showed three men hanging a banner Saturday night directing people to a website for Patriot Front, which is identified by the Anti-Defamation League as a white nationalist hate group.
About an hour after the sign went up, employees of the Seraphine restaurant ripped down the banner. Among them was Michael Smearman, who works as a sous chef.
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“We got past the initial disbelief,” Smearman said. “It was just like anger.
“We [have to] take this down. This is terrible. This is not what Durham is. The fact that they even decided to put that crap up in Durham is … we're not going to stand for it, basically."
Durham’s American Tobacco Campus is owned by Capitol Broadcasting Co., which is WRAL’s parent company.
The sign directed people to the website for the Patriot Front.
Smearman said he and his coworkers were preparing to open their restaurant Saturday night when they saw the sign on social media. They identified the nearby parking garage and took the banner down.
“We threw it in the trash [and] covered it with the most disgusting trash we have, so that even if they dug it out it was just terrible,” Smearman said. “[We] did everything we could to destroy it.”
Durham leaders addressed the banners and signs, along with recent racist text messages sent before and after Election Day, at a news conference on Wednesday.
“These acts have no place in Durham,” said Durham Public Schools Chair Millicent Rogers. “They are a direct assault on the values we hold dear -- values of inclusion, dignity and respect for one another. To be clear, hate has no home in our city, our county or in our schools."
The North Carolina Attorney General’s Office said it is working with federal partners to investigate the racist text messages sent.
Anyone who has received a hateful text message should contact the attorney general’s office online or by calling 1-877-566-7226.