After months of hate mail, no choice but to move [View All]

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No choice but to move

After months of hate mail, interracial Smithtown family relocates



BY THERESA VARGAS
STAFF WRITER

August 12, 2005

For months, Lois and Mitchell Fuchs put up with the hate mail flooding their mailbox -- slurs aimed at her because she's black and at him because he's Jewish. Then came a typed note, bearing the words, "Where's Hitler when you need him?"

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"We didn't know where else to go," Lois Fuchs said. "My parents just moved to North Carolina and they said, 'Please come, we don't have those crazy people here.'"

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Smithtown is considerably less diverse than not only neighboring towns, but the rest of the nation. According to the latest census figures, 95.5 percent of Smithtown's 115,715 residents are white versus 75 percent for the nation. Less than 1 percent of the town's population is black, like Lois Fuchs, or two or more races, like her children.

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Lynne Niebuhr, who lives across the street, said she was upset over the unkempt condition of their house. "That's the only thing I had against them -- just clean your house," she said, adding that it was never about race, as far as she knew.

"We had lovely Negro, um, African-American neighbors to the left and right," said Niebuhr, who is not suspected of sending the mailings. "I think all that was blown out of proportion."

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"As a parent, I feel I am doing the right thing" by leaving, Lois Fuchs said. "If it was just us we would stay and fight it. With the kids, it's not worth it."

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-libias0812,0,3095307.story?coll=ny-li-bigpix