A shocking video of a racist display outside a house in Decatur, Georgia, went viral this month, showing offensive signage and stuffed monkeys hanging on nooses from a tree.
A woman who said she was a realtor shared the clip on TikTok, where it has reached 1.5 million views since March 13. The woman's username was @shiatherealtor and her name appeared to be Shia.
While she was visiting an open house, Shia said the house next door "apparently didn't want any Black neighbors." She noted that the offender must have known there would be plenty of traffic moving in and out of the open house.
On the right side of a tree in the homeowner's front yard, they had placed a white lamb resting on a plank, which Shia theorized had been intended to symbolize white people. On the left side, three stuffed monkeys hung on nooses tied to the tree.
She then showed various signs stuck on the ground, including one that read, "Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the gun down." Another sign asked, "Black Lives Matter???"
Viewers expressed their horror and sympathy for Shia, who is Black, in the comments.
"I have never seen such a hateful display as this in my whole life," wrote one user. "Sorry to anyone that had to see this."
"Please be careful going around that house," cautioned another person.
One commenter suggested that the homeowner was a previous offender named James Edward Avery. A report from local station WSB-TV in September 2017 covered neighborhood complaints against Avery, who indeed appeared to have an identical display of lynched monkeys hanging from a tree.
In February 2018, Decaturish reported that Avery's neighbors begged Dekalb County to intervene for years until he was finally charged in 2017 under a local code that specified the square footage allowed for signage. The excessive signage violation landed him $10,000 in fines and five years probation, but Avery broke the terms of his probation and received a sentence of 30 days in jail in 2018, according to Decaturish.
Newsweek could not confirm if Avery was the same person behind the display in Shia's video.
The FBI defines a "hate crime" as a criminal offense motivated wholly or partly by the offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender or gender identity. The "crime" involved is typically a violent crime, such as assault, murder, arson or vandalism.
Shia said in a follow-up video that after the open house, she had returned to the same location for a showing and observed the homeowner bringing his signs, stuffed monkeys, nooses and other objects from the yard into his house. She was not sure if he had received a warning or caught wind of her viral video.
Newsweek reached out to Shia and the DeKalb County Police Department for comment.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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