VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — A Virginia Beach grandmother is causing quite the stir in her neighborhood not far from the Hilltop Area.
It all started with a handmade Black Lives Matter sign that she displayed in her window.
WTKR reporter Angela Bohon spoke with the woman who said neighbors are stopping by and showing their support.
Paula Hughes has lived in her home for about 40 years. She said this is her way of making a statement. Hughes said the statement is to support the movement.
You can see the letters “BLM” in her front window. She put them there last fall. The letters were initially bright pink, and just recently, she and her grandkids decorated them with autumn leaves.
They decorated them after she got an anonymous letter in the mail about a month ago.
In that letter, the author asked her to take down the sign. The homeowner believes an adult wrote the letter, but a child addressed the envelope.
“Please take down your bright pink sign in your picture window," the anonymous author said. "At this point we ALL know you are a lover of BLM. It is obvious you are neglecting your yard with overgrown bushes and trees. If your intention is to bring down your street by making your yard ghetto, you have succeeded. I am writing this on behalf of your neighbors. It would serve you well to educate yourself on BLM. God bless you. You are in our prayers.”
75-year-old Hughes decided to take that letter and enlarge it into a giant poster board and put it in her yard for the neighborhood to see.
Since then, she said she has had people stopping by and showing their support. However, last night, there were two notes scribbled onto the sign.
At first, she thought it was graffiti condemning her, but it appeared that people supported her efforts.
One neighbor who did not want to be identified said, "She merely is stating what she believes in, and I think it’s great."
Hughes described how it all began with those three letters.
“It went up because I couldn’t march and felt there was something I had to do to show solidarity with the movement. So I went out and bought the brightest colors I could find.”
And Hughes said she doesn’t feel like she has done anything wrong and there is no homeowner’s association, so she says she is not breaking any rules.
Hughes has reached out for some legal advice. She said she does not intend to take down the BLM letters anytime soon.
WTKR first reported this story.
