Was It Evil Passing Through or Something Dark Within? : For N.J. Town, Devastating Racial Attack Brought a Loss of Innocence

Hildegard Smith doesn’t remember the 30-odd years she spent raising her family in this rural county seat. Friends say the 50-year-old mother of five knows that the people gathered at her bedside are her children, but only because they have told her so.

She believes Richard Smith when he tells her he is her husband, but cannot conjure up memories of their years together or the plans they made to retire soon to Florida.

Yet when she shuts her eyes, those close to her say, Hildegard Smith sees as vividly as if it were just happening the faces of two white men who accosted her in her apartment building stairwell, chopped off her hair, smeared her with excrement, painted markings on her face and told her, “We don’t want niggers in this town.”

Victim in Seclusion

Suffering from amnesia since the morning attack Feb. 8, Smith is in seclusion, being guarded by her family and supported by a growing coalition of clergy members, citizens and community leaders.

Meanwhile, the town’s tiny detective squad is working overtime trying to find the assailants.

The Rev. William J. Sadler, interim pastor of the First Presbyterian Church and a leader of the coalition, likened the community’s response to the attack to the way a person reacts to the death of a loved one.

“They go through all the same phases,” he said. “First, they say ‘Did this really happen?’ . . . Then, they get angry.”

And underlying the anger here are feelings of impotence and anxiety.

Assailants Unknown

“We don’t know who they are,” Sadler said of the assailants.

So, the question remains: Was it an evil passing through this town or has something dark within been revealed?

“People have been calling, asking, ‘Are we racist?’ ” Newton Administrator Camille Furgiuele said.

Newton, nestled among hills 60 miles northwest of New York City, is home to 8,000 people, of whom an estimated 150 are black.

“We’re really a lily-white community,” Sadler said.

But not a racist community, said Sadler, Furgiuele and others.

Widespread Prejudice

“There is prejudice no matter where you go,” Furgiuele said. “I can’t say that there is no prejudice here. But I don’t think it exists in Newton any more than anywhere else.”

Sylvester Fletcher, a 54-year-old black scientist who urged the formation of the coalition, put it this way:

“There are undercurrents of racism in every community. In that regard, Newton is not an exceptionally good place. It’s a decent place.

“People here either like you or they let you alone,” he added.

John Gibson, 37-year-old co-owner of the County Seat restaurant, doubted that the attackers were locals.

Usually Harm Themselves

“I don’t think they could be from around here. I’ve noticed that people here only usually do harm to themselves . . . drinking too much, that sort of thing,” he said.

Newton is facing transition. A nearby interstate highway completed just over a decade ago has brought traffic to town and made urban New Jersey seem closer.

The attack on Smith has made the cities seem closer still.

“People tell me they’re locking their doors,” Furgiuele said.

However, more apparent than any sense of fear is the feeling of a community protecting its own.

Unable to Talk of Attack

Although dozens knew of the attack shortly after a neighbor found Smith, the story was kept under wraps. Smith, hospitalized for 12 days immediately after the attack, initially was unable to talk about the incident.

By the time police had the full story, days had turned into weeks and community leaders were getting anxious, Fletcher said.

“I am a positive person,” he said. “I wanted something positive to happen.”

“We had to make a statement that this community would not accept this kind of violence,” Sadler added.

Richard Smith finally agreed to let the new coalition publicize his wife’s case. A Feb. 26 news conference was called at which Smith’s identity was revealed and composite sketches of the assailants were handed out.

$13,000 Reward Offered

The sketches appear on 10,000 wanted posters that were distributed last week. A reward of $13,000 was offered for information leading to arrests.

The ensuing publicity has been rough on Police Chief Larry Romyns. He has one full-time and one part-time detective. And shortly after the attack on Smith there was a murder. A man is accused of slaying his wife because she intended to divorce him.

Romyns said his detectives have received dozens of leads.

Others are leery of what the publicity might bring to the community.

“We do not want anyone to escalate this into a Wappingers Falls situation,” Sadler said, referring to the New York state hometown of a 16-year-old black girl who says she was sexually assaulted by six white men.

Hair Had Been Cut

When the teen-ager, Tawana Brawley, was found last November, excrement was smeared on her and “KKK” and “nigger” were written on her body. Some of her hair had been chopped off.

Officials here say they do not know if the attack on Smith was a “copycat” reaction to the Brawley case. But they are quick to point out the differences between them.

Smith was not sexually assaulted; Brawley was, she told police. Also, people here say this is a local affair that will be handled without the help of outsiders.

“If (the Rev.) Al Sharpton showed up, we wouldn’t want him here,” Sadler said, referring to the civil rights activist who has taken up Brawley’s case. Sharpton and others have encouraged Brawley not to cooperate with authorities, claiming that for various reasons they cannot be trusted to handle the case properly.

Some Outside Support

The community is not without outside support. The state chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People has initiated an investigation of the incident. The state Assembly has passed a resolution expressing a “vehement cry of outrage.” And the Newark-North Jersey Committee of Black Churchmen says it will ask Gov. Thomas H. Kean to “intercede in whatever way he would deem necessary to bring this case to justice,” according to the group’s leader, Dr. Edward Verner.

One way the state can help, Sadler said, is by allocating money from a fund for victims of violent crimes. The Smiths have no health insurance, and in addition to paying for Smith’s hospital stay, the family faces huge bills for psychiatric treatment she will need.

“Our hope is that through treatment and time, her memory will come back,” Sadler said.