Blair Campbell, the Pocahontas County woman who was targeted with racist graffiti in January, sounded like a different person on Monday.
Before the man who wrote the graffiti on her place of business was sentenced on Friday, Campbell was still feeling disillusioned by the jury's decision on Aug. 28 not to convict the perpetrator on a civil rights charge.
Robbie Ratliff, who wrote "N---- Lover" on Campbell's restaurant, the Pretty Penny Cafe, was only found guilty of destruction of property.
Campbell, a white woman married to a Jamaican black man and the mother of two bi-racial children, had stood in the bitter cold with several friends and used heavy-duty brake cleaner to remove the message.
She worried for months that violence would follow the attack. She said the verdict made her feel like to the jury, comprised of mostly white men and no people of color, "the safety of our family was a joke."
But Monday, she was animated as she described Circuit Judge Robert Richardson's actions at the sentencing on Friday.
"Judge Richardson definitely was not joking," she said.
While the jury didn't recognize the attack as race-based, Richardson did, she said.
"Judge Richardson is a gift," she said. "I'm telling you, the man is a genius. He just gets it. He understands it's not about destruction of property. This is about the destruction of a family and a community."
The judge sentenced Ratliff to a year in jail, but suspended the sentence for three years. First, Ratliff will have to do some character-building.
Within the next two weeks, he has to write a 2,000-word essay on how he would feel if he were a person of color, and someone had targeted him.
He will have an assigned reading, to be determined by the judge, every month. He will have to complete 500 hours of community service and pay the cost of court proceedings.
"I didn't know he could get so creative," Campbell said.
He will also have to paint the now-closed Pretty Penny Cafe. Campbell said she had planned to suggest that at the sentencing, but she didn't have to. Ratliff suggested it himself.
Campbell said she doesn't know how Ratliff felt about the sentencing. He didn't stick around after the hearing. He also couldn't be reached by the Gazette-Mail.
"I guess we'll find out when we start painting," Campbell said.
Campbell had hoped for the civil rights conviction, not necessarily because she wanted Ratliff to be incarcerated longer, but she wanted the acknowledgment that his words had weight. She also worried about the message the verdict sent to the community, especially to people of color.
She's not worried anymore.
"It means a lot for the next person that this happens to, just to have that precedent," she said.
She said Ratliff said he understood the gravity of his crime, but the judge told him he didn't think Ratliff truly understood the pain he had inflicted.
"But this isn't even just about them," the judge said, according to Campbell. "This is about them and this entire community and everyone of color in this county."
Campbell said she hoped Ratliff would take his assignments to heart, and become someone the community could say "good things" about.
"If he does all these things, you're going to have to say good things," she said.
Campbell also feels like she was given a voice because she was able to talk about the effect the crime had on her life.
"It's going to be a full-time job for him," she said. "I feel validated."
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