On Saturday morning, April 11, award-winning children's book author Irene Smalls awoke to a racially-charged message painted in black across the tidy, white wooden fence of her Durham Street home and a more cryptic message on the side of her brick house. Smalls, a longtime resident of the historically black area, was alerted by an alarmed neighbor to the graffiti reading, "Every n***** is a star".

Smalls called the police, who arrived at the home at 9:00 AM, according to Boston Police Department public information officer Rachel McGuire. While Smalls is no stranger to graffiti on her home, the epithet-laced message has left her shaken. "I've lived in this house for 38 years and I've never had a racial problem. This really threw me off. It felt very personal, very targeted. My fence has been tagged before with things like 'Carmen loves Maria', but this was just aimed at me. It made me feel very uncomfortable," Smalls said in a telephone interview.

McGuire said that the vandalism is thought to have occurred between 4:00 PM on Friday and 8:15 AM on Saturday, and Smalls said she did not hear, see or suspect anything before the neighbor pointed out the graffiti. McGuire said that there are no witnesses as yet, but the investigation is ongoing. "District 4 actively investigates any acts of vandalism similar to this one," she added. The phrase painted on Smalls's fence is a quote from a song by Jamaican recording artist Boris Gardiner and more recently sampled on the album, "To Pimp a Butterfly" by Compton, California-based hip hop artist Kendrick Lamar.

McGuire said that the BPD called its Community Disorders Unit, which investigates bias-motivated crimes, and the Mayor's Hotline, which deploys the city's graffiti removal service. "The city is coming on Wednesday with the graffiti truck," Smalls said. Smalls plans to have the fence removed as it is now a reminder of the racist affront and has set up a GoFundMe campaign to pay for the new fence and the cost of an outdoor security camera for her house.

Smalls has published over a dozen children's books, some of which were inspired by her fondly-remembered childhood in Harlem in the 1950s, receiving the Boston Public Library's Literacy Lights for Children Award in 2001. She is also the creator of Literacise, an innovative, multi-media children's reading project that incorporates music and movement along with written stories. Reflecting on the racist message, Smalls said, "Someone calling me the N word: they don't even know me. They don't know that I work with kids and volunteer in the community."

Smalls's Literacise was presented at the South End Branch Library with the late Mayor Thomas M. Menino in attendance, and in 2014 she taught a free class on writing children's books at the library. She noted that Titus Sparrow, the accomplished tennis player and first black umpire of the United States Tennis Association, lived on her street, which is adjacent to the park bearing his name. The series of small streets between Columbus Avenue and St. Botolph Street from Dartmouth Street to Massachusetts Avenue was for decades an enclave of mostly-black homeowners, many of them members of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Smalls observed, "This neighborhood has such a rich black history past that has been forgotten. This used to be a black neighborhood and now there is only one other family." The graffiti had a chilling effect on her African American neighbors as well. After the vandalism to her fence, Smalls asked the neighbors, "Why didn't you come over?" They replied, "We were afraid they might be next."

Although the incident "threw me for a loop," as Smalls said, she is determined to remain in the neighborhood. "I set up a GoFundMe campaign because I want to put up a new fence and a camera. I've been here 38 years and now I want to see everyone who goes around my house," she said, adding, "I don't intend to move. This strengthens my resolve to stay here."