The principal saw a swastika first. It was inky black, spray painted on a trash can just beside the entrance to the high school. David Burton switched off the engine of his SUV, unaware, even then, of the magnitude of what he was about to see.
This was the last day of the year for the class of 2018 at Glenelg High School. There was going to be an awards ceremony, a picnic, that end-of-a-journey feeling that always made Burton so proud of his job. But as he was on his way to work at 6:25 a.m., the assistant principal had called, agitated and yelling about graffiti. "It's everywhere," he kept saying, so Burton had leaned on the gas and rushed the last few miles.
Soon, everyone would be telling him how shocked they were. This was Howard County, after all: a Maryland suburb between Washington and Baltimore that is extremely diverse, extremely well-educated and home to Columbia, a planned community founded on the principles of integration and inclusion. People moved their families here for that reputation just as much as for the good schools.
"Pleasantville," Burton liked to call it, but as a black man, and as the principal of the county's only majority-white school, he knew this place was more complicated. When he stepped out into the bright spring day, he confronted the reality of just how much more.
Beneath his dress shoes, there were more swastikas. Spray painted around them were crude drawings of penises.
Then Burton saw the letters "KKK." He saw the word "Fuck" again and again next to the words "Jews," "Fags," "Nigs" and "Burton."
He kept walking, following the graffiti around the building's perimeter. It was on the sidewalks, the trash cans, the loading dock, the stadium around back. There were more than 100 markings in total, though he didn't bother to count.
He turned a corner and saw something written in large capital letters on the sidewalk: "BURTON IS A NIGGER."
He paused only for a moment, looking at the words, trying to comprehend that all of this was real.
Later, school district officials, county administrators and prosecutors would have a name for what happened here. They would repeat it, condemn it and vow to prevent it from occurring again. Hate crime.
By the time the awards ceremony was about to begin, Principal Burton had rewritten the speech he had been planning to give. "We are not going to let this ruin your celebration," he would now tell students.
He emerged from his office with notes clutched in his hand and stopped to check in with the police. The security footage, they told Burton, confirmed what he had suspected.
The principal entered the auditorium to a burst of applause. He stepped up to the podium. He stood before his students, looked out into their faces and felt certain: The people who did this were looking back at him.
