Hate Hits Home

It sounds like the kind of thing that might happen in 1899, not 1999. When Bonnie Jouhari, a fair housing advocate in Reading, Penn., started the Berks County Hate Crime Task Force, and began trying to fight racism in earnest, a certain group of people in the Reading area took offense.

She began to get threatening phone calls, a local Klan member started sitting outside her office every day, and her picture was put up on a racist web site. When an anonymous woman made a threatening call to her teen-age daughter, Jouhari decided it was time to move to a place where she felt safe.

She moved across the country, to the Seattle area. But the hatred followed her, and the crank calls and harassment continued. She and Dani decided they were no longer safe, and had to uproot their lives yet again. They are not sure where they will go now.

CBS.com talked to her late last year, as she was in the process of leaving Reading, about her experiences and her work.

Frustration and Bitterness

Bonnie Jouhari: "It has made me a little bitter, and I'm really kind of a little ashamed to admit that. I've always been a firm believer in the system. My objective has always been, No. 1, to be a good mother, and provide a stable environment for my daughter. And to try to help people where I can. And you know, to try to work with them in a system that we all need to work with. And really that's it. That's me."

"And this experience has been....I don't even know how I feel. I'm angry at the system for not working. I'm angry at these people for starting this whole mess in the first place. I'm even angrier, and probably most angry at having to remove my daughter from everything that she knows."

On the Backlash

Bonnie Jouhari: "When you do civil rights work, I mean, history has shown that's not a real popular thing to do. And I mean I did expect some backlash, [but] certainly not to this degree. And certainly not anything that I thought would spill over into my home."

Why Berks County Is So Resistant to Change

Bonnie Jouhari: "Berks County is No. 1 in the state for hate crime....The county is very large. It's about 360-odd square miles. The city of Reading is only about nine square miles of that. And while we have a large minority population in the city, the percentage out in the county anywhere is less than 2 percent."

"And you know, historically, families just stay here. It's a very agricultural area, and it's a lot of suburban rural areas. The folks out in the county are not, they just don't welcome change. It's a very close community."

In the past year, Dani Jouhari has had to leave two sets of friends behind.

"At the end of last school year, when all this was really heating up, just before school broke for the summer, some kids were let into the workshop by a teacher, and made T-shirts that said 'coon hunter.' And they walked around the school with these T-shirts on. It sounds almost unbelievable, but..."

Still Committed to Change

"Oh yeah, I haven't changed my mind at all. They won't change my mind, I'll just come up with another way and another place to do it, that's all. I'm a little stubborn. And I just don't change my mind that easily."

Written by David Kohn;