In response to the Fremont incident, community members have donated about $2,300 to the library, which is part of the Alameda County Library system. The money will be used to replace the defaced books and to add to the branch’s collection of books about African-American and Jewish history, Pantages said.
Fremont police, who filed the vandalism as a hate crime, have no suspects.
The incident began Jan. 6 when an African-American boy checked out “My Life with Martin Luther King Jr.” by Coretta Scott King. After leaving the library, he discovered that the title page was covered by a racist sticker.
Librarians and patrons have continued to find marred books. The stickers and fliers included caricatures of African-Americans and Jews, as well as the swastika-and-globe logo of a Michigan-based white supremacist group known as the European American Education Association.
The vast majority of slurs were found in African-American histories and biographies. But several books dealing with Nazism, Adolf Hitler and Jewish culture were also marred.