Rob Mathis acted in his own best interests.
He took a selfie and left after walking into an open house in Michigan in 2019 and discovering confederate flags and a framed KKK application on the wall. He shared a photo of the application on Facebook and discovered that the items belonged to Charles Anderson, a local White police officer.
While Mathis’ post went viral and he received a flood of messages of support and gratitude for bringing Anderson’s story to light, not everyone was grateful, and they let him know.
“It was people saying stuff like, ‘You better have eyes in the back of your head,’” Mathis told rolling out. “‘You’re ruining this police officer’s life, we’re going to kill you, watch your back.”‘
He and his wife received cyber threats as well.
“We’re at shopping centers and people would be like, ‘Hey, I think that’s the guy right there,’” Mathis said. “So, people were stopping in the aisles, while me and my wife were shopping, and they gathered. I’m like, ‘Okay. Let’s just keep walking, grab our stuff, and let’s get out of here because it’s going to be a problem.’
“It was a lot of situations like that. Sometimes, we pull up to lights, and people yell and knock on the window, call us names and stuff like that. So, it was it was going on for quite a while.”
Mathis is a veteran of the United States military. Mathis enlisted in the military at the age of 16, and during his time in the service, he was subjected to a great degree of bigotry. In his camp, there was a White soldier who never did what he commanded him to do.
