After their home was firebombed in 2015, a Manhattan Beach, California family decided to take thousands of dollars in donations to educate their community on race.
According to CBS Los Angeles, an arsonist threw a flaming tire into the Clinton family’s front door, causing nearly $20,000 worth of damage.
Since the attack, investigators have not made an arrest in the possible hate crime.
However, their community rallied behind them. Residents donated about $35,000 to help find who was responsible for the act.
But the family did not let the attack get them down. They used the event to start a real discussion about racism in the country.
First, they donated the scorched door to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Then, the Clintons took the $35,000 in donations and gave it to the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation. These funds will be used to train teachers about bias and to create social inclusion programs.
“[We wanted to] take something that was really intended to harm us and to hurt us and to make something good out of it,” Malissia Clinton tells reporters. “But really getting at the heart of the matter, which is that a lot of this is hidden within us. If you were the idiot who started this fire, look at what’s resulted from it.”
