A white mother and son in rural Illinois who waged a monthslong campaign of racial harassment and intimidation against their Black next-door neighbor in 2020 must now pay him $90,000 in damages, after a historic ruling found they violated the state’s hate crime law.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office has now tried and won the state’s first civil hate crime lawsuit.
Cheryl Hampton, 70, and her son Chad Hampton, 49, who are white, were found by Carroll County Circuit Court Judge Jerry Kane to have engaged in intimidation and disorderly conduct toward their neighbor, Gregory Johnson, who is Black, while also subjecting him to escalating racial harassment.
According to attorney general’s civil lawsuit filed against them in June 2022 (and obtained by Atlanta Black Star), the racist behavior by the Hamptons against Johnson culminated in their constructing an effigy of a Black-faced man who resembled him, wrapped in chains, and hanging it by a noose from a tree in their front yard in direct view of his home. In a window, they draped a Confederate flag with the word “Ni—er” painted in black paint on the pane.
The friction between Johnson and his white neighbors began in July 2020, when he noticed damage to his lawn that he believed was caused by a riding lawn mower used by the Hamptons. He erected an orange retractable fence on his property line to prevent the mower from crossing into his yard.
Cheryl Hampton told Johnson to remove the fence, and after he declined to do so, he found it had been cut in half the next day and called police.
Savanna Police Department Lt. Daniel Nevills responded and spoke to Cheryl Hampton, who told him in reference to her dispute with Johnson that she “did not want ni—ers living next to her,” the lawsuit said. While she talked to the officer, her son Chad Hampton ran a Confederate flag up a flagpole in view of Johnson’s home.
When Nevills left, Johnson said he witnessed Chad Hampton spray his lawn with weed killer, destroying the grass along the property line. Hampton later pulled up and damaged more of the fence. Johnson also reported these actions to the police, who charged Hampton with misdemeanor criminal damage to property.
On September 23, 2020, Chad Hampton spray-painted large swastikas with black paint on the garage door of his rental property, in direct view of Johnson’s home. Johnson was upset due to the symbol’s “historical and present-day association with white supremacist ideology,” the complaint said, and took photos of the swastikas and called the police.
On Oct. 19, 2020, Chad Hampton was arraigned in court on the misdemeanor charge stemming from his spraying weed killer on Johnson’s lawn. A week later, Johnson saw a Black “dummy” hanging by a noose from a tree in the Hampton’s yard.
The hanging figure had a white rubber mask with facial contours that had been painted black, with a curly black wig on its head that appeared to have been spray-painted in part with white paint. Johnson has salt-and-pepper hair, the lawsuit noted.
The body of the figure included stuffed jeans with a torso and arms covered by a stuffed beige zip-up jacket, clothing similar to what Johnson was known to wear. A large chain was wrapped around the hands, over the shoulders and behind the neck of the figure.
Startled upon seeing it, Johnson interpreted the figure as a threat on his life and his personal safety, the lawsuit said. He went to the police station to report it and urged them to arrest the Hamptons for a hate crime.
Meanwhile, Savanna residents noticed the racist effigy and began posting about it online, while also phoning in complaints to the mayor’s office.
Later that day, Lt. Nevills came to observe the hanging figure and photographed it. Savanna Police Officer Cory Drowns spoke with Cheryl Hampton, who told him she had hung it on the tree. Nevills also saw the Confederate flag and the word “Ni—er” painted in the window. Hampton admitted the flag was hers.
The following day, the complaint said, Savanna Mayor Chris Lain and Nevills came back and tried to talk Cheryl Hampton into removing the figure from the tree, telling her it appeared to be a racist symbol and would likely be offensive to the Black man living next door.
Cheryl Hampton refused and claimed the hanging figure was a Halloween decoration. She also told them she was tired of her neighbor’s complaints and was angry that her son had to take a day off work to attend court.
On Oct. 27, 2020, Nevills, after consulting with the Carroll County State’s Attorney’s Office, returned to the Hamptons’ residence with Savanna police and arrested Cheryl Hampton for harassment of a witness, a felony.
Two officers cut down the hanging figure from the tree. Its bulky size and weight and placement on the tree led them to believe that Cheryl Hampton, who was 5’2’’ and then 65 years old, could not have hung it by herself.
While the criminal charges against the Hamptons were awaiting adjudication in court, Attorney General Raoul led a hate crimes investigation assisted by city and county police and prosecutors. His office filed the civil hate crimes lawsuit against the mother-and-son duo in June 2022.
The combination of criminal actions and hateful speech and conduct engaged in by the Hamptons allowed Raoul to charge them civilly with violating the Illinois Hate Crimes Act under expanded authority granted under a 2018 amendment to the law.
“Our complaint alleges the defendants intentionally used the shameful history of lynching and racism to terrorize and instill fear in their next-door neighbor simply because he is Black,” Raoul said in a statement announcing the filing. “I am committed to continuing to partner with law enforcement agencies across Illinois to prosecute hate crimes and send a message that hate and bigotry of any kind are not welcome and will not be tolerated.”
“I looked out of my new home at a Black-faced mannequin shackled and lynched on a tree branch, the N-word scrawled upon a window, and swastikas,” Johnson said at the time. “Our American flag was replaced with their Confederate flag. Have we not come any farther than this?”
In April of 2024, Cheryl Hampton was sentenced to three years in prison for harassing a witness, having pleaded guilty a month earlier, the Shaw Local reported.
After Chad Hampton was found not guilty of the misdemeanor criminal damage to property charge, she tried to withdraw her guilty plea, saying in a motion that she had only pleaded guilty “to protect her son from prosecution, who was the actual instigator and facilitator of the offense of witness intimidation. … The defendant does not wish to take responsibility for this offense, since she had no involvement in the placement of the Black effigy or the racist and derogatory language displayed on her home, [which] she was sharing with her son.”
Her motion was denied by Carroll County Circuit Court Judge Jerry Kane.
Now, both mother and son have been found civilly liable by the same judge for hate crimes. Each was ordered on Jan. 6 to pay $45,000 in damages to Johnson and $5,000 to the state in civil penalties.
“This behavior is shocking, racist and un-American,” Raoul said in a press release. “I appreciate the judge’s order that shows such despicable behavior will not be tolerated in our state.”
The attorney general noted that reported hate crimes risen dramatically in Illinois and said he’ll “continue to use all the tools at my disposal to prosecute hate crimes.”
According to the FBI, the number of hate crimes in Illinois rose from 98 in 2021 to 347 in 2023, reported FreedomMag.
That corresponds with a spike in hate crimes nationally in recent years. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported last fall that 2023 and 2024 saw the most reported hate crimes ever — close to 12,000 were reported to the FBI both years — and said 2025 data indicated the worrisome trend would continue.
About half of hate crimes reported to the FBI were race-based, with 3004 targeting Black people and 797 targeting Latino or Hispanic people.
