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This Limestone County home was vandalized on New Year's Eve. (Photo by WHNT News 19)

What happened to Terry Turner last week sounded like something from the Alabama of 50 years ago.

"Move N-----, NOW" scrawled on the garage door. Rocks thrown through the front windows. A woman and her 6-year-old granddaughter terrorized inside a middle-class Limestone County home.

Decent people should be shocked that this kind of crime is still happening where we live. We should be embarrassed at this craven act of racism that defies the progress made since the Civil Rights Movement.

We can't, and shouldn't, deny that racism is alive and well in Alabama and elsewhere.

But we can abhor it, and we can celebrate the community reaction that followed.

Neighbors showed up and offered to help clean up the mess, to at least paint over the stain that this act made on our community.

Dozens of people contributed to a "GoFundMe" account to help Turner meet her $1,000 insurance deductible. Hilary Gould of Huntsville, who did not know the Turner family, started the crowdfunding effort, which quickly made its goal once it got media attention.

Bless the Hilary Goulds of the world and the people who worked to fix the damage done to Turner's home.

Unfortunately, paint and Plexiglas, and even goodwill, can't erase the feeling of personal violation that such an attack leaves on Turner and her granddaughter, who is now afraid to spend the night at her grandmother's house again.

Until we as a society can stop these kind of crimes from happening altogether, the scars of the past will never heal.

In the short term, the Limestone County Sheriff's Office should make it a priority to find out who committed this crime and prosecute them to the fullest extent the law allows.