Key filed a police report on March 11, seen by BuzzFeed News, and immediately told Town leadership about what happened. Parker asked her not to say anything or take legal action, according to Key, Otobor, and text messages provided to BuzzFeed News. He also acknowledged that Town management knew the woman was a problem. Darryl Cohen, the woman’s attorney, told BuzzFeed News he “would love to comment on the matter but can’t because it’s too sensitive.”
Fayetteville police said they investigated the incident and “found nothing that would be considered a criminal violation under Georgia Law,” they told BuzzFeed News. “We have not received any further complaints on these individuals.”
In an email to homeowners reviewed by BuzzFeed News, Trilith’s HOA said it took “swift action to condemn the behavior,” consulted an attorney to see what legal actions it could take, and sent a “cease and desist” to the white neighbor.
“Although the opportunity to create something remarkable here at Trilith will not happen overnight, we all want Trilith to be a community where all are welcomed, respected, and valued,” the email said.
The same day Key filed the report, she said Parker met with her and Otobor for three hours, where he said that he understood their concerns and fears for their children. It was a tough situation, and he acknowledged that Trilith was an experiment in integrating people of different cultures, socioeconomic statuses, and races.
“Nobody lives this way,” he said in a recording of the conversation provided to BuzzFeed News. “Very few people outside of the city live this way. There are a whole bunch of people who have only lived in the suburbs, and this is their first experience and it truly is, it’s probably very awkward to be on display, but they don’t know. They haven’t felt it.”
It was not a satisfying explanation, but the women said they left the meeting feeling hopeful, if still uneasy. They said he acted like he cared and had vowed to make some changes.
But as word of Key’s incident began to spread, Black residents began to talk to one another more openly. Otobor and Key met and talked with the Williamses. They ran into Sojourner, the former experience director who’d been fired, and he shared his story. Again and again, their neighbors shared examples of instances where they’d felt discriminated against.
“This is racism. And racism is proven not by what happens to one person, but when everyone realizes, when they find out, ‘Oh, that happened to me,’ ‘Oh, that happened to me,’ and the only people that happened to were Black,” Otobor said.
The revelations also hit hard for Pam Williams, the resident whose home repairs reportedly went ignored. On March 14, she said, she decided to do what she’d been conditioned not to: raise hell. She and her husband, along with her friend Craig Warman, Key, and Otobor, met with Parker to talk about race at Trilith. In an emotional meeting around a large living room table, she passionately outlined the differences between how Trilith and its associates had treated them versus how they treated the Town’s white residents, according to those in attendance. Warman also documented the discussion in his journal, which he shared with BuzzFeed News.
“It was hard to listen to, but after all they’ve been through they needed to say what they said,” Warman wrote. “As we filed out of the room I was struck by how Rob [Parker] sat there — he had turned away from us, face in his hands — I think that image of him will be burned in my mind forever.”
Stunned by the eruption of stories, Key and Otobor called an emergency community meeting with the help of Bob and Gail Werstlein, a white couple who host town gatherings of Be the Bridge, a group focused on fostering racial reconciliation through a Christian lens. About 65 people, ages 18 to 82, many of them people of color, packed into the Werstleins’ home, and Key began to speak.
After she shared her story, others began to raise their hands. Seven people who were at the meeting described it to BuzzFeed News. A Black father spoke about how white neighbors had accused his kids of damaging property. A video later showed the culprits had been white. A Latina mother spoke, in tears, about how management had given her family written permission to host a celebration at the pool but then shut it down after white residents complained.
Aubrey Williams also recalled the dismay he felt sitting next to his wife on the crowded couch as so many neighbors spoke up around them. It was shocking, he said, how many issues similar to their own were shared that day — but he wasn’t surprised by how people had been treated.
The group’s overwhelming consensus was that the Town needed reforms and new leadership. People wanted a response from Dan Cathy, a formal place to file complaints, and a written set of values. They wanted their voices taken into account as the community continued to grow.
Trilith did take some immediate action, like adding a Black representative to its group of builders. But members of the meeting said messages from Cathy, his family, and his team seemed to indicate management wanted to sweep the issues under the rug and keep anyone from talking about their grievances. For example, Aubrey texted Cathy, whom he considered a good friend, asking to talk. In response, Cathy said he’d been briefed about the discussion regarding racial issues and then mentioned other Black people he’d worked with, including at an event at his Atlanta megachurch, Passion City.
“We are all in on bridge building and long overdue racial reconciliation. As you witnessed, I shined the shoes of Usher at a nationally televised Passion worship service to make the point that we all need a contrite spirit to overcome divisiveness,” Cathy wrote in his response to Aubrey, adding Parker and another person to the thread. “I’m confident we’re going to be able to restore Christ honoring relationships at Trilith once again.”
But Cathy didn’t actually shine the singer Usher’s shoes. He’d seemingly mixed up that artist with a Christian rapper named Lecrae, whose shoes Cathy had spontaneously cleaned onstage. At that same Passion City roundtable — during which the pastor called slavery a “blessing” to whites, which he later apologized for — Cathy said white people are “out-of-sight, out-of-mind oblivious” to injustice against Black people and should stand up against racism. Aubrey, though, said he never heard from Cathy again after their text exchange. When he saw Cathy around town, Aubrey said, there was also a distance and awkwardness that hadn’t been there before.
“As a Black man, I’m used to picking that up in white people, that discomfort,” he said. “There’s a shift that happens when you step out of line.”
