In her 38 years living on Durham Street, Irene Smalls had never seen anything like the racist graffiti she found on her South End property Saturday morning.
The graffiti was painted on the children's book author's white fence and brick wall overnight Friday, Boston police said. A racial epithet and several seemingly unrelated symbols, including a peace sign, were crudely spray-painted along with the sentence.
Smalls, 65, said she's fallen victim to graffiti in the past, but it was innocuous in nature.
"This is a stunner," she said. "Either it was a threat or a prank, but I'm not sure which it is. . . . What it says is, 'Be wary, be careful.' "
Smalls moved into her brownstone just a few blocks off Massachusetts Avenue in 1976, when it was mostly a black neighborhood, because the area reminded her of her old home in the Harlem section of New York City, she said.
"I was OK with [the neighborhood changing]. I wasn't in love with it, but I was OK," Smalls said, adding that she is one of few remaining black homeowners on her block. "Now, I'm on edge."
The vandalism occurred sometime between 4 p.m. Friday and 8:15 a.m. Saturday, Boston police said. It was reported around 9 a.m. Saturday. Responding officers met with Smalls and notified their supervisors, the Community Disorders Unit, and Mayor Martin J. Walsh's office to have the graffiti removed.
Smalls and several of her neighbors said they haven't heard of any other instances of racist graffiti in the area.
"That is really nauseating," neighbor Joel Zimet, 63, said as he looked at Smalls' vandalized fence. "I have no sense of anybody here not being appalled. . . . I'm horrified."
Ty Hinson, 25, "born and raised in the South End," agreed.
"The only graffiti I've seen [around the neighborhood] is in train stations," he said. "Everyone gets along in this neighborhood."
Smalls said she couldn't think of anyone who might have been angry with her, but that she felt targeted. Still, she said, she wouldn't be leaving the neighborhood.
"I'm not going to feel intimidated or frightened, or let someone frighten me into moving out," she said. "If anything, it sort of hardens my resolve that I'm going to stay."
Smalls plans to demolish her fence and replace it with something that is harder to deface. She also said she'll install several security cameras to monitor the alley next to her house and her backyard.
"It was an offense and it was almost an anonymous offense," Smalls said of the vandal's use of the racial epithet. "It's threatening, but it's anonymous because it's assuming that I have no personality, no goals, no life. . . . In that sense it's very disconcerting because there's no sense of looking at me as an individual."
The incident is under investigation by Boston police.
Kiera Blessing can be reached at kiera.blessing@globe.com.