A Smithfield woman found a plastic bag containing pebbles and a neo-Nazi flyer in her front yard May 18.

The flyer lists a Milwaukee, Wisc., mailing address and website for the New Order, a group whose logo swaps the “O” in “Order” for a Nazi swastika. It includes a photo of a white family and the words “it is no disgrace to love your race!”

Smithfield Police Deputy Chief Chris Meier said the department is looking into the organization to determine if they are violent in nature and pose a threat to the Smithfield community. But the information the flyer contains “is protected speech under the First Amendment,” he said.

Smithfield’s Police Department has only received the one report of the flyer, he added.

“We are very disturbed by this hardcore Identitarian stuff being circulated, especially after dealing with other concerns in our community … the Confederate monument relocation and the continued placement of Confederate flags in its absence and the rhetoric of persons saying equity and inclusion is decisive and hate-filled,” said Valerie Butler, president of Isle of Wight County’s local NAACP chapter. “When will we move on and live in unity?”

The Confederate monument that stood outside Isle of Wight’s government complex for more than a hundred years was dismantled and relocated the morning of May 8 to private land owned by Carrsville area resident Volpe Boykin along Walters Highway. Later that day, one or more people placed miniature Confederate flags around the patch of dirt by the county’s flagpoles where the monument once stood. County staff removed the flags.

There was another incident the night of May 15 where someone placed another miniature Confederate flag and a handmade sign reading “in honor of those from Isle of Wight County that fought and died for the Confederate States of America 1861-1865.”

“It does not appear to be the same person,” Assistant County Administrator Don Robertson said.