Foster Care Activist Dr. Candice Matthews Says Death Threats Won’t Stop Her
A Black civil rights activist in Texas who is notorious for “dropping the hammer for accountability on corruption” and was targeted with a racist hate letter and noose has spoken about how the threat will not stop her mission from protecting foster children of color in the Lone Star State from abuse.
In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, Dr. Candice Matthews said she was scared “at first,” but that didn’t deter her.
“At the end of the day, I’m the voice of the people. I’m the voice for children, the voiceless. My job is to protect the unprotected and that’s what I’m going to,” she said.
Matthews does not mince words when she rings the alarm on social media about alleged abuses foster children in Texas are subjected to and the government employees who are supposed to protect them. Her TikTok videos have garnered hundreds of thousands of views about alleged corruption within Texas Health and Human Services (HHSC) and the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS).
Earlier in April, she gained widespread attention for boosting awareness about human trafficking within the Klein Independent School District and state child protective services placing foster children in unregulated hotels.
Then on the morning of April 28, while having breakfast, Matthews said she and her family discovered the threatening items when her sister went outside to check her car after someone in the neighborhood accidentally hit it while a realtor held an open house nearby. Matthews’ husband went outside to help his sister-in-law and found the hand-delivered note and noose in the process.
That same day, Matthews uploaded a series of videos and photos to Instagram, detailing what happened.
“I done got a death threat, and it’s telling me to stay out of HHSC and DFPS business and stuff,” Matthews says in the video. She pans the camera over to her mailbox, showcasing a long black rope and a handwritten letter on brown parchment paper.
“This ain’t going to stop me from exposing corruption,” she vows. “It’s going to make it worse. Stay tuned.”
The next slide of the Instagram post showed the content of the letter, written in block letters.
“Dr. Matthews[,] stay out of our business with DFPS and HHSC,” the letter reads. “N----r if you don’t[,] we will use this rope to drag you like Jame[s] Bryd [sic]. Fuck you n----r and n----r providers. You’ve been warned n----r!!”
James Byrd, who the letter refers to, was a Black man and victim of a vicious hate crime in Jasper County, Texas, in 1998 when he was killed by three white men who chained him to the back of a pickup truck and dragged his body for three miles. According to the Texas Tribune, Byrd’s brutalized body was discovered outside of a local Black church before Sunday morning service.
Matthews told The Daily Beast that the letter wasn’t in an envelope and appeared as if it was from “someone that really hates Black people.”
“It looked very creepy. My husband, my mom, my sister, all my family members were highly upset,” she said
Matthews called the Harris County Sheriff’s County, who reported the incident as a “terroristic threat.” She explained that her address isn’t public because she has a professional license in Texas and believes that only DFPS and HHSC know where she currently lives.
“That’s how I know it came from somebody from both of those entities,” she claimed.
Since the incident, Matthews has had to tighten up security around her home. She says she travels with bodyguards and even wears a bulletproof vest for protection. Sometimes, she carries a pistol.
“It’s a surreal moment because I never would have thought in a million years that I would have to do that,” Matthews told the The Daily Beast. “I never would have thought that I would receive some type of hate like that. You know what, I’m not going to stop. I’m just going to keep going. Because at the end of the day, when you don’t say something, it makes you complicit. And I’m sorry, I’m not about to be complicit at all. I’m not. I’m not going to stop. I’m going to continue to fight. They just made me regroup so I can fight harder.”
Matthews has been an activist in Texas for over 10 years. She is the chair of the Texas Coalition of Black Democrats, the national minister of politics for the New Black Panther Nation, and owns the independent Children of Diversity adoption agency. She says she “wears several hats” when it comes to aiding people of color and dismantling systemic injustice, running in similar professional circles with civil rights icon Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee, and attorney Ben Crump.
Recently, Matthews has been serving as the spokesperson for the family of Darryl George, the Black Texas youth who was repeatedly reprimanded for wearing locs in public school.
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Much of Matthews’ work centers around protecting children of color involved in the foster system, and she’s very quick to call out government employees and agencies who do not protect them. In her interview with The Daily Beast, Matthews detailed how many of the foster children live in squalor shelters without food nor security, and placed in close proximity to reported sexual predators and in areas ripe for human trafficking.
“I’m one of the most vocal providers here in the state of Texas because a lot of the other providers are scared to even say anything because they fear retaliation,” Matthews explained.
In turn, Matthews said that her adoption agency has been reported with false “deficiencies” and marks, which resulted in impromptu in-person reviews from HHSC and child protective services. She claimed that her agency was placed on hold and unable to place children, which means less children and less government funding she expected to receive.
Nonetheless, Matthews, who is originally from Houston, says she is committed to her mission and motivated to only fight harder. If there is this much effort to silence her, she says that means she’s onto something that people are afraid of becoming public. During those moments, Matthews is known for carrying a version of Mjölnir, the Norse god Thor’s infamous hammer, to use as a tool to eradicate the hidden scum she continues to dig up.
“Thor wheels Mjölnir, and then he comes out and he slams and everything drop,” Matthews explained. “That is the semblance: all the corruption, all the unjust, all this stuff that they’re doing. When I slam that hammer, it’s all going to stop because I’m going to expose all of it.”
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