Racist text messages invoking slavery sparked outrage across the country this week after being sent to Black men, women, and students, including middle schoolers, forcing the FBI and other authorities to conduct investigations.
Multiple locations, including New York, Alabama, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, reported the anonymous messages. They utilized a similar tone but different phrasing.
Some asked the receiver to arrive at a certain address at a certain time “with your belongings,” while others did not specify a location. Several of them made reference to the new presidential administration.
High school and college students were among those who received the messages, but it was unclear who delivered them or where they went.
The FBI said it was in contact with the Justice Department about the communications, and the Federal Communications Commission said it was looking into the texts “alongside federal and state law enforcement.” The Ohio Attorney General’s Office also stated that it was looking into the matter.
Tasha Dunham of Lodi, California, claimed her 16-year-old daughter showed her one of the texts on Wednesday evening before basketball practice.
The text not only included her daughter’s name but also instructed her to go to a “plantation” in North Carolina, where Dunham claims they have never lived. After researching the address, they found a museum.
“It was very disturbing,” Dunham said. “Everybody’s just trying to figure out what does this all mean for me? So, I definitely had a lot of fear and concern.”
Her daughter initially believed it was a joke, but emotions are running high following Tuesday’s presidential election. Dunham and her family suspected it could be more sinister and reported it to local authorities.
“I wasn’t in slavery. My mother wasn’t in slavery. But we’re a couple of generations away. So, when you think about how brutal and awful slavery was for our people, it’s awful and concerning,” Dunham said
According to Megan Shafer, acting superintendent of the Lower Merion School District, approximately six middle school students in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, also got the letters.
“The racist nature of these text messages is extremely disturbing, made even more so by the fact that children have been targeted,” she wrote in a letter to parents.
Students at several prominent campuses, including Clemson in South Carolina and the University of Alabama, reported receiving the messages. The Clemson Police Department issued a statement saying it had been aware of the “deplorable racially motivated text and email messages” and urged anyone who received one to report it.
Fisk University, a historically Black university in Nashville, Tennessee, released a statement calling the messages directed at some of its students “deeply unsettling.” It asked students to be calm and told them that the texts were most likely sent by bots or malevolent actors who had “no real intentions or credibility.”
Missouri NAACP President Nimrod Chapel said black students at the organization’s Missouri State University chapter received SMS noting Trump’s victory and identifying them by name as being “selected to pick cotton” next Tuesday. Police in Springfield, Missouri, where the university is located, have received an alert, according to Chapel.
According to Nick Ludlum, a senior vice president for the wireless industry trade group CTIA, “Wireless providers are aware of these threatening spam messages and are aggressively working to block them and the numbers that they are coming from.”
David Brody, the director of The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law’s Digital Justice Initiative, expressed uncertainty about the sender of the messages, but estimated their distribution to over ten states, including most Southern states, Maryland, Oklahoma, and even the District of Columbia. The Metropolitan Police Department stated in a statement that its intelligence branch was looking into the source of the communication.
Brody asserted that various civil rights statutes can effectively tackle incidents related to hate. Several other civil rights leaders, including Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, condemned the remarks, saying, “Hate speech has no place in the South or our nation.”
“The threat — and the mention of slavery in 2024 — is not only deeply disturbing, but perpetuates a legacy of evil that dates back to before the Jim Crow era, and now seeks to prevent Black Americans from enjoying the same freedom to pursue life, liberty, and happiness,” said NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson. “These actions are not normal. And we refuse to let them be normalized.”