Black middle school, high school, and college students across the United States have reported receiving racist text messages about “being chosen to pick cotton at the nearest farm,” prompting local, state, and federal authorities to launch investigations.
The first text messages appear to have been sent the day after Donald Trump won this week’s US presidential election. Since then, there have been reports of hate-filled texts in dozens of states including New York, Nevada, Ohio, Tennessee and California.
Some asked the recipient to come to an address at a certain time “with their belongings,” while others did not mention the location. Some mentioned the next presidential administration, and listed the recipient by name.
At least some of the messages, an offensive reference to the former enslavement of black people in the US, claimed to have come from a “Trump supporter.”
It’s not clear at this point who is behind the messages, but TextNow, an app that allows people to create untraceable “clone” phone numbers for free, said at least some of the messages were sent from its platform.
“As soon as we became aware of this, our Trust and Safety team acted very quickly Disable related accounts In less than an hour, the company told CNN, referring to the text messages as a “large-scale coordinated attack.”
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The FBI said it was in contact with the Justice Department about the messages, and the Federal Communications Commission said it was investigating the texts “along with federal and state law enforcement.” The Ohio Attorney General’s Office also said it was looking into the matter.
Students at some major universities, including Clemson in South Carolina and the University of Alabama, said they had received the letters. The Clemson Police Department said in a statement that it had been made aware of the “unfortunate racially motivated text messages and emails” and encouraged anyone receiving such messages to report them.
Fisk University, a historically black university in Nashville, Tennessee, issued a statement calling the messages targeting some of its students “deeply disturbing.” She urged calm and assured students that the texts were likely from bots or malicious actors with “no real intentions or credibility.”
Missouri NAACP President Nimrod Chappell said black student members of the organization’s Missouri State University chapter received text messages noting Trump’s win and describing them by name as being “chosen to pick cotton” next Tuesday. Chappell said police in the southeastern Missouri city of Springfield, the university’s headquarters, were notified.
In a statement to NBC News, Brian Hughes of the Trump campaign denounced the texts and said Linking the texts to Trump is “complete nonsense.”
“If we can find the origin of these messages promoting this kind of… Ugliness is in our name “Obviously we will take legal action to stop this,” Hughes said.
He continued: “President Trump has built a diverse and broad coalition of support, with voters of all races and backgrounds.” The result was a landslide victory for his logical mandate for change. This will lead to a second term that will benefit every worker in our nation.”
However, the NAACP says it believes the messages are a product of Trump’s election to a second term.
“The unfortunate reality of electing a president, Historically, it has embraced, and sometimes encouraged, hatred“It’s unfolding before our eyes,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson shared in a statement. “These actions are not normal. We refuse to allow normalization.”
Tasha Dunham, of Lodi, California, told The Associated Press that her 16-year-old daughter Show her one of the messages Wednesday evening before basketball practice.
The text not only used her daughter’s name, but also directed her to come to a “farm” in North Carolina, where Dunham said they never lived. When they looked up the address, it was the museum’s website.
“It was very upsetting,” Dunham said. “Everyone is just trying to figure out what does this all mean for me? So, I definitely had a lot of fear and anxiety.”
— With files from The Associated Press
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