Authorities across the United States are investigating after racist text messages – some with references to “slave catchers” and “picking cotton” reminiscent of the country’s painful and bigoted past – have been received by children, college students and working professionals from unrecognized phone numbers in the wake of the presidential election.
The NAACP president warned Thursday of possible broader implications of the hate-filled rhetoric reported in more than 20 states from New York to California, and the District of Columbia. Attorneys general of both parties are condemning the messages and vowing to root out their senders.
“The unfortunate reality of electing a president who, historically, has embraced and at times encouraged hate, is unfolding before our eyes,” NAACP CEO Derrick Johnson said. “These messages represent an alarming increase in vile and abhorrent rhetoric from racist groups across the country, who now feel emboldened to spread hate and stoke the flames of fear that many of us are feeling after Tuesday’s election results.”
Donald Trump’s presidential “campaign has absolutely nothing to do with these text messages,” its spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
Students from at least three Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) – Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia, Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina – have reported receiving the text messages, according to statements from the universities.
It was not immediately clear who sent the messages, and there is no complete list of whom they were delivered to. At least some appear to have been sent through TextNow in what the company “believe(s) … is a widespread, coordinated attack,” it told CNN on Friday.
“As soon as we became aware, our Trust & Safety team acted quickly, rapidly disabling the related accounts in less than an hour,” said the company, whose service lets people sign up anonymously using an email address and send texts that appear to come from a randomly-generated phone number.
The “texts appear to be targeting Black and brown individuals, including students,” New York’s attorney general said.
The Federal Communications Commission’s Enforcement Bureau is investigating the texts, FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel announced. “These messages are unacceptable,” she said, adding, “We take this type of targeting very seriously.”
“The FBI is aware of the offensive and racist text messages sent to individuals around the country and is in contact with the Justice Department and other federal authorities on the matter,” the agency said in a statement Thursday.
Talaya Jones, a Black resident of Piscataway, New Jersey, was “shocked,” then angry and sad, to get a racist text Wednesday telling her she had been “selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation” and referring to “executive slave catchers,” she told CNN.