Racist text messages referencing slavery raise alarms in several states

The seal on the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building.

By Ayanna Alexander, Ali Swenson and Gary Fields

Nov. 8, 2024 6:34 AM PT

WASHINGTON — Racist text messages invoking slavery raised alarm across the country this week after they were sent to Black men, women and students, including middle schoolers, prompting inquiries by the FBI and other agencies.

The messages, sent anonymously, were reported in California and several other states, including Alabama, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. They varied in wording but were generally similar in tone.

Some instructed recipients to come to a certain address at a particular time “with your belongings”; and some mentioned the incoming Trump administration.

It wasn’t clear Friday afternoon who was behind the messages, and there was no comprehensive list of where they were sent, but high school and college students were among the recipients.

The FBI said it was in touch with the Justice Department about the messages, and the Federal Communications Commission said it was investigating the texts “alongside federal and state law enforcement.” The Ohio attorney general’s office also said it was looking into the matter.

Tasha Dunham of Lodi, Calif., said her 16-year-old daughter showed her one of the messages Wednesday evening.

The text used her daughter’s name and directed her to report to a “plantation” in North Carolina, where Dunham said they’ve never lived. They looked up the address and found it was the site of 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 thought the text was a prank. But with emotions high across the nation since Tuesday’s presidential election, Dunham and her family thought the message could be more nefarious, so they reported it to local law enforcement.

“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,” she said.

About six middle school students in Montgomery County, Pa., received the messages too, said Megan Shafer, acting superintendent of the Lower Merion School District.

“The racist nature of these text messages is extremely disturbing, made even more so by the fact that children have been targeted,” Shafer wrote in a letter to parents.

Students at universities including Clemson in South Carolina and the University of Alabama said they had also received the messages. The Clemson Police Department issued a statement on what it called “deplorable racially motivated text and email messages,” and encouraged anyone who received one to report it.

Fisk University, a historically Black school in Nashville, issued a statement calling the messages, some of them targeting students there, “deeply unsettling.” The statement urged calm and said the texts likely were from bots or malicious actors with “no real intentions or credibility.”

Missouri NAACP President Nimrod Chapel said Black students who are members of the organization’s Missouri State University chapter received texts citing Trump’s win and calling them out by name as being “selected to pick cotton” next Tuesday. Chapel said police in the southeastern Missouri city of Springfield, home of the university, have been notified.

“It points to a well-organized and resourced group that has decided to target Americans on our home soil based on the color of our skin,” Chapel said in a statement.

Nick Ludlum, a senior vice president for the wireless industry trade group CTIA, said: “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, director of the Digital Justice Initiative at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said that it isn’t clear who is behind the messages but estimated that they had been sent to more than 10 states, including most Southern states, plus Maryland, Oklahoma and the District of Columbia. The district’s Metropolitan Police force said in a statement that its intelligence unit was investigating the origins of the messages.

The leaders of several civil rights organizations condemned the messages, which Brody said could violate a number of civil rights laws.

“Hate speech has no place in the South or our nation,” said Margaret Huang, president and chief executive of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“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.”

Alexander, Swenson and Fields write for the Associated Press. AP reporter Summer Ballentine in Jefferson City, Mo., contributed to this report.