Multiple federal, state and local authorities are investigating the origins of a series of racist text messages that were sent to Black college and high school students over the past two days, which included messages about being "selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation."
"It’s sick and it’s wrong," says St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones. Her 17-year old son, a high school student, received the text Wednesday night.
“This awful message that children around the country have been receiving about turning them into slaves and picking them up in an unmarked brown van,” she says. “I was furious.”
Her father, the student’s grandfather, Virvus Jones, posted the message on social media.
He says it is no joking matter to harken back to something as horrible as slavery.
"I know they may think it's funny, but I was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1947 when Jim Crow was legal, so it’s not funny to me." he says.
Virvus Jones takes note of the timing of the texts, coming immediately after a contentious, and dark, election.
He added, "What it says about this country is that there are a lot of people who would like to take us back to some form of slavery or some form of being subservient to white supremacy."
The Jones family is reporting the message, which appeared to come from a local phone number, to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.
"These are some twisted individuals to target children like this, and I hope that they're they are found and prosecuted," says Mayor Tishaura Jones.
Civil rights groups across the country are encouraging people to report the texts to police and the FBI.
"This is alarming, both because there's no indication who the text is from, but because all the people who received it were young African Americans," says Margaret Huang, President and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the SPLC Action Fund.
The organization, which monitors hate groups, is trying to track down the origins of the text.
"We have traced the texts being sent from emails that appear to have some international connection," Huang says.
She says they’ve determined that the list of phone numbers may have been purchased from a company. "And we are trying to determine whether the company is indeed the source of this information and to whom they sold the information to actually make those texts possible."
Huang says the SPLC is sharing its findings with federal officials. The FBI says it’s aware of the offensive and racist text messages and is in contact with the Justice Department and other federal authorities on the matter.
The Federal Communications Commission announced Friday it was opening an investigation into the messages.
Several state attorneys general and campus police departments say they have opened investigations into the source of the disturbing robotexts.
Digital footprints
A Grand Rapids, Michigan tech firm says an attempt was made to use its bulk texting software to send racist messages. TextSpot CEO Lance Beaudry says an internal AI review flagged the language as problematic and possibly indicating human trafficking or forced labor. Upon getting that alert, the company blocked the messages from going out.
Beaudry says a user named Amy Jones signed up for a TextSpot account at 3:52pm on Nov. 6th and tried to send a test message. It read: “You have been selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation. Be ready at 12AM November 12 SHARP. Be prepared to be searched down once you enter the plantation. You are in Plantaion group A.”
Beaudry says the company has reported the incident to local authorities and submitted the information to the FBI, including the IP address in the Philadelphia area where the message originated.
He says the company’s flagging system typically would pick up phishing or fraud messages, but that it’s rare to intercept racist material or hate speech.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said her office had traced the origin of some of the messages to a virtual private network provider in Poland but had not found the original source.
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