A wave of racist text messages summoning Black people to report for slavery showed up on phones across the United States, prompting the scrutiny of the F.B.I. The N.A.A.C.P. said that messages were received in nine states, and attorneys general in two other states reported the same on Thursday.
The F.B.I. said in a statement that it was “aware of the offensive and racist text messages” and that it was coordinating with the Justice Department and other federal authorities.
The White House also condemned the racist text messages and confirmed federal and state officials were investigating. Federal officials were trying to determine the origin of the messages, which continued to send shock waves through schools across the country on Friday….
Some examples of the messages were shared by recipients and reviewed by The New York Times. They followed a pattern: addressing recipients by name, telling them they had been selected to “pick cotton” on a plantation and ordering them to show up at a specific time to be picked up by slave handlers. Some included a reference to the president-elect, Donald J. Trump.
A spokesman for the Trump campaign, Steven Cheung, said in an email that the “campaign has absolutely nothing to do with these text messages.”
Mr. Trump stoked racism throughout his campaign in speeches that included false accusations against immigrants and inflated crime figures. He demeaned the intelligence of his opponent, a Black woman; repeatedly amplified a lie that Haitian immigrants were eating neighbors’ pets in Ohio and held a rally near the end of his campaign at Madison Square Garden that was rife with bigotry and misogyny.
The messages hark back to the most painful past for Black Americans. “Our executive slave owners will come get you in a brown van, be prepared to be searched down once you’ve entered the plantation,” one version said….