FBI investigating racist text messages sent to North Texans
DALLAS - People in multiple states have reported receiving racist text messages that refer to a dark time in our nation’s history – slavery.
Now the FBI and law enforcement are investigating to try to find the person or group that’s responsible.
Maya, a 24-year-old from North Texas who didn’t want to share her last name, said she woke up to the disturbing text message on Thursday.
"I had just woken up when I saw the test message. I really didn’t know what to say. I was kind of more like astonished and also hurt because, I mean, I wouldn’t say that I haven’t experienced racism, but I haven’t really experienced racism like that in my face. Getting called those types of names, like I didn’t know really what to say. It really hurt my heart. It hurt my feelings, and it also made me scared as well," she said.
Maya reported her text to both the FBI and the local police in her North Texas community.
The Dallas FBI confirmed it is part of a larger investigation that includes messages sent to Black people in at least 10 other states and Washington D.C.
Many of the messages with wording about slavery and picking cotton were sent to students at historically Black colleges and universities, as well as schools like Clemson and the University of Alabama. But some have been sent to adults and even middle school students.
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Racist messages telling people that they were selected to pick cotton for a plantation group have been received across the country -- including in the Detroit area.
The texts arrived at different times throughout the day, some with the names of the person associated with the phone numbers. Others contain racial slurs.
Aric Asti is the managing director at Apollo Cyber. He believes it’s not a single person who is behind the texts.
"But rather an individual or individuals or an organization using a service to send multiple messages out so the next step for law enforcement is to work with the service provider. So in this case, it looks like TextNow is involved. There may be others to see if there’s any internal login on the TextNow system that could tie or correlate the originators from that call to the victims," he said.
It’s also not clear if it’s Americans or foreigners who are behind it.
Regardless, the goal seems to be stoking fear and anger using messages that are as ugly as the past they refer to.
Maya said the experience has changed her perspective about the country.
"This presidential election really divided us a lot after the results and what not. I did see a lot of division on Instagram," she said. "I don’t feel like who is in office give you the right to want to be racist or blatantly be nasty to other people."