Racist text messages target young African Americans post-election

Black college and high school students report receiving racist texts about being "selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation."

Federal, state, and local authorities are investigating the offensive messages that have been sent over the last two days.

"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 a day 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.

Several state attorneys general and campus police departments say they have opened investigations into the source of the disturbing robotexts.