Black Students Across US Receive Racist Texts

Investigations have begun across the country after Black students in at least 25 states received racist texts on Wednesday. The texts referred to slavery and were signed only, "A Trump supporter." They went to college students on multiple campuses but also to students as young as middle schoolers, the AP reports. Investigating officials do not know where the messages, which varied slightly but followed the same basic script, originated, per USA Today. They were sent out with the announcement that Donald Trump had won the presidential election.

A 16-year-old in California showed her mother the text she received Wednesday evening. It used the girl's name and told her to report to a "plantation" that doesn't exist. "It was very disturbing," her mother said. CBS News reached one person who had sent one of the texts, who said it was a prank, then hung up. Civil rights advocacy organizations said sending the texts amounted to a hate crime. The messages are "frighteningly personal and harrowing," said a cofounder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, who described the attack as a first. "I've also never seen this kind of racist messaging threatening people directly," said Heidi Beirich. (More racism stories.)