Authorities probing bigoted text messages that spread alarm across U.S.

According to Reuters reporter, U.S. Federal and state authorities are investigating a wave of bigoted text messages sent anonymously that have spread alarm among Black Americans across the country this week. 

The messages urged recipients in multiple states, including Alabama, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia, to report to a plantation to pick cotton, an offensive reference to past enslavement of Black people in the United States, Reuters reported citing officials and recipients.

It is unclear who is behind the reported texts, how many people had received them, or how the recipients were targeted.

The Federal Communications Commission said on Friday its enforcement bureau was among those probing the incidents.

Lousiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, told Reuters on Friday that her office is among those investigating the text messages, adding that some targets - herself included - also received emails.

Murrill, who is white, said one of the messages hit her personal email box at 8:17 a.m. Friday, according to a screenshot of the message she shared with Reuters.

The message greeted her with an ethnic slur and said "Now that trump is president, you have been selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation" and that "Our guys will come get you in a van."

She said the FBI was also looking into the messages.

(Cover: File photo of the White House, Washington, D.C., U.S. /CFP)