North Carolina Plantation Descendants Won’t ‘Cower’ From ‘Disrespectful’ Massive Texts About Slavery After Donald Trump’s Election

Descendants of certainly one of North Carolina’s largest plantations have condemned mass text messages sent to Black Americans across the country informing them that they’ve been “selected to pick cotton” the day after Donald Trump was re-elected president.

Black people across the country were sent the identical message with slight differences, informing them that that they had been “selected to pick cotton on the nearest plantation.”

Dozens of text messages informed recipients that the “executive slaves” would arrive in a “brown van” that will transport them to the plantations after which inform the victims which “plantation group,” marked AZ, they belonged to.

Beverly Evans said ABC11 that “people who received these messages felt disrespected, and all of us, as Black people, felt disrespected because of this.”

The 76-year-old recently learned that she is descended from a family that was once enslaved on the Stagville Plantation in Durham, North Carolina. According to Stagville’s websitethe plantation belonged to the Bennehan-Cameron family, which enslaved over 900 people across 30,000 acres of land within the state.

The North Carolina Department of Historic Sites reported that some people even received text messages mentioning the Stagville plantation:

“We have become aware that some North Carolinians have received alarming text messages regarding the Stagville State Historic Plantation Site. North Carolina Historic Sites condemns these acts that sought to incite fear and division by weaponizing history. Stagville is a sacred space where visitors can grapple with the history of slavery, emancipation and injustice. We will cooperate with law enforcement to investigate these hateful and fraudulent messages.”

Another person whose family was once enslaved on the Stagville plantation asserted that he wouldn’t be unnerved by messages designed to stoke fear and intimidation.

“We don’t hide anymore. We are no longer intimidated. Those days are over,” said Ricky Hart. “They can try the intimidation factor or the fear factor, but it won’t work anymore.”

The news sparked a social media firestorm and was condemned by many state and federal elected officials. Authorities strongly urged anyone who received the message to contact local FBI field offices and state agencies.

Federal agents opened an investigation and dispatched criminal, cyber and counterintelligence agencies to analyze the matter. It is unclear right now whether the lyrics come from the United States or abroad.

A spokesman for CTIA, the official trade association representing the U.S. wireless communications industry, he told NBC News blocked many messages and the numbers that sent them. The association urged people to send spam text messages to 7726 or “SPAM” to report them to their wireless service provider.

Divisive and hateful rhetoric has increased throughout the last presidential election cycle. Trump has been hailed by his opponents as a significant influencer of this rhetoric, raising concerns that race relations within the country will proceed to deteriorate once he returns to office.

The NAACP released an announcement stating that the messages “represent an alarming increase in vile and disgusting rhetoric from racist groups across the country who now feel emboldened to spread hate and fan the flames of fear many of us feel in the wake of Tuesday’s election results.”

Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, condemned the text messages last week, stating: “If we can find the origin of these messages that promote this kind of ugliness on our behalf, we will of course take legal action to stop it.”