Racist texts sent to Black people following election

DENVER — When Jennifer Green dropped her son off at Northfield High School Wednesday, she said he got a concerning text.

“So basically, it addressed him directly, which was frightening,” Green said. “But it just said, ‘Hey you know, you have just been selected to go to the plantation and pick cotton.’ Said he would be picked up in a brown van by executive slaves. And when he arrived at the plantation, he’d be in a specific group.'”

Green said she was shocked the text had both her son’s first name and last initial.

“That’s what made it personal for me because I felt like he was being targeted,” Green said. 

Green told her son not to delete the text and bring it to an adult at school.

He told her he was already on his way and she turned around to meet him.

“He talked to his counselors, talked to the principal, they were very supportive,” Green said. “Made sure the SRO called me, got some information from me, they filed the report. I felt very supported and I think he did too.”

Green said she felt like the message and its timing were intentional.

“For me, I feel like it’s the current political climate right now,” Green said. “It’s very tense, very scary for a lot of individuals including myself and others in my friend circle. The fact that it happened the day after election day, it really speaks to what I think is going on here.”

Green said she expects racism will be more visible following the election results.

“We do talk about politics,” Green said. “It’s not something that I hide from him because he is going to be a Black man in America. So I make sure that he understands what the landscape of his adulthood could look like. So it’s not something we shy away from. So definitely made sure that he felt okay, that he felt safe.”

Green said her son told her another kid overheard him talking about it and said they got a text message like that too.

DPS said it only had one reported incident at Northfield, but its principal Jessica Rodriguez-Bracey, sent an email to families, encouraging their students to reach out if they were affected by a similar incident.

Green also later learned from a friend this was something affecting people nationwide.

“My friend sent me a text message that said someone in a different state, got a similar text and it was very similar in wording, they just changed a few letters around, but that is also concerning because I’m wondering how widespread this is,” Green said.

9NEWS found several different postings of the message online. Each person was Black and showed the text came from different numbers. 

Green said Denver police traced her number back to Jamaica, but she still doesn’t know who sent the text.

“The fact that they knew my son’s name really terrified me,” Green said. “It’s very scary to think someone is targeting your child with such racist things.”

DPD’s bias-motivated crimes unit is investigating the incident as well as working with state and federal agencies to verify connections to similar occurrences outside of Colorado.