Ahmaud Arbery’s Killers Shared Racist Text Messages & White Supremacist Video

As their hate crimes trial gets underway, racist texts and content shared by Ahmaud Arbery’s killers prove he was killed due to his race.

On Wednesday, jurors heard vulgar text messages from Travis McMichael that proved he was a racist, fueling the notion that Arbery was murdered because of his skin color. In one text message to a friend, McMichael says he’s happy to be out of the Coast Guard and working as a government contractor because there were “zero n—-rs” working alongside him. In another message sent via Facebook Messenger, McMichael shared a video containing a song called “Alabama N—-r” by white supremacist artist Johnny Rebel. A clip of a Black child dancing was placed in the video.

William “Roddie” Bryan, the neighbor who helped McMichael and his father Greg chase down Arbery, also sent racially charged text messages, calling his daughter’s Black boyfriend a racial slur. During that exchange, he expressed his disdain for their relationship that was also read aloud in court.

Investigators could not retrieve all of the text messages belonging to Greg due to Apple’s strict protocol regarding unlocking iMessage data.

Last year, the three men were found guilty in state court of chasing Ahmaud Arbery through the street of their Brunswick, Georgia neighborhood and shooting him on August 25th, 2020. Their attorneys have argued that they killed him in self-defense. However, the video taken of the incident proves that Arbery posed no threat to the men as he went for a jog through the neighborhood.