A message sent to Student United Ithaca's Facebook page enclosed a warning.

News articles about the efforts made by the group to diversify the cast of Ithaca High School's spring musical had circulated on the online message board 4chan, the warning said.

The backlash was imminent.

“And immediately after it, on Sunday, it started coming,” said Anabella Mead-VanCort, a senior at Ithaca High School and member of Students United Ithaca, in a phone interview.

The Facebook page received a flood of messages, some threatening the high school students and doxxing their family members.

A photograph circulated online of Mead-VanCort's mother, Eliza VanCort, disclosing her name, address of her place of work and phone number. The address and phone number happened to be wrong.

“Of course, it was quite disturbing to see my information online. Particularly, the fact that people had sought out my address," VanCort said of the practice known as doxxing, or publishing identifying information about a person online. "While posting it, they also mentioned veiled and also not so veiled threats towards me and my family. That said, the worry I have for my children and all of the kids in this movement is of course paramount. They are just young people trying to make a difference.”

Members of Students United Ithaca wrote a series of letters, as well as a list of demands, after a white actress was cast as the musical's lead role of Esmeralda, a Romani gypsy.

The mother of Students United Ithaca member Prachi Ruina received what Prachi identified as "nasty" messages to her mother's work email.

About 40 messages were sent to the group's page and a thousand or so comments were added to their posts.

One message sent to the group's page read: "F*** you and your racist group. U stupid f***ing libtards. Go cry to your mommy and make sure she changes your soiled diapers. Are u all toilet trained yet???? You’re a pathetic racist scum group. Why don’t u all go hold hands together and jump off a bridge. And take obama with you !!!!"

Another read: "If you had any talent you would have been the lead. go back to s***y india and stop crying about whites in this WHITE COUNTRY if u dont like it go live in africa or even better go back to your own s***hole country india."

Another photograph, including African American student Eamon Nunn's picture, suggested "this is why we search for trees.”

“The lynching reference, for me, is very scary," said his mother, Nia Nunn, in a phone interview. "It’s outrageous."

The group's members received direct messages to their personal Facebook accounts.

“We never thought, when we started this, that we would get such backlash from white supremacist neo-nazis," Anabella Mead-VanCort said.