Sundown Town

[debrand]

Alecto talked about Sundown Town in a different thread, but I wanted to discuss it more in depth.

http://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/0 ... own-towns/

I found a blog article on Sundown Towns for those who want to read it. Here is another article about Sunddown towns

http://www.thehistorychannelclub.com/ar ... lcome-home

The first time that I heard about Sundown Towns was as an adult. Our neighbor told us that there used to be such a town in the part of Arkansas where he lived. He said that there was some sort of sign, openly warning minorities to stay out of town.

Do such towns exist today?

[Michiru]

How can this be legal? :shock:

[Alecto]

http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyc ... tryID=3658

This has a lot of information about them in Arkansas. There are still a lot of towns in West Arkansas that black people are practically afraid to go into because of this.

[Alecto]

How can this be legal? :shock:

It doesn't have to be legal. The south is rife with the "good old boy" network.

[debrand]

How can this be legal? :shock:

It isn't but that doesn't mean that there aren't such towns. :( Imagine how hard this would be to prove. The residents could claim that minorities have simply not moved into their town. When you consider that the police force is probably made up of racists in the town, it becomes apparent that there would be no one to turn to for protection.

Are there any towns like this in NC?

[mirele]

I don't know if there are any now...but when my dad was growing up, his town (Paden, OK) was a sundown town and the African-Americans lived down the road in Boley. My dad left Paden in 1952 and never went back there to live.

Both towns (Paden and Boley) have dwindled from their heydays in the early 20th century. They were bypassed by the freeway (I-10) and have not much else to offer people.

Here's the Wikipedia on Boley: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boley,_Oklahoma

[Rosa]

It wasn't just the South - doesn't that author think it was actually worst in border states (Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio) but there were Sundown Towns everywhere - Edina, the nice SW suburb of Minneapolis, was one. There were Sundown towns in New York and New Jersey.

That book changed my life - I had grown up thinking Black people didn't live in those little towns just because NOBODY wanted to live in the little towns I'd grown up in. But it's just not true. The whiteness of so many small towns in the West and Midwest was artificial and enforced with violence for at least a century.

[dawbs]

It wasn't just the South - doesn't that author think it was actually worst in border states (Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio) but there were Sundown Towns everywhere - Edina, the nice SW suburb of Minneapolis, was one. There were Sundown towns in New York and New Jersey.

That book changed my life - I had grown up thinking Black people didn't live in those little towns just because NOBODY wanted to live in the little towns I'd grown up in. But it's just not true. The whiteness of so many small towns in the West and Midwest was artificial and enforced with violence for at least a century.

Someone I know (in her 60s I believe at this point) lived in Indiana growing up.

Hers was a Sundown Town.

She remembers the entire town going to 'cheer off' Louis Armstrong after his concert--making sure they didn't make an exception (she thinks they made a 'little' concession--it was post-sundown, but definitely not overnight!) and he was OOT before he could get into trouble. :(

[Deleted03]

http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=3658

This has a lot of information about them in Arkansas. There are still a lot of towns in West Arkansas that black people are practically afraid to go into because of this.

thank you it's very informative!

[GeoBQn]

James Loewen, who wrote "Lies My Teacher Told Me," wrote a very eye-opening book on sundown towns. Basically, his hypothesis is that if a town used to have African Americans at some point, but suddenly no longer had them and went for decades without any African Americans, then the town is that way on purpose. They tend to be most common outside the Traditional South--the Midwest, Ozarks, and Cumberland especially. Some particularly notorious ones he mentioned were Gross Pointe MI, Kenilworth IL, Darien CT, La Jolla CA, and Appleton WI.

It's sad that towns still exist, though they try to be more under the radar. He starts out his research in the town of Anna, IL. It's still common to joke there that Anna stands for "Ain't no n-words around."

[JosiePye]

I had never heard of a sundown town until I worked in an office that was 95 per cent black (I'm white). I remember talking to an older supervisor who was telling me that the night her two sons were just driving through this town, Marshall IN, on the highway, at night, she was up all night worrying (this was in the late nineties--pre-cell phone for us poor folk). What was astounding to me is that I had grown up not more than an hour and a half away and, at the time, was living just 40 minutes away and I had no idea. None. It really drove home the point that all that lofty talk of a post racial America I picked in my (all-white) high school AP classes was nothing more than a bunch of white people trying to feel better about an ugly past by deluding ourselves into believing it was the past. That was a very informative year.

[fundiefan]

I must have spent my life living under a rock. I've never heard of sundown towns. I have to admit, I'd kind of like to crawl back under that rock.

[Alecto]

James Loewen, who wrote "Lies My Teacher Told Me," wrote a very eye-opening book on sundown towns. Basically, his hypothesis is that if a town used to have African Americans at some point, but suddenly no longer had them and went for decades without any African Americans, then the town is that way on purpose. They tend to be most common outside the Traditional South--the Midwest, Ozarks, and Cumberland especially. Some particularly notorious ones he mentioned were Gross Pointe MI, Kenilworth IL, Darien CT, La Jolla CA, and Appleton WI.

It's sad that towns still exist, though they try to be more under the radar. He starts out his research in the town of Anna, IL. It's still common to joke there that Anna stands for "Ain't no n-words around."

The problem with his hypothesis is there is historical evidence that some towns forcefully drove minorities out.

[Eponine]

James Loewen, who wrote "Lies My Teacher Told Me," wrote a very eye-opening book on sundown towns. Basically, his hypothesis is that if a town used to have African Americans at some point, but suddenly no longer had them and went for decades without any African Americans, then the town is that way on purpose. They tend to be most common outside the Traditional South--the Midwest, Ozarks, and Cumberland especially. Some particularly notorious ones he mentioned were Gross Pointe MI, Kenilworth IL, Darien CT, La Jolla CA, and Appleton WI.

It's sad that towns still exist, though they try to be more under the radar. He starts out his research in the town of Anna, IL. It's still common to joke there that Anna stands for "Ain't no n-words around."

This is an interesting theory and makes sense to me. I'm curious about town that are historically overwhelmingly white. For example, the town where I grew up, outside of New York City, has had a vast white majority since its founding in 1656 and is still 92% white. It's had a high Jewish population for some time now (I know some sundown towns also excluded Jews). I've always figured there must be a reason that minorities hardly ever moved there but it doesn't fit this pattern. Does the author mention those types of towns at all? I imagine there must have been community pressure not to allow blacks and other minorities post Civil War but I'm really not sure.

[Rosa]

Alecto, doesn't that support the thesis? KKK groups, citizens councils, and "casual" racist violence were the enforcement arm of illegal segregation everywhere that segregation existed, but there was no legal Jim Crow.

There was a violent mob enforcing residential segregation in the neighborhood just south of mine - the police stood around keeping back outright violence but allowed flaming torches & shouting and threats 24/7 for weeks. 80 years ago this year, they just put up a memorial. It was one of the days that was 100 degrees so I didn't go, and I wish I had.

[GeoBQn]

Alecto, he goes more into detail about how the towns drove out minorities and kept them out. Many times, there was one massive violent event that drove them out, and smaller acts kept them out.

[PBrooke]

To this day, the most appalling, blatant racism I've ever witnessed has been from people from the Midwest - and I grew up in the South. When I asked my mother about it, she explained that the South had government-forced integration, and the urban east coast cities had integration out of necessity; but everywhere else, attitudes and prejudices were free to run unchecked.

When I was a kid in the 90s I was still being bussed 20 min across town to go to school as part of a desegregation program, by the way. Most people don't realize desegregation still actively goes on.

[nuri]

My mother grew up in one, Cullman, Alabama. It's traditionally a Catholic (EWTN is literally a couple of miles away) and now Baptist town. Last time I was there I realized I went the entire trip without seeing a single black person. It struck me as so odd, until I looked up sundown towns myself. Then I was just sad.

PBrooke: As a person in the midwest, I pretty much agree. People here don't see themselves as racist, but they certainly have their prejudices that few challenge (and I couldn't myself in this. I'm sure I have my prejudices that I haven't realized and been called on yet).

Don't read the online comments on local papers, they will only make you angry.

[xDreamerx]

I obviously knew racial segregation and violence existed and I know the history of Jim Crow but I basically assumed that white society was just a racist all the time, regardless of whether it was daylight or not (lunch counters, buses, pretty much any public venue). Does the "sundown" thing imply that it became worse at night? Was dark when most of the killings happened? I'm not trying to be morbid, I'm just trying to distinguish nighttime in a racist society vs. all the time.

There was really good American Experience episode on the Freedom Riders in the early 60s. I would definitely recommend it. For those who question the legality of the whole thing, it really brings to light how corrupt the police were. They were almost always on the side of the white racists and would even show up late to areas where was there was a problem, so that people could beat on African Americans. Some policeman beat them themselves I'm sure. This was not a time when the law was there to protect you if you weren't white.

[MamaJunebug]

It's a tragic thing.

I've been told by a person who grew up in a certain Arkansas town that AA gangs there had "kill a whitey" as part of their initiation rites. That EA folks stay inside after dark if they don't want to be hassled or worse by AA youth.

White-on-black, black-on-white, hatred and violence and bigotry are tragic. Doesn't matter how it looks, it's all very, very bad.

PBrooke, IIRC there's still "bussing" in the Saint Louis, Missouri, metro area. AFAIK it's been reasonably successful, though I'm told that in high school cafeterias, there are AA tables and EA tables. But the kids make those decisions, themselves, it isn't imposed upon them by any adult hierarchy.

It's in the workplace that people have the chance to find out that people who don't look like them, still are like them in more ways than expected.

I'm rattling & rambling. Blame it on the heat.

[GeoBQn]

They're called "sundown towns" because they allow African Americans and/or other minorities to work in the town, but they can't live there and have to be out by night. It comes from some towns that posted signs that said, "Don't let the sun go down on you in [name of town]."

Besides violence, real estate companies have been pretty big in encouraging a town or suburb to stay white or free of religious minorities. Gross Pointe became notorious for having a "point system." Minorities had to achieve a certain number of points before a real estate agent would let them consider buying a house there. They didn't let the man who invented the artificial heart move into town because he had a Jewish parent.

[Alecto]

Does the "sundown" thing imply that it became worse at night?

From what I understand, the idea was that black people could come into town and conduct business during daylight hours but had to leave by sundown. So you could have a black maid or cook or laborer during the day.

[PBrooke]

Yeah, when I was a kid there was definitely racial tension in my school - and having kids bussed in from other areas sometimes meant that there economic divides as well (though the richest white areas got to go to their own local schools, of course - only the poorer white areas had to be bussed across town). And it's probably no accident that kids placed in the honor classes tended to be mostly white, so there was still some division in classes that weren't gym or art, etc. However, even with all the tension - you sort of had to confront the problems right in front of your face, you know? And you wind up being exposed to the culture and problems of AA's on a far less 'theoretical' level.

In some cases I wound up more educated than my friends at other schools. For example, pre-teen pregnancy was a huge problem in the area where my school was located (a girl in one of my classes was defiant when she said she would NOT be getting pregnant at 12 or 13, like her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother before her). As a result, there was an extremely comprehensive sex ed program in the sixth grade, where I learned about the benefits of spermicide and the drawbacks of lambskin condoms. I've checked with my husband, who attended another school in the same county - it wasn't county-wide.

Though I was annoyed at the time - I wanted to go to the same school as my friends - I'm glad that I didn't spend my formative years in a white bubble.

[xDreamerx]

They're called "sundown towns" because they allow African Americans and/or other minorities to work in the town, but they can't live there and have to be out by night. It comes from some towns that posted signs that said, "Don't let the sun go down on you in [name of town]."

Besides violence, real estate companies have been pretty big in encouraging a town or suburb to stay white or free of religious minorities. Gross Pointe became notorious for having a "point system." Minorities had to achieve a certain number of points before a real estate agent would let them consider buying a house there. They didn't let the man who invented the artificial heart move into town because he had a Jewish parent.

Were they basically allowing them to come and in and work because it was cheap labour? I didn't know it had to do with commerce. That's really...disturbing/sad/horrible.

I know about the real estate thing. I watched a documentary on suburbia (in the classic post war boom sense of the word) and it talked about the discrimination in the GI bill and how that basically helped to produce racially segregated neighbourhoods. It went further to explore the gentrification of neighbourhoods today and how it is often intertwined. If I manage to think of the name of it, I'll post it.

[PBrooke]

Meanwhile, in Minnesota... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/0 ... 16323.html