Sundown Towns -- There Are Still 137 Sundown Towns Across 21 States

[ancianita]

Last edited Sun Sep 6, 2020, 07:42 PM - Edit history (1)

Sundown Towns -- 137 Sundown Towns Across 21 States -- Are The Litmus Test of America's Transformation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sundown_towns_in_the_United_States_by_state

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town

Sundown towns, also known as sunset towns, gray towns, or sundowner towns, are all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States that practice a form of racial segregation by excluding non-whites via some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation, and violence. Entire sundown counties[1] and sundown suburbs were also created by the same process. The term came from signs posted that "colored people" had to leave town by sundown.[2] The practice was not restricted to the southern states ... at least until the early 1960s...northern states could be nearly as inhospitable to black travelers...

Following the end of the Reconstruction Era, many thousands of towns and counties across the United States became sundown localities, as part of the imposition of Jim Crow laws and other racist practices. In most cases, the exclusion was official town policy or was promulgated by the community's real estate agents via exclusionary covenants governing who could buy or rent property. In others, the policy was enforced through intimidation. This intimidation could occur in a number of ways, including harassment by law enforcement officers.[6] Though widely believed to be a thing of the past, many hundreds of sunset towns continue to effectively exclude black people and other minorities in the twenty-first century...

...sociologist James William Loewen writes in his book, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (2005) writes that sundown status meant more than just that African Americans were unable to live in these towns. Any black people who entered or were found in sundown towns after sunset were subject to harassment, threats, and violence, including lynching....

We The People. Who are the "we” of sundown towns across America.

The 'we’ I’ve known are only folks who know southern states. They are my 100 or so former black students, and my 30 or so black friends on Facebook. When I brought up sundown towns this past July, a few of my black friends' friends told me about several near them in Illinois -- my blue home state of residence has more sundown towns than any other state! There's nearby Indiana, Mike Pence’s state. Hell, we have House Democrats from states that still harbor sundown towns.

How do those 19th Century towns legally still exist anywhere, anymore in the 21st Century!

You'd be surprised how many millions of whites, and Blacks for that matter, who are antiracist, yet have still never heard of sundown towns, or believe they exist only in the dustbin of history.
Ignorance of America's original sin is still a matter of exposure.

One thing I know is that Joe Biden knows. In so many words, Joe said, the hatred that spawns racism and other exclusions doesn’t go away. It hides. Blow some oxygenation under their rock and they come out full force again.

This is not an unsolvable problem. I think Joe knows that, too. His work on this would go a long way to making public reparations to Anita Hill and black women.

To "feel better" about knowing about sundown towns is just our first step, as antiracists.
But knowing and feeling better about this ugly truth is no longer enough. Both knowing and feeling better, or hoping someone else is solving this concrete problem -- possibly in a town near you and me -- has been just one of the ways that we Democrats have unknowingly failed in the past.
We must transform our old habit with: "Now what!” And a plan.

Are you in a sundown town state? Governors Jay Pritzker, Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sundown_towns_in_the_United_States_by_state

If we antiracists want this century free of racism, racists will have to be fought in these towns, too, not as in fight club, and not just through the BLM protesters taking these towns to the Supreme Court on Blacks' behalf. And not even with what Kamala Harris promises will be a new and improved Voting Rights Law. These people will have to be in for some "good trouble" from the rest of us.

To me, when antiracist whites really know, visit, and see these American places, these sundown towns' racist home rule policies would be taken to court. You'd think that the Southern Poverty Law Center or ACLU, bastions of civil rights court cases, would have tackled this policy remnant of the US’s 400-year disease once and for all. But the pressure on them will have to come from us. Feeling anxious about the last 55 days? Think about a trip to a sundown town near you.

Only one town has been taken down. Anna, Illinois, by Black Lives Matter this past year. https://www.propublica.org/article/a-sundown-town-sees-its-first-black-lives-matter-protest

That leaves 17 more. (Good lord, I can hardly even believe that I thought I'd left all that behind in the South.)
If the BLM method in Anna can work elsewhere, then we can finish this deadly virus off sooner than courts can. This BLM effort has been the final signal that antiracist whites had better solve.
It might not be solved once and for all, but it will be solved.
And the problem of sundown towns is whites' problem to solve.

This original sin no longer should be the burden of Blacks in America. European and American whites invented and developed the concepts of race, the capitalist systems built on race, and the subsequent policies of racism. Now, American whites should be the ones to end it. Young whites at BLM protests have made me proud, and sad that they still have to finish what we older Americans haven't.

I’ve had my radar out for years and have not seen any ACLU or other legal organization suits or rulings to stop sundown town racist policymakers — either through cease and desist orders, photographed breaking of injunctions against their assaults against blacks who enter to vote or shop or just BE in these towns. I’ve not seen any blanket orders of protection issued on behalf of blacks who live near them, nor witness protection from the FBI for those blacks who testify about sundown town abusers or leaders who run “law and order” interference for their white residents.

So why not offer the good cop/bad cop deal to these towns: either they quietly end their policies, or they are met immediately with court orders, enforced immediately through monitoring what Blacks and their local counsel, who live near these towns, report.

Civil rights legal work must be at state district court levels, then if necessary, reach state supreme courts, where the matter should end. If not, lawyers for plaintiffs need to pursue their sundown case suits to the SCOTUS. Pro bono. The ACLU and SPLC, having huge endowments, can get big bang for buck with these cases. But whites like us will have to bring them forward. Names, dates, stories, contact information.

Sundown towns, if taken to court, will then have to be monitored by Title VII Consent Decree, the way schools were for a few decades after Brown v Bd of Education, and by the public, the way antifa keep an eye on Nazis in Europe and here.

These towns keep the seeds of Nazis and militias alive, the soil of racism that build racist policy, use paramilitias, local police, sheriffs, to keep their unjust peace. All the things we're seeing in unsurgency form in antiracist cities right now. Black lives matter, their votes matter as much in and near these 137 small towns as in America’s cities.
The Constitution says so. The Civil Rights Act says so.

These towns should never ever have been allowed to exist this long.
There can be no more "I didn't know" excuses. Every racist generation tries to *forget* its past damage, then reproduce ignorance about its bad policies that stand, unknown. Or unnoticed because hidden under threat of white violence.

I say NO. No more. Racist Policies that infringe, endanger, damage and eventually kill all races, along with white racists, eventually.
Racist policies allow these sundown towns their veiled racist language, their covid excuses, or any other excuses their enforcers use run interference for undercover hate.

The policy MAKERS of racist policy must be served injunctions; failing to show policy and street level changes, they must be eliminated by defunding, firing, and jail.

If it comes down to buying them out, allies in philanthropy can make sundown town real estate deals, or buy towns lock, stock and barrel; make whole towns their new land investment write-offs. Green New Deal investment locations for manufacturing jobs.

To finally salt the racist soil of this country is to never let this inhumanity grow here again.

There is no sitting back once Joe Biden and Kamala Harris start up the first 100 days.

Because if Black Lives STILL don’t Matter anywhere, then no lives matter anywhere.

Then we are not the more perfect union. Not America.

[DURHAM D]

1. What ???

I thought the 1964 Civil Rights Act killed these off.

I grew up in a Sundown Town. When I was in college in 1965 or 1966 during one of our usual Sunday phone conversations my Dad told me that he and my uncle Jess had removed the signs at each end of town. He said the Civil Rights Act had taken care of the problem.

I talk about Sundown towns all of the time because almost no one knows about them.

[ancianita]

2. Yes indeed.

And now here we are.

Who kept a lid on this for so long? Why haven't whites, even today's young Blacks, known about them?

[regnaD kciN]

3. In fairness, it should be noted...

...that a lot of the towns on that list may have had "whites-only" laws at the time of their founding, but nobody has enforced them for decades. For example, one of the places listed is Culver City, which has probably been majority-minority for almost half a century.

[ancianita]

4. Then in fairness, they must produce written town declarations, including all dates, of said alleged

endings of their sundown status.

Are you saying we should take the word of these towns' leaders without documented legal proof?

The official existence of sundown towns with "unenforced" ordinances should not exist on any official town records in America.

[Amishman]

47. Probably a good idea for every town to do some law and ordinance spring cleaning

Plenty of absurd forgotten or unenforced laws still on the books in many towns. The older the town, the more legal debris they've probably accumulated.

Clean up the books completely, simplify, and rewrite in more understandable language and format. Would take care of many problems, not just those mentioned in the original post.

I wonder how many of the public officials in these towns even knew about the old discriminatory laws on their books.

[ancianita]

48. Certainly. It's probable that any official documents existed before any of us were born.

The sooner they can be declared null and void, then sent to town or state archives, the better.

[Amishman]

49. I like the idea of any local law or ordinance becoming void if unenforced for a period

Maybe something like being void if no one is cited under it for 20 years? Give them the option of reaffirming it (essentially passing it again) if they still want it.

[ancianita]

52. I so agree. Because "legalities" of one generation can become outright hindrances to the next.

The whole idea of using freedom responsibly is that each new generation becomes better at using freedom than the last, able self govern more broadly, responsibly and with less exclusion.

[sweetloukillbot]

6. Yeah, those LA suburbs may have been Sundown towns at one point...

But they aren't anymore. Tempe Arizona was one as well, but has been integrated since the 60s.

That said, there are places like Vidor Texas that still are, if unofficially.

[ancianita]

10. At any point, if they're not checked by law to see that their records as sundown towns are not

expunged, they can still "legally" enforce any exclusions they want by LEO's.

Cleaning up the "legal" past is a form of reparations.

[Stallion]

22. Vidor Had a Successful BLM Rally

[sweetloukillbot]

28. That's great!

Seriously - as of the early 2000s it was still considered a sundown town.
And I have a friend who got the sundown treatment in Jasper Texas as well.

[Gothmog]

35. BLM comes to Vidor

Vidor is a small town between Beaumont and the Louisiana border that we will not stop in. It has an active KKK chapter. This amazes me

Link to tweet

Vidor, Texas,” boomed the Reverend Michael Cooper, thin and tall in his cowboy hat, “will now be known for love!” The crowd, assembled at a dilapidated pavilion on the grounds of Vidor’s Raymond Gould Community Center, cheered. Vidor has been known for many things—among them the activities of the local Ku Klux Klan; its status as a “sundown town,” in which blacks were not allowed in city limits after dark; and an ugly fight in the early nineties over a federal effort to desegregate public housing in the city, which caused Texas Monthly, in a cover story that year, to describe Vidor as Texas’s “most hate-filled town.” The census estimates it to be 91 percent white.

So when word started to circulate that a Black Lives Matter rally was being planned in Vidor, many people on social media thought it was a trap—and expressed skepticism the event’s supposed planner, 23-year-old Maddy Malone, even existed. (She does.) To black folks with knowledge of the region, who had been told never to stop in Vidor, the idea seemed insane. “A civil rights rally in Vidor” is the punchline to a joke, not a thing that could happen in this world. C’mon.

Yet on Saturday, there they were, some 150 to 200 people standing in the sun, in the draining humidity and heat of Southeast Texas, “to come together in love and unity and to bind together under God,” as Malone told the crowd. “My generation is reaching to break the cycle.” They heard from a number of speakers, including Cooper, who is the head of the Beaumont chapter of the NAACP, but also young Vidorians like Malone.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the Vidor rally was the demographic mix of attendees. There were a good number of African American marchers, but the crowd was predominantly white. Many were young people in their teens and twenties, like Maddy. But there were also middle-aged white women with homemade T-shirts and hats bearing slogans like “I can’t breathe” handing out chilled water and snack packs. A white mother bore a sign that said she had been “radicalized” by Floyd’s calls for his mama as he was losing consciousness. After the event, a well-built white man with an American flag and an airborne infantry pin on his baseball cap came up to thank Malone for putting the event together. There was a guy in a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey. (There’s always a guy in a Steelers jersey.)

[sweetloukillbot]

42. Wikipedia's census info from 2000

Vidor had a population of 11440, with .1% AA.
That's 11 people.

I hope this is a good sign for the town.

[DBoon]

8. culver city...

The 2010 United States Census[53] reported that Culver City had a population of 38,883. The population density was 7,566.0 people per square mile (2,921.2/km2). The racial makeup of Culver City was 23,450 (60.3%) White,[54] 3,694 (9.5%) African American, 191 (0.5%) Native American, 5,742 (14.8%) Asian, 81 (0.2%) Pacific Islander, 3,364 (8.7%) from other races, and 2,361 (6.1%) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 9,025 persons (23.2%).

[sweetloukillbot]

12. Apparently that's not good enough because the poster hasn't read anything formal denying Wikipedia

[ancianita]

24. You don't really know that.

[sweetloukillbot]

26. Then cite your sources

You've accused the democratic governor of California in being complicit in this, back it up with your sources, other than Wikipedia articles that disprove your point.

[ancianita]

32. I certainly made no such accusation of any governor. I stated a fact. They probably don't know

about them, either. Doesn't mean that such places should be overlooked, does it.

Rather than telling me to do more work for you to prove whatever it is you're trying to say, why not produce a source that disproves Wikipedia yourself. And say clearly what you mean, instead of criticizing.

I'd welcome whatever you come up with, or anything about California, if that's where you live.

[DBoon]

31. Correct

Just citing stats as to the most current makeup of the population.

Even if the law has been nullified by Federal legislation, should still be repealed at the municipal level.

[JI7]

51. Culver City is probably less than 60 percent white Today , but it's a pretty diverse area

[Squinch]

5. OK, I live in one of those towns and I have plenty of black neighbors who live here too.

[ancianita]

7. Then check public records to see that no "unenforced" town ordinances exist on paper.

If they don't exist, and you have proof, scratch one off the list.

[Squinch]

9. How about I just continue to live happily with my black neighbors who are as welcome here

as I am.

And PS: We had a really wonderful, really well attended, really peaceful and neighborly BLM parade here earlier this year. (Can't even call it a protest, because it was too joyful and full of solidarity.)

[ancianita]

15. Of course. Why would I tell you what to do. I'm happy it's off the list.

[Squinch]

16. No, it's not off the list. It's on the list you linked to. And I'm saying that list is

bogus.

[ancianita]

25. Not the whole list. I know four sundown towns in IL exist for a fact; so no, the list isn't bogus.

[sweetloukillbot]

27. Four towns in Illinois is not your list

Sundown towns do exist. But a lot of the places listed there are not sundown towns anymore. And you only undermine your own point by insisting they are because SOME sundown towns do exist...

[ancianita]

30. You said "the list you linked to," so it's not up to me to know what you meant.

Last edited Mon Sep 7, 2020, 08:43 AM - Edit history (1)

And no, I don't undermine anything about the majority of towns on Wikipedia's list.

If you can disprove anything here, do it, but the undermining isn't coming from me. Take your disproof to Wikipedia. They'd be glad to see evidence that they can use to edit the list. If you insist that I or Wikipedia be 100% correct to post, I'll duly note that for future reference.

[sweetloukillbot]

13. You're the one making the assertion that the LA suburbs are sundown towns

Why not you find something other than a wikipedia list?

[ancianita]

17. I'm passing along information. Why do you focus on LA suburbs? Do you live near them?

If so, why would you say that I'm claiming to know about them as established fact.

Sure, I could investigate all 137 listed towns in the U.S., but even LA suburbs is a pretty tall order. Though others who live near them might.

I'm investigating Gulfport, Zephyrhills and Ocoee, Florida, since it's where I am right now.

If you don't want to believe me, perhaps you can find some sources to disprove Wikipedia, which is not a perfect source, but is wide ranging, and the most comprehensive source about them that I could find to start off this OP.

A few mistakes does not throw out the accuracy of the list altogether.

[Aristus]

11. No sundown towns listed for Washington State.

We have plenty of racists in this state; a lot of them out Spokanistan way. But thank goodness we haven't institutionalized it...

[JustGene]

50. We have plenty of those towns here

I also include places w/ a "Blacktown"
Called such by Black people
Racists use a different term.
When I first heard this I nearly choked.
Years ago I saw this in KY, OH, and AR
In 50 years this hasn't changed much.
Side note:Forrest City,AR, Majority black, Is named for Nathan Bedford Forrest.

[hurple]

14. Read the book by James Loewen

It is a must!

[ancianita]

19. He has a video lecture, too, but its audio isn't good quality, and takes some effort.

Writers aren't always good public speakers, so I'll check out the book, too, for sure.

[bullwinkle428]

18. Waterloo, Iowa has an African-American Mayor. And he's definitely not a Ben Carson type.

https://www.cityofwaterlooiowa.com/government/mayor/index.php

[Buckeye_Democrat]

20. I find it very hard to believe that Fairborn OH is one of them.

Wright State University is located there, and there's a lot of late-night and early-morning activity around that area among people of all skin colors.

Edit: Probably not so much during the pandemic, since bars have to stop serving by 10 pm, but still.

Tipp City is the only "recent" example in the Dayton area that I know about, and I think that finally stopped in the 70's.

[ancianita]

21. I thought the same thing when I saw the university. Also there's a military base nearby.

I looked over the locations in Ohio when the thread about the close polls came up, just to see if Trumpers were located mostly in the southern end of the state. I saw that OH's sundown towns are not south but center, nearer to IN, KY, PA along major interstates.

It could be that unexpunged records still exist. That happens a lot as towns grow and change. Chicago, for instance, still allows chickens in any Chicagoan's back yard.

But the issue of any unexpunged sundown ordinances would be to end any "legal" basis for local law enforcement's undue force, or any citizen's discriminatory abuse of anyone not white.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

23. Yeah, maybe Fairborn still has laws on the books...

... that have been ignored for many decades?

If so, the rule obviously needs to be officially removed because it's racist and not followed anyway.

Yeah, WPAFB is there too. No way is that happening around that huge place with people from all over the country stationed there.

[ancianita]

29. It's about not allowing any laws to remain on the books as cover for local LEO's, really.

Last edited Sun Sep 6, 2020, 07:54 PM - Edit history (1)

It only takes one incident to direct attention to the police and the target, to distract from a law on the books that could exonerate police who'd know that the target wouldn't have legal means to sue.

With unexpunged laws on the books everywhere, Blacks shouldn't have to retain lawyers to travel safely, or even engage in nighttime activities with all the freedoms that whites do. That townspeople might think the old days are over and forget about what's on the books, doesn't change a bottom line injustice that lurks behind "justified" random profiling by law enforcement.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

33. Yeah, I agree.

Cops can get "creative" with old laws, and we don't need to give them the slightest opportunity to abuse people.

[ancianita]

34. Also,

they just abuse people with no laws on the books, so there's that.

This is kind of a way to kill two birds with one stone, now that 'change' in towns away from their origins has come up.

[csziggy]

36. I didn't realize Ocoee, Florida was one - or that there are two others in Florida

The Ocoee massacre was a white mob attack on African-American residents in northern Ocoee, Florida, which occurred on November 2, 1920, the day of the U.S. presidential election. The town is in Orange County near Orlando. Most estimates total 30–35 Blacks killed[1][2][3], although as many as 50 African Americans may have been killed during the massacre. Most African-American-owned buildings and residences in northern Ocoee were burned to the ground. Other African Americans living in southern Ocoee were later killed or driven out on threat of more violence. Ocoee essentially became an all-white town. The massacre has been described as the "single bloodiest day in modern American political history".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocoee_massacre

For more than 40 years, Ocoee remained an all-white sundown town.[12][13] In 2018, the city commission issued a proclamation formally acknowledging the massacre and declaring that Ocoee is no longer a sundown town.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocoee,_Florida#Ocoee_massacre

Perhaps there should be a 100th anniversary event about the Ocoee Masscre on Nov. 2 this year. It would help remind people why voting matters. Too many people have died trying to keep that right to easily give it up.

[ancianita]

38. Thank you for the information. That makes three crossed off the list, which probably existed before

2018.

[Snake Plissken]

37. I was really shocked to see some of the towns on list

especially when I actually know someone who grew up in one of the towns on that list in the 1950s, one of her best friends is Black and grew up next door to her.


And other towns which still blatantly try to keep people with dark skin out and are not on that list.

[ancianita]

40. The whole idea seems shocking, really.

Maybe you could name the towns not on the list. The status of towns seems to be changing. Some grow and become more tolerant, and just need ordinances expunged. Others, unknown, could also be checked out.

It was weird that Oak Park, IL, the suburb just west of Chicago, was listed. I've known Black people who've lived there for years, so I crossed it off, lowing IL's total to 23. I'm still calling their city hall's legal counsel to find out if there's such an ordinance on the books.

If you know of other towns not listed, maybe they can be at least investigated. I can think of a few whose laws don't reflect residents' attitude, too. Like Ocala, where the sheriff is a member of the KKK; still, Blacks live there.

I can later contact Wikipedia after more input, and make sure their list is more accurate.

[AwakeAtLast]

39. Most if Southern Illinois was a Sundown area

My town was one of them.

While the Civil Rights Act took care of the posted signs and the ability if these laws to be enforced, it didn't alter people's hearts.

Emphasis on "Southern" in these parts!

[ancianita]

41. Yes, I looked up names, found them in the area south of Decator and east of Rte 70 to the IN line.

These are places my Facebook friend's friend lives near.

[sweetloukillbot]

43. Here is another great resource

I don't want you to think that I'm downplaying the existence of sundown towns. This has a more extensive list of towns that are or were sundown towns.

https://sundown.tougaloo.edu/sundowntowns.php

[ancianita]

46. Thank you.

Much appreciated. I'd looked into Loewen's books, and hadn't seen his homepage with his tour schedule.

The section on how to confirm their existence looks promising, such as checking with the census, and in-person visits with a local librararian, City Clerk, city council meeting records, historical society, nursing home folks and long time realtors, along with how to talk to those who can steer one to current documents.

[Brother Buzz]

44. Used to be the Green Book - Don't leave home without it

I guess the internets fills the void these days

[sweetloukillbot]

45. Have you watched Lovecraft Country?

The first episode had an absolutely chilling scene with the main characters (who wrote for the Green Book) attempting to get out of a sundown county with a sheriff on their tails. More tense and terrifying than the monster jump scares in the episode.

[Brother Buzz]

53. No, I'm cable challenged

I'm not keen on the horror genre, either, but the first episode piques my interest.

FWIW, Lovecraft Country is fiction and Atticus' uncle George wrote a Green Book-style Black travel guide, no doubt a hat tip to the genuine Green Book.

On the other hand, The Green Book, and its founder, Victor Hugo Green would make an interesting film.

Drafted WW1. Despite being married and a postal worker, an automatic exemption for a white male, his request was denied
Served in France with the 92nd Infantry Division (Colored) - Woohoo, I was assigned to the last active element of the 92nd
Settled in Harlem and totally lived the Harlem Renaissance.

And that's just the first five, ten minutes of the film. Hollywood, please pick up the nearest white courtesy telephone.

[sweetloukillbot]

55. The first episode is free on YouTube

The horror is really only the last five minutes (At lead in the first episode). The examination of Jim Crow racism and segregation though is just chilling.

[Brother Buzz]

59. Thanks, I can do YouTube

[Brother Buzz]

60. A 1949 Packard Woody!

[displacedtexan]

54. Everman, TX used to be a Sundown town.

It's directly south of Fort Worth, and it even had a warning sign at the city limits. Today, it's a thriving bedroom community with all shapes,sizes, & colors.

[ancianita]

56. Okay.

And would you happen to know if the town still has sundown ordinances on the books?

[displacedtexan]

57. No idea. Woouldn't surprise me if it still had one.

I distinctly remember the warning sign at the edge of town. It was a sun setting over a hilltop with "N***** Don't Let The Go Down On You In Everman"

[ancianita]

58. I hear you.

Whoah, that's sounds like the more hardcore racist of signs that used to be all over. They're down now, but in too many towns that hate lives on.

As I keep saying, expunging sundown ordinances from the books is important so that LEO's don't use them as small print excuses to be profilers and harassers, since too many white supremacists hided behind badges.