"Sundown Towns" - Daytime only protest implication in Ferguson

[cui bono]

Not that long ago many towns had laws that people of color had better not be seen in town after dark. The result being "whites only" towns. When the people of Ferguson are told they can protest during the day but they are "advised" or "requested" to not protest after dark, because the police can't do their jobs at night for some reason, it is an eerie reminder of days past.

Darkness on the Edge of Town

On Nov. 8, 1909, nearly a century before Loewen stepped into the store, a mob of angry white citizens drove out Anna's 40 or so black families following the lynching in a nearby town of a black man accused of raping a white woman. Anna became all-white literally overnight, Loewen reports, and embraced racial exclusiveness for the long haul. According to the 2000 census, just one family with a black member lives among Anna's 7,000 residents.

Anna is far from unique, as Loewen, a sociologist, argues in his powerful and important new book, Sundown Towns . On the contrary, Loewen reports that -- beginning in roughly 1890 with the end of Reconstruction and continuing until the fair-housing legislation of the late 1960s -- whites in America created thousands of whites-only towns, commonly known as "sundown towns" owing to the signs often posted at their city limits that warned, as one did in Hawthorne, Calif., in the 1930s: "Nigger, Don't Let The Sun Set On YOU In Hawthorne." In fact, Loewen claims that, during that 70-year period, outside the traditional South, "probably a majority of all incorporated places [in the United States] kept out African Americans."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102001715.html

When Signs Said 'Get Out'
...
A black lawyer, he grew up in Baytown, Tex. Back in high school in the late '60s and early '70s, he would borrow his mom's car and drive around East Texas, exploring. He saw the signs in a couple of towns.

"I was terrified," he says. "You're driving with your buddies and you say, 'Thank God, it's not dark. Let's get the hell out.' "
...

George Brosi remembers the signs, too. Editor of Appalachian Heritage magazine, he recalls seeing one sign in southern Kentucky back in the 1990s when he was a college English teacher.
...

Most of the signs were posted in the first half of the 20th century, Loewen says, but some lingered on long afterward. They were not a Southern phenomenon, he stresses. They were found all over the United States with local variations

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/20/AR2006022001590.html

The constitution does not list hours that each right is in effect. We have our rights 24/7. When a predominantly black town is "asked" to not exercise their rights after dark it is eerily familiar. When it is done in a militarized police state it should worry us all.

Solidarity.

[arcane1]

1. Interesting, I was thinking about James Loewen last night when all this was going down.

Thanks for posting!!

[cui bono]

3. Yeah, and what I heard was that they said that the cops couldn't do their job after dark.

What a strange excuse.

[arcane1]

5. Obviously there should be a nightly curfew for ALL residents, if that's true.

[upaloopa]

2. In 1968 some friends and I went to Columbus

Georgia to visit some African American young people our age. They told us that they were not permitted to cross the bridge into town to see a movie unless they were accompanied by White people.
This was four years after the Civil Rights Act.

[cui bono]

4. Wow. I was suprised that a sign was seen in the 1990's!

That's crazy.

I've never lived in an area where racism is so overt. When I read and hear about it it is astounding.

[procon]

6. I saw those signs in the early 60's

in lots of little one-stoplight towns in west Texas. I remember one that terrified me because it was very prominent and the image remains stuck in my memory all these years later.

It was a big billboard with that warning to black people with a row of flashing yellow lights to draw your attention. The people of that town were obviously proud of their racism and that was enough to keep us from ever stopping there for food or gas.

[gollygee]

7. I remember a town here in Michigan

that "tested its tornado sirens" every evening at 6 pm. I asked why they would have to be tested so often, and someone who lived there told me that it was a holdover from when African Americans were expected to be out of the town by 6 pm - the siren was the signal. I think it was probably very common here.

[freshwest]

8. Saw a big one driving through TX to LA in the early 90's. Nearly as heart stopping as seeing a huge

billboard off the interstate (both of these were on the interstate) nearing Birmingham, AL in 1971.

My group was on a bus on the way to DC to protest Nixon's war escalation. The bus made a curve and there was a larger than the bus billboard with the face of George Wallace. I felt so much fear, I thought I was gonna have a heart attack right there.

Later went on more buses to go to LA and passed through AZ and CA. There were no bus terminals to eat at, so the driver (who really didn't like us and made a point of driving crazy on the roads to spook us) stopped for us to eat at these restaurants.

I was amazed to see this 'Sambo' imagery. I'd never seen anything like it before, a little black kid in the jungle sort of thing, all very modern signage. It was outside and inside, with 'The story of Little Black Sambo' in the menus. I was likewise freaked out, but when I remarked on it, the guys didn't think it was racist!

And just think, I was not even the target of that overt racism. I spent some time in a rural area in west Texas and wanted a black friend and her family to come visit. They there was no way they'd come out there. Over time, I learned about all the racism in that region. It as crazy like the movie 'Deliverance' there.

Way more than I wanted to know, but see, I could put my blinders on and think that the civil rights movement had changed things everywhere. It certainly changed things in the big city I lived in.

Moved to the west coast and was surprised to find it's out here, too. Got my first hate voicemail from a wrong number who didn't like my accent. He said to move back to Africa or learn to 'talk white.' It was chilling, but nothing to compare to what blacks have dealt with for centuries.

But no area is immune, the infection is national. It's just under the surface, if one wants to learn it.

[cui bono]

9. The original Sambo's is still there!

I had to look it up to be sure. I remember in the 80s wondering why it was there and didn't anyone think it was wrong? Before the freeway went through Santa Barbara it used to turn into a street with traffic lights and you had to drive right by where you could see it. Now when I drive through I don't see it, though I haven't tried to, not sure if it's visible or not from the freeway.

Here's an article about the history of it that I found:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/30/pancakes-and-pickaninnies-the-saga-of-sambo-s-the-racist-restaurant-chain-america-once-loved.html

The grandson bought it and he changed it up some, but not completely. And he wants to expand again and CA approved his trademark request but Washington turned him down. Still a line to get pancakes.

Weird.