Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism (100 page)

BOOK: Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism
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18
Post died in 1960, but her granddaughter-in-law, Elizabeth Post, brought out the 12th edition of
Etiquette
in 1969.
19
Patrick M. McMullen, “Gated Communities,” entry for
Encyclopedia of Chicago,
draft, 10/17/2000; Albert F. Winslow,
Tuxedo Park
(Tuxedo Park: Tuxedo Park Historical Society, 1992).
20
Ingrid Gould Ellen,
Sharing America’s Neighborhoods
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 71.
21
Larry Peterson, who has studied housing and race in the Chicago suburbs for four decades, points out that another reason owners move first is the behavior of realtors. Since they make far more money from sales than rentals, it is in their interest to encourage turnover, so they focus on persuading white homeowners to sell.
22
Installment contracts differ from mortgages in that the buyer builds no legal equity until payments are complete. Missing a single payment can put the buyer in default, leading to the loss of the entire investment and leaving the speculator free to sell the house again.
23
Arnold Hirsch,
Making the Second Ghetto
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 32; Luigi Laurenti, “Property Values and Neighborhood Integration,” in Raymond Mack, ed.,
Race, Class, and Power
(New York: American Book Co., 1968), 435.
24
George Galster, “Neighborhood Racial Change, Segregationist Sentiments, and Affirmative Marketing Policies,”
Journal of Urban Econonomics
27 (1990): 334–61, summarized in Ellen,
Sharing America’s Neighborhoods,
63.
25
Arthur Hayes, “Managed Integration,”
Black Enterprise,
7/1982, 43; Goodwin,
The Oak Park Strategy,
157–58; cf. Ellen,
Sharing America’s Neighborhoods,
162–63.
26
White flight is not inevitable. Whites are not fleeing Mt. Rainier, Maryland, for example, which was 56% black in 1990 and just 62% black in 2000. In the last twenty years, whites have sometimes moved
into
majority-black neighborhoods, such as parts of Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and made them majority-white. Between 1960 and 1970, Kirkwood, a neighborhood in Atlanta, went from being 91% white to 97% black. Then in the 1990s, some whites returned, making Kirkwood 14% white by 2000. Tipping point theory, which holds that whites will not flee until a neighborhood reaches a certain percentage and then will leave, cannot explain gentrification. Nor can it explain Lynwood.
27
Richard Morin, “The Odds of Being Poor,”
Washington Post,
3/23/1999; “Proposed Group Home Sparks Long Legal Battle,” Associated Press, 3/16/2002, on Advocacy and Protection for People with Mental Illness web site,
geocities.com/ahobbit.geo/group_home.html
, 6/2003; “Local Judge Rejects Effort to Stop Group Home in Greenwich,” Associated Press, in
Hartford Courant,
9/9/2002, on Homeless News web site, groups.yahoo .com/group/HomelessNews/message/2094, 6/2003.
28
Mary Otto, “Suburbs Struggle to Help Homeless,”
Washington Post,
12/18/2000.
29
Jonathan Kozol,
Savage Inequalities
(New York: Crown, 1991), 7–9; Ellen,
Sharing America’s Neighborhoods,
4, 118.
30
Some do pay a lesser amount that reimburses a city for some of the services—police, streets, fire protection, etc.
31
Kozol,
Savage Inequalities,
55; Darwin Payne,
Big D: Triumphs and Troubles
(Dallas: Three Forks Press, 1994), 214.
32
Longtime Cincinnati suburbanite, e-mail, 11/2002.
33
Michael N. Danielson,
The Politics of Exclusion
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 88, 110.
34
Gunnar Myrdal,
An American Dilemma
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964 [1944]), 618–22; Jianping Shen, “Have Minority Students Had a Fair Share of Quality Teachers?”
Poverty & Race
12, 4 (7/2003), 7; Michael Powell, “Separate and Unequal in Roosevelt, Long Island,”
Washington Post,
4/21/2002.
35
Danielson,
The Politics of Exclusion,
21; Carolyn Adams et al.,
Philadelphia: Neighborhoods, Division, and Conflict
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 163; Powell, “Separate and Unequal in Roosevelt, Long Island.”
36
Witold Rybczynski,
City Life
(New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 206–7; Powell, “Separate and Unequal.”
37
Dan T. Carter,
The Politics of Rage
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 433; John Gehm,
Bringing it Home
(Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1984), 193; Janet L. McCoy, “AU Prof: Remember Wallace for Changing U.S. Political Ideology,” at
auburn.edu/administration/univrel/news/archive/9_98news/9_98wallace.html
, 8/2003; Ken Rudin, “Flunking Out of the Electoral College,”
Washington Post,
10/15/1999,
washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/junkie/archive/junkie101599.htm
, 8/2003.
38
“Quiet Town in Michigan Has ‘a Feeling for Wallace,’ ”
New York Times,
9/12/1968.
39
Bill Outis, 10/2001; Reynolds Farley, Sheldon Danziger, and Harry Holzer,
Detroit Divided
(New York: Russell Sage, 2000), 11; Dan T. Carter,
The Politics of Rage
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 434; Kathy Spillman, 12/2000.
40
Nixon quoted in George Lipsitz, “The Possessive Investment in Whiteness,” in Jonathan Birnbaum and Clarence Taylor, eds.,
Civil Rights Since 1787
(New York: New York University Press, 2000), 674; Donahue, “Wrestling with Democracy,” 18; Sugrue,
Origins of the Urban Crisis,
266; Alexander Polikoff, “Racial Inequality and the Black Ghetto,”
Poverty & Race
13, 6 (11/2004), 1.
41
To be sure, the Republican administration in 2001–05 hardly shrank the federal government.
42
Thomas Edsall and Mary Edsall,
Chain Reaction
(New York: Norton, 1992), 226, 229; Dan T. Carter, “The Southern Strategy,” in Birnbaum and Taylor, eds.,
Civil Rights Since 1787,
738; cf. David M. P. Freund, “Making It Home,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1999.
43
Sheryll Cashin,
The Failures of Integration
(New York: Public Affairs, 2004), 270.
44
Edsall and Edsall,
Chain Reaction,
228.
45
Ibid., 226, 229.
CHAPTER 14: SUNDOWN TOWNS TODAY
 
1
Donald Deskins Jr. and Christopher Bettinger, “Black and White Spaces in Selected Metropolitan Areas,” in Kate A. Berry and Martha L. Henderson, eds.,
Geographical Identities of Ethnic America
(Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2002), 38.
2
Benjamin Johnson, post to
umb.edu/forum/1/AMST203/member/Forums/s-484415211-.html#471016211
, 8/2001; former Marlowe resident, e-mail, 11/2004; Missouri resident, e-mail, 6/2000; Roger Karns, e-mail, 5/2002; Margaret Alexander Alam, e-mails and photo, 9/2003.
3
Dan F. Morse and Phyllis A. Morse, “Introduction,”
The Lower Mississippi Valley Expeditions of Clarence Bloomfield Moore
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998), 2.
4
Malcolm Ross,
All Manner of Men
(New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1948), 66.
5
Herrin, which was sundown when Angle was there, had 104 African Americans, almost 1% of its population, in 2000.
6
Paul M. Angle,
Bloody Williamson
(New York: Knopf, 1952), 98; Zeigler librarian, 9/2002; Deidre Meadows, e-mail via
Classmates.com
, 9/2002; Du Quoin resident, 9/2002.
7
Robby Heason,
Trouble Behind
(Cicada Films, 1990).
8
Frank Nickell, e-mail, 6/2002; professor, Taylor University, 6/2004; Rebecca Tolley-Stokes, e-mail, 8/2002; Michael D’Orso,
Like Judgment Day
(New York: Putnam’s, 1996), 329.
9
Undergraduate, University of the Ozarks, 9/2002; undergraduate, University of Illinois–Chicago, 9/2001.
10
Chris Meno, e-mail, 10/2002; professor, DePauw University, 10/2001; clerk, National Afro-American Museum at Central State University, 10/2000.
11
If the census shows no black families, that does not prove that African Americans
cannot
live there. Only continuing incidents prove that, and I cannot be up to the moment for every town I’ve studied. For most communities my information is current only as of 2001–04 or even earlier. Checking each town anew would take years, at the end of which we would be in a new present, no longer up to the moment. Also, in many sundown towns the question simply cannot be resolved, even with up-to-date information, owing to no recent trials. Until another black family (or better, two or three) tests a town by trying to move in, we cannot know for sure if it still keeps out African Americans. We know it did, but we do not know that it does.
12
Listing more than one race was allowed on the 2000 census for the first time. Few (<5%) chose such categories, and usually I omitted them, being unsure how they classed themselves. Neither I nor the census achieved consistency, however. Sometimes I included individuals of both African and European ancestry as “black,” and the census apparently includes nonblack family members, as it should, in its table of population in households with one or more black householder. I use the term “black household” to mean “household with one or more black householders.” Like the IRS, I required “households” to include more than one person; otherwise I could not distinguish them from unattached individuals.
13
Anna editor and reference librarian, 9/2002; Anna farmer, 1/2004.
14
Illinois state trooper, 1/2004; Ronald Alan Willis, e-mail, 9/2004.
15
Martinsville native, 10/2002.
16
Post by “goneaviking” to
uncensored-news.com/alt.flame.niggers
, 5/23/2001; Smokey Crabtree,
Too Close to the Mirror
(Fouke: Days Creek Production, 2001), 186.
17
Of course, many residents of Elwood want no part of such events, the KKK marches in many multiracial towns, and “hosting” KKK events costs Elwood money for police overtime. See “The High Price of Policing Hate,” 10/28/2002, Anti-Defamation League,
adl.org/learn/news/cost_of_hate.asp
, 6/2003.
18
North Judson teacher, 4/2001; former Marion, Indiana, policeman, 6/2002; Indiana teacher, e-mail, 6/2000.
19
David Cline, e-mail, 6/2003, confirming conversation with Steeleville librarian, 6/2003.
20
Two Pinckneyville residents, 9/2002; Du Quoin resident, 9/2002; Pinckneyville native, e-mail, 8/2004.
21
Mattoon businessman, e-mail, 10/2002.
22
Champaign-Urbana resident, 2000.
23
Pana spokeswoman, 10/2001; Pana resident, 10/2001.
24
Forsyth County, GA, resident, e-mail, 5/2002; native of Oak Grove, 3/2004; D’Vera Cohn, “1990s Further Reshape Suburbs,”
Washington Post,
5/25/2001.
25
Librarian, Joplin Public Library, 9/2002.
26
Robert Bullard quoted in Jonathan Tilove, “2000 Census Finds America’s New Mayberry Is Exurban, and Overwhelmingly White,” Newhouse News Service, 2001,
newhouse.com/archive/story1a051001.html
, 8/2004.
27
Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck,
Suburban Nation
(New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000), 43.
28
Ellen James Martin, “Set Some Priorities When Buying in a Classy Community,”
Chicago Tribune,
9/14/2001.
29
Kenneth T. Jackson,
Crabgrass Frontier
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 8; Duany, Plater-Zyberk, and Speck,
Suburban Nation,
44.
30
Common rules include no JetSkis or boats in driveway; no fence, no gazebo, no unapproved lawn furniture; any doghouse must resemble your house and must be hidden from the street by a six-foot fence or greenery. Diane Hershberger of Kansas City told of subdivisions in suburban Johnson County where “you can’t leave your garage doors open, you can’t work on your cars in your own driveway, you can’t hang laundry outside at any time.” These restrictions need not be racial. Sociologist Karyn Lacy described a suburb that has gone majority black and has similar rules: “Residents must not allow their grass to grow more than 4 inches tall. (At the same time, they are also precluded from not maintaining grass at all.) Detractors are hit with heavy penalties.” Diane Hershberger, 11/2000; Karyn Lacy, “A Part of the Neighborhood,”
International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy
22 (2002): 62.
31
Elizabeth Razzi, “House Rules,”
Kiplinger’s Magazine,
9/2000, 87–88; Frederique Krupa, “Los Angeles: Buying the Concept of Security,” Chapter 3 of “Privatization of Public Space,” unpaginated, translucency. com/frede/pps.html, 1/2004.

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