Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism (17 page)
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Authors: James W. Loewen
BOOK: Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism
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Metropolitan areas, too, have their black townships. Suburban Long Island alone has thirteen.
103
For that matter, many residents of sundown suburbs have long relied on maids and gardeners who commute from inner-city ghettoes, which are analogous to black townships. Some suburban black settlements date back to the nineteenth century.
104
Others grew after World War II, when white suburbs likewise exploded. Typically black townships supplied workers for nearby suburbs that wanted maids and gardeners but didn’t want African Americans to spend the night. Often they were located in floodplains or next to railroad tracks just outside the city limits of the nearest suburb. In 1966, sociologists Leonard Blumberg and Michael Lalli identified sixty of these communities, which they called “little ghettoes . . . in the suburbs.” Most of these communities were unincorporated or did not enforce their zoning ordinances and building codes, which allowed African Americans to build their own homes, keep chickens and even pigs, and thus create rural pockets in urban areas. Over time, however, as blacks were not allowed to live in incorporated suburbs, the stigmatized nature of the townships as “permitted locations for a negatively valued population,” to use Blumberg and Lalli’s formulation, became apparent to all. Geographer Harold Rose calls them “black colonies in the metropolitan ring.”
105
103
For that matter, many residents of sundown suburbs have long relied on maids and gardeners who commute from inner-city ghettoes, which are analogous to black townships. Some suburban black settlements date back to the nineteenth century.
104
Others grew after World War II, when white suburbs likewise exploded. Typically black townships supplied workers for nearby suburbs that wanted maids and gardeners but didn’t want African Americans to spend the night. Often they were located in floodplains or next to railroad tracks just outside the city limits of the nearest suburb. In 1966, sociologists Leonard Blumberg and Michael Lalli identified sixty of these communities, which they called “little ghettoes . . . in the suburbs.” Most of these communities were unincorporated or did not enforce their zoning ordinances and building codes, which allowed African Americans to build their own homes, keep chickens and even pigs, and thus create rural pockets in urban areas. Over time, however, as blacks were not allowed to live in incorporated suburbs, the stigmatized nature of the townships as “permitted locations for a negatively valued population,” to use Blumberg and Lalli’s formulation, became apparent to all. Geographer Harold Rose calls them “black colonies in the metropolitan ring.”
105
Not only African Americans but also other “deviants” were often confined to these black townships. In the 1950s and ’60s, Colp had a regionally famous house of prostitution; it still has a thriving bar.
106
As early as the 1970s, the Chevy Chase Heights Community Center hosted monthly gay dances. In the 1960s, the Elks Club and Sadler’s Bar in Chevy Chase Heights were perhaps the only places in Indiana County where whites and blacks might socialize and even dance together. Indeed,
within
black towns and townships, race relations were often good. “In Chevy Chase a man is treated as a man regardless of color,” said Fred Johnson, black Elks Club member in 1960. “In Indiana a white man is treated as a man, but a colored man is treated as an animal.” Residents of sundown towns usually put down whites who socialized or lived in nearby “black” townships as “white trash.” At the same time, whites in sundown towns often drove to nearby black townships to buy alcohol during Prohibition.
107
For decades Locke, a Chinese township in California founded in 1915, supplied gambling, prostitution, and opium to residents of Sacramento. Today, locations in black inner-city neighborhoods play the same role for whites from sundown suburbs seeking illegal drugs.
108
106
As early as the 1970s, the Chevy Chase Heights Community Center hosted monthly gay dances. In the 1960s, the Elks Club and Sadler’s Bar in Chevy Chase Heights were perhaps the only places in Indiana County where whites and blacks might socialize and even dance together. Indeed,
within
black towns and townships, race relations were often good. “In Chevy Chase a man is treated as a man regardless of color,” said Fred Johnson, black Elks Club member in 1960. “In Indiana a white man is treated as a man, but a colored man is treated as an animal.” Residents of sundown towns usually put down whites who socialized or lived in nearby “black” townships as “white trash.” At the same time, whites in sundown towns often drove to nearby black townships to buy alcohol during Prohibition.
107
For decades Locke, a Chinese township in California founded in 1915, supplied gambling, prostitution, and opium to residents of Sacramento. Today, locations in black inner-city neighborhoods play the same role for whites from sundown suburbs seeking illegal drugs.
108
Unincorporated townships such as Stump Town and Chevy Chase Heights—and black ghettoes, for that matter—have no police forces of their own. White sheriffs and police chiefs often wink at deviant or illegal behavior in black townships, as it fulfills three functions at once in the white community. It relieves the demand for the deviance, which usually involves victimless “crimes” like drinking, gambling, buying drugs, and buying sex. It avoids arousing the forces of priggery because the behavior does not take place in neighborhoods they care about, hence is not salient. And it further stigmatizes both the black township and African Americans in general.
Alternatives to the Great RetreatThe Great Retreat to the larger cities of the North and West and to black towns and townships was not African Americans’ only response to the wave of increasing white hostility they met during the Nadir—but there was no good answer. Following Booker T. Washington’s advice to “cast down your buckets where you are” and seek only economic advancement, forgoing political and social rights, didn’t work; white southerners sometimes lynched successful black businessmen and farmers simply because they were successful. Following the counsel of W. E. B. DuBois and pursuing voting rights and full citizenship led to such fiascoes as the Ocoee, Florida, riot, described in Chapter 7, in which whites drove out the entire black population and converted Ocoee to a sundown town.
We have seen that moving to small towns in the North became difficult as more and more of them went sundown. Emigrating to Indian Territory, which at first promised a more tolerant multiracial milieu, led to the overt racism of Oklahoma after 1907, including sundown towns such as Okemah and Henryetta. Going farther west didn’t work either; an African American in Denver lamented in 1910 that what he called “the onslaught” against the race had reached Colorado, even though “the Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, and all other races are given a chance.” Giving up hope for America, the author wrote, “We are leaving in great numbers to the far northwest, taking up claims in Canada.” But Canada offered no real refuge; Portfolio 17 shows that it considered closing its doors to blacks entirely. African Americans in Boley and in many interracial towns joined the back-to-Africa movements organized by Chief Sam and Marcus Garvey. The popularity of these movements did not derive from any developments in Africa but was another aspect of the Great Retreat, prompted by the white racism exemplified in the sundown town crusade. The movements organized by both Sam and Garvey ended in disarray, partly because they expressed pride and despair more than actual intentions to emigrate.
109
The Great Retreat Was No Solution109
We have seen that forming black towns and townships offered only partial relief. So did moving to large cities, which increasingly segregated their African American residents into constricted ghettos and marginal occupations. Despair seemed to be the only answer to the hatred of the Nadir. Still relevant were the old slave spirituals such as “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.”
Certainly the Great Retreat did not improve race relations. Regardless of how sundown towns were created, the whites within them only became more racist. They almost had to, to rationalize having forced or kept nonwhites out. Writing about Omaha, Howard Chudacoff points out another reason: because African Americans increasingly lived in separate neighborhoods, whites no longer had the benefit of knowing them individually, so they fell back on thinking stereotypically about them as a group. “The lack of familiarity bred suspicion and resentment which burst during the riot of 1919.”
110
110
Chudacoff concludes, “Clearly, the experience of Negroes resembled those of no other ethnic group.” Every white ethnic group experienced and even chose residential concentration during their initial immigration to the United States. Thereafter, as the years passed and they became more Americanized, their residential concentration decreased—precisely when it was rising for African Americans. As the years passed, African Americans found themselves more and more isolated—increasingly barred from towns, suburbs, and neighborhoods.
111
111
How did this happen? How were sundown towns (and counties and neighborhoods) created? What were the mechanisms by which so many towns became all-white or, in the case of suburbs, created themselves that way? The next chapter tries to answer these questions.
4
How Sundown Towns Were Created
Negro Driven AwayThe Last One Leaves Decatur, Ind., Owing to Threats MadeThe last Negro has left Decatur, Ind. His departure was caused by the anti-Negro feeling. About a month ago a mob of 50 men drove out all the Negroes who were then making that city their home. Since that time the feeling against the Negro race has been intense, so much so that an Anti-Negro Society was organized.The colored man who has just left came about three weeks ago, and since that time received many threatening letters. When he appeared on the streets he was insulted and jeered at. An attack was threatened....The anti-negroites declare that as Decatur is now cleared of Negroes they will keep it so, and the importation of any more will undoubtedly result in serious trouble.—
New York Times,
July 14, 1902
1
A
FINE HISTORY by Jean Swaim of Cedar County, Missouri, provides a detailed example of the process that took place in many of the counties summarized in
Table 1
of the previous chapter. Cedar County is located between Kansas City and Springfield, Missouri. African Americans had lived in the county since before the Civil War, originally as slaves. In the 1870s, a black community grew up within Stockton, the county seat, including a school, candy store, and “a park with a popular croquet court, where white Stockton men often spent their Sunday afternoons competing in tournaments.” Some African Americans worked as domestic help, others at a local brickyard. By 1875, whites and blacks had organized the Stockton Colored School, which eventually had as many as 43 students. A newspaper account from August 1899 shows interracial cooperation: “About 1,500 attended colored people’s picnic here. Order was good except for a few drunken whites. Stockton won the ball game from Greenfield, 20–1. Greenfield’s colored band was a big attraction.” African Americans also lived elsewhere in the county, including “Little Africa” near Humansville in the northeastern corner. Forty families lived there, with a church, school, and store. They held an annual picnic on the Fourth of July to which whites were invited and had a baseball team with a white coach.
2
FINE HISTORY by Jean Swaim of Cedar County, Missouri, provides a detailed example of the process that took place in many of the counties summarized in
Table 1
of the previous chapter. Cedar County is located between Kansas City and Springfield, Missouri. African Americans had lived in the county since before the Civil War, originally as slaves. In the 1870s, a black community grew up within Stockton, the county seat, including a school, candy store, and “a park with a popular croquet court, where white Stockton men often spent their Sunday afternoons competing in tournaments.” Some African Americans worked as domestic help, others at a local brickyard. By 1875, whites and blacks had organized the Stockton Colored School, which eventually had as many as 43 students. A newspaper account from August 1899 shows interracial cooperation: “About 1,500 attended colored people’s picnic here. Order was good except for a few drunken whites. Stockton won the ball game from Greenfield, 20–1. Greenfield’s colored band was a big attraction.” African Americans also lived elsewhere in the county, including “Little Africa” near Humansville in the northeastern corner. Forty families lived there, with a church, school, and store. They held an annual picnic on the Fourth of July to which whites were invited and had a baseball team with a white coach.
2
Then something bad happened, something that the local histories don’t identify and that has been lost even to oral history. As another local historian, born in the county in the 1920s, put it, “It’s just a dark history that nobody talks about,” speaking of the event or chain of events that ended Cedar County’s racial harmony.
3
Around 1900, the county’s black population declined precipitously, from 127 (in 1890) to 45. Whatever prompted the initial decline, we do know why it continued: Cedar County was becoming a sundown county. By 1910, only thirteen African Americans lived in the county, and by 1930, just one. Swaim refers to “many shameful incidents” in which “visiting ball teams, travelers, and even laborers were . . . told to be out of town by night. Blacks could find haven in Greenfield,” the seat of the next county to the south. She tells of a black bricklayer whose work attracted admiring crowds: “Not only was he paving El Dorado Springs’s Main Street in perfect herringbone pattern as fast as an assistant could toss him bricks, but he sang as he worked and moved in rhythm to his song.” Nevertheless, he “had to find a place out of town at night.” “In Stockton, prejudice was still rampant in the late 1960s,” Swaim continues, “as black workmen constructing the Stockton Dam were provided segregated and inferior housing west of town. Their visiting wives cooked for them.” Is Cedar County still sundown today? Swaim writes, “In the 1990s few blacks are seen in Cedar County.” But the 2000 census counted 44 African Americans. One black couple lives in El Dorado Springs and seems to get along all right. Nevertheless, Cedar County in 2005 has yet to reach the level of black population and interracial cooperation that it showed in the 1890s.
4
3
Around 1900, the county’s black population declined precipitously, from 127 (in 1890) to 45. Whatever prompted the initial decline, we do know why it continued: Cedar County was becoming a sundown county. By 1910, only thirteen African Americans lived in the county, and by 1930, just one. Swaim refers to “many shameful incidents” in which “visiting ball teams, travelers, and even laborers were . . . told to be out of town by night. Blacks could find haven in Greenfield,” the seat of the next county to the south. She tells of a black bricklayer whose work attracted admiring crowds: “Not only was he paving El Dorado Springs’s Main Street in perfect herringbone pattern as fast as an assistant could toss him bricks, but he sang as he worked and moved in rhythm to his song.” Nevertheless, he “had to find a place out of town at night.” “In Stockton, prejudice was still rampant in the late 1960s,” Swaim continues, “as black workmen constructing the Stockton Dam were provided segregated and inferior housing west of town. Their visiting wives cooked for them.” Is Cedar County still sundown today? Swaim writes, “In the 1990s few blacks are seen in Cedar County.” But the 2000 census counted 44 African Americans. One black couple lives in El Dorado Springs and seems to get along all right. Nevertheless, Cedar County in 2005 has yet to reach the level of black population and interracial cooperation that it showed in the 1890s.
4
Swaim’s fine account, summarized above, provides the texture of the Great Retreat from one Missouri county, but neither Swaim nor the other historian quite say how it all began. The initial “how” in Cedar County may be lost to history by this point. But in many other places, we do know how counties and towns went sundown, or how they were created that way in the first place. This chapter examines the variety of methods by which town after town across America excluded African Americans, mostly after 1890. We begin with violence because it was the most important. Moreover, threat of violent force underlies many of the “softer” methods: ordinance, informal actions by police and public officials, freezing out blacks from social interaction and from institutions such as schools and churches, buying them out, and other forms of bad behavior by white residents of the town. By dint of these methods, independent sundown towns were created, mostly between 1890 and 1930. Sundown suburbs were created a little later, mostly between 1900 and 1968, by a panoply of methods, among which violence and intimidation were also prominent.
Creating Sundown Towns by ViolenceOften white residents achieved their goal abruptly, even in the middle of the night.
In town after town in the United States, especially between 1890 and the 1930s, whites forced out their African American neighbors violently, as they had the Chinese in the West.
Decatur, in northeastern Indiana, went sundown in 1902, as told in the excerpt above from the
New York Times.
Adams County, of which Decatur is the county seat, wound up without a single black household; a century later, it still had only five. Decatur exemplifies a widespread phenomenon: little riots, most of which have never been written about, even by local historians. These are cases of what Donald Horowitz calls “the deadly ethnic riot.” He cites examples from India, Kyrgyztan, Malaysia, Nigeria, and other countries, and defines the form as:
In town after town in the United States, especially between 1890 and the 1930s, whites forced out their African American neighbors violently, as they had the Chinese in the West.
Decatur, in northeastern Indiana, went sundown in 1902, as told in the excerpt above from the
New York Times.
Adams County, of which Decatur is the county seat, wound up without a single black household; a century later, it still had only five. Decatur exemplifies a widespread phenomenon: little riots, most of which have never been written about, even by local historians. These are cases of what Donald Horowitz calls “the deadly ethnic riot.” He cites examples from India, Kyrgyztan, Malaysia, Nigeria, and other countries, and defines the form as:
an intense, sudden, though not necessarily wholly unplanned, lethal attack by civilian members of one ethnic group on civilian members of another ethnic group, the victims chosen because of their group membership.... Members of one ethnic group search out members of another. The search is conducted with considerable care, for this is violence directed against an identifiable target group.
5
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