Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism (58 page)
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Authors: James W. Loewen
BOOK: Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism
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Racist Symbols and Mascots
This book is a history of exclusion, yet the excluded are ever-present. They persist in the form of stereotypes and constructions in the minds of those who keep them out. From the Nadir until very recently, sundown town residents have been even more likely than other whites to impersonate African Americans in theatrical productions and revues. After whites in Corbin, Kentucky, drove out all African Americans on Halloween in 1919, May Minstrel Festival with “black-faced comedians” became perhaps its most popular annual event during the 1920s. In Royal Oak, a sundown suburb of Detroit, the Lions Club put on minstrel shows from 1948 to 1968. White residents in blackface performed minstrel shows in all-white towns in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Vermont into the 1970s. Even today, residents of sundown towns are much more likely than in interracial towns to display such atavisms as black “coach boys” or Confederate flags in front of their houses.
10
Students in all-white towns in several states have caused disruptions by wearing Confederate flags, T-shirts, and jackets to school. Such incidents also take place in interracial schools, of course, but much less often, because there they will not go unopposed by other students. Perhaps more worrisome, in some all-white towns, such as Deer Park in eastern Washington, students cause
no
disruption by wearing or displaying Confederate flags, according to recent Deer Park graduates. “You cannot wear all one color—so as to be Goths, etc. But you
can
have Confederate flags on your locker!”
11
10
Students in all-white towns in several states have caused disruptions by wearing Confederate flags, T-shirts, and jackets to school. Such incidents also take place in interracial schools, of course, but much less often, because there they will not go unopposed by other students. Perhaps more worrisome, in some all-white towns, such as Deer Park in eastern Washington, students cause
no
disruption by wearing or displaying Confederate flags, according to recent Deer Park graduates. “You cannot wear all one color—so as to be Goths, etc. But you
can
have Confederate flags on your locker!”
11
An in-your-face example of white privilege is the use of racial slurs to name athletic teams, a common practice in sundown towns. For several decades Pekin High School in central Illinois called its athletic teams “Chinks” (“Chinklets” for the girls). It was supposed to be funny, referring to the town, named for Peking (Beijing), China; the teams’ previous nickname had been “Celestials.” When Pekin won the state basketball tournament in 1964 and 1967, the resulting publicity prompted an outcry from outraged Chinese Americans. In 1974, Kung Lee Wang, president of the Organization of Chinese Americans, twice flew to Pekin from his Maryland home. He denounced the name as “a racist slur,” met with the mayor, school superintendent, and principals, and addressed the student council. The students then voted 85% to 15% to stick with “Chinks,” and the board of education echoed that decision the following spring. Pekin retained “Chinks” until 1980, when a new school superintendent demanded a change, apparently as a condition of his employment. The change then provoked a student walkout that lasted several days. Unfortunately, the school changed its nickname to “Dragons,” which also conjures not only China but also leaders of the Ku Klux Klan.
12
That connotation was not lost in Pekin, which was notorious as a statewide Klan headquarters in the 1920s. Indeed, the Klan owned the
Pekin Times
for a while and ran sections of official Klan philosophy as editorials; today a Klan leader still lives and recruits in Pekin.
13
12
That connotation was not lost in Pekin, which was notorious as a statewide Klan headquarters in the 1920s. Indeed, the Klan owned the
Pekin Times
for a while and ran sections of official Klan philosophy as editorials; today a Klan leader still lives and recruits in Pekin.
13
“Redskins” is a more common slur used as nickname, chosen by at least three all-white high schools in Illinois and several others in other states. To be sure, naming teams with racial slurs is hardly limited to sundown towns, as the Washington Redskins prove. Nevertheless, without attempting the exhausting task of analyzing the mascots of all U.S. high schools against the racial composition of their student bodies, my impression is that all-white high schools are more likely to adopt racially derogatory nicknames and mascots and less likely to change them when challenged. Many people of color and their allies hate this practice and have protested it, not only to the owners of the Washington NFL team but also in small towns such as Sullivan, Illinois. The typical response from sundown towns—and from supporters of the Washington team—is to deny that they mean anything racist by the nicknames and to say that if people choose to interpret them differently, that’s their problem. As Pekin graduate Dianna Adams wrote about the Chinks, “I always thought that it was a compliment to those who chose to take it otherwise.”
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Names such as “Chinks” and “Redskins” imply that whites are dominant and can use racial slurs anytime they want. Too few Chinese Americans lived in Pekin—and their position was too tenuous—to protest. Similarly, American Indians are less than 1% of the population, and the protesters who appear at every home Redskins football game in D.C. are even fewer, so “we” can do whatever we want.
15
The same sense of privilege holds for displaying a Confederate flag or black coach boy. In interracial towns, whether from fear that such a symbol (or the house behind it) might get vandalized or from a sincere desire not to offend people of color, whites are less likely to flaunt such items.
Athletic Contests in Sundown Towns15
The same sense of privilege holds for displaying a Confederate flag or black coach boy. In interracial towns, whether from fear that such a symbol (or the house behind it) might get vandalized or from a sincere desire not to offend people of color, whites are less likely to flaunt such items.
In many small towns, high school athletic contests are portentous. Usually a basketball or football game draws more people than any other event of the week; often the game then becomes the main topic of conversation during the next week. The contests are important symbolically as well. Unfortunately, racist mascots are only part of the problem of white misbehavior when players and fans from interracial schools visit sundown towns. Such visits take place under a double cloud of “otherness.”
A town already forms an in-group vis-à-vis the next town. In high school athletic contests, this antagonism usually has a lighthearted cast. Cheers like “Smash the Tigers!” aren’t meant literally, of course. But when a town is all-white on purpose, the sense of being the racial in-group as well lends a special edge to the contest. A black graduate of Manual, Peoria’s most interracial high school, said that when her alma mater plays Pekin, downstate Illinois’s largest sundown town, “something racial is definitely going on.” A 2001 white graduate of Manual agreed: “There is a special atmosphere when Manual plays Pekin. Lots is at stake. Whole buses of students go, to protect the team.” On occasion the team has needed protection; in 1975, for example, according to Randy Whitman, a Manual student at the time, as the team was leaving Pekin “bottles, bricks, and all other kind of debris start pelting the bus.” Fans of interracial high school teams near other sundown towns say the same thing: they take a busload of people “to protect their team” in what they surmise is likely to be a hostile environment. Administrators and coaches from interracial schools caution their fans and team members to stay in groups and exhibit extreme decorum when they play schools in sundown towns.
16
16
Supporting the cheerleaders become an issue too, especially if they “cheer black.” Blacks and whites tend to engage in two quite different styles of cheerleading, each of which can appear laughable to the other. In overwhelmingly white environments, black cheerleaders can face ridicule, even without the racist catcalls that sometimes emanate from fans in a sundown town. When Meadowbrook High School, a majority-white but integrated school southwest of Richmond, Virginia, played Colonial Heights, known informally as “Colonial Whites,” the Meadowbrook cheerleading coach recruited extra chaperones to accompany them to help students deal with the racism they routinely experienced there.
17
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Interracial towns and teams need not include a high proportion of African Americans to draw the ire of fans and players in sundown towns. Cleveland, Oklahoma, has a big football rivalry with Hominy, the next town north. According to a 1985 graduate of Hominy High School, that “game was always well attended, even when both teams stank. The story I heard was that the racial difference between Cleveland and Hominy was so great that Cleveland used to call their rivals the ‘Hominy Coons.’ ” In 1990, Hominy had 76 African Americans among 2,342 residents, just 3%, but that looked very black from the vantage point of Cleveland, which had just 8 African Americans—and no black households—among its 3,156 residents, or 0.2%. In a sundown town, emphasizing even the few blacks among an opponent’s student body or team can provide a unifying rhetoric for the in-group.
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Fans in sundown towns commonly use racial slurs. Across America, coaches and principals from interracial high schools caution their players and fans not to react. They know that racial slurs have often led to more serious altercations. In the 1960s, all-white Cedar Cliff High School in Lemoyne, Pennsylvania, across the river from Harrisburg, played football against Harrisburg’s majority-black John Harris High School. According to a high school teacher in the area, “riots occurred every time the game was on the ‘White Shore.’ ” Clearly, more than good-natured rivalries are involved. Fans in some sundown towns seem affronted that African Americans dare to play in their town. Kaye Collins attended Rabun Gap Nacoochee High School, in the northeast corner of Georgia, in 1972–73. “We had a black basketball player on our team, and threats were made against him when we played in Towns County. That was the first time I heard that black people shouldn’t be in Towns County after dark.” The death threats were made days before the game, but according to Collins, “nothing happened. Our team trounced them!” In the 1990s, whites burned crosses in Dale, Indiana, when a majority-black team from Evansville played there, a high school teacher from the area reported. An African American member of the Danville, Kentucky, football team remembered repeated outrageous fan behavior at Corbin, Kentucky, in the early 1970s. “They would cut the bus tires and the car tires, especially if we were winning.” Corbin is the scene of the only film ever made about a sundown town, Robby Heason’s documentary
Trouble Behind.
In it, an African American former football player in a nearby town says in 1990,
Trouble Behind.
In it, an African American former football player in a nearby town says in 1990,
We went in there to play; we were scared to death.... When we’d come out we’d get “rocked”—they’d throw rocks at your buses, they’d throw big cin-derblocks. We had a couple of times where they would throw through the complete windshield.... And we had to drive back one night, this is when I was a sophomore, and this is a basketball game, and they crashed the whole front window and we had to drive home without it.
Later in the documentary, Heason films the school superintendent in Corbin saying, “It’s a good place to rear our children.”
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It isn’t just fans who misbehave. Often players and even officials act up as well. Cairo, an interracial town at the southern tip of Illinois, played for the regional basketball championship in Anna in 1987. The Cairo Pilots, all black except their coach and one player, led by fifteen points at the half. Thereafter, “every call seemed to favor the hometown Wildcats of Anna-Jonesboro,” according to two
Washington Post
reporters at the game. Referees called 24 fouls on Cairo and just 8 on Anna-Jonesboro. Late in the game, a Cairo player struck back after being elbowed by an Anna guard, and a near-riot ensued. “We go through this all the time,” said Bill Chumbler, the Cairo coach. “There are no black referees down here, and we know that if it’s close near the end, they’re going to take it away from us.”
20
Washington Post
reporters at the game. Referees called 24 fouls on Cairo and just 8 on Anna-Jonesboro. Late in the game, a Cairo player struck back after being elbowed by an Anna guard, and a near-riot ensued. “We go through this all the time,” said Bill Chumbler, the Cairo coach. “There are no black referees down here, and we know that if it’s close near the end, they’re going to take it away from us.”
20
Interracial schools have to take measures to shield their black teammates and cheerleaders from harm in some sundown towns. Football and basketball teams in interracial high schools in Evansville—in southwestern Indiana—have a tradition of playing away-games at Jasper, Indiana, “earlier in the day than usual,” according to a man who practice-taught in Evansville in 2001. “The reason: it was still commonly understood that for the safety of the student athletes of color and their parents, the team needed to be out of Jasper before dark or as close to it as possible.” A 1995 graduate of interracial Carbondale High School in southern Illinois said their wrestling coach warned them to protect their African American players on and off the mat when competing at West Frankfort, a sundown town 20 miles northeast. Athletes in Sullivan, Missouri, were so racist that some coaches chose not to risk letting their African American players play, according to a nearby resident:
Some local context: It was only about 9 years ago that the sign outside of the town of Sullivan, Missouri, (a stronghold of the KKK in Missouri, and about 30 miles from where I live) was removed. It stated simply “Nigger, don’t let the sun set on you in Sullivan.” I have friends who live there who have told me of things that they have seen themselves there. My daughter married a man who was born and raised there and has told us that the town fathers, bank president, mayor, and other officials are all known to be members and leaders of the local [KKK] chapter. When my son was in high school and played football, the black kids were always benched when they played in Sullivan. It was not out of discrimination against them, but to protect them from injury. Over the years the coach had too many black players hurt there, and hurt in ways that couldn’t be proven were intentional, but appeared to be so. He felt he couldn’t risk it any more. The parents went along.
21
This tradition of racism at athletic contests also besets sundown suburbs, where it has sometimes drawn coverage from major city daily newspapers. The
New York Times
ran a story on Connecticut’s 1999 state championship football game between Darien, a sundown suburb, and Weaver High School in north Hartford, where the majority of students are black and Hispanic. “After Game, Aftertaste of Racial Slurs Lingers” was the headline. Weaver won, 69 to 26. “In the hearts of many Weaver players, however, the sweetness of victory mingled with the sting of racism,” according to the
Times.
“As the game wore on and the score became more lopsided, members of the Weaver team, all of whom are black or Hispanic, said they heard a number of crude racial epithets hurled at them by Darien’s all-white team.” Players from Darien, one of the richest suburbs of New York City, also hurled class insults after a Weaver touchdown: “It’s O.K. In five years, you’ll be working for me.” Some Darien players charged that Weaver players had also used racial slurs, and the teams did get together for a constructive session at Weaver later. If the Darien team had included black players, it is unlikely that its white players would have used
nigger,
and if Darien were integrated on social class lines, it would be equally unthinkable that some team members would taunt opposing players for being poor.
22
New York Times
ran a story on Connecticut’s 1999 state championship football game between Darien, a sundown suburb, and Weaver High School in north Hartford, where the majority of students are black and Hispanic. “After Game, Aftertaste of Racial Slurs Lingers” was the headline. Weaver won, 69 to 26. “In the hearts of many Weaver players, however, the sweetness of victory mingled with the sting of racism,” according to the
Times.
“As the game wore on and the score became more lopsided, members of the Weaver team, all of whom are black or Hispanic, said they heard a number of crude racial epithets hurled at them by Darien’s all-white team.” Players from Darien, one of the richest suburbs of New York City, also hurled class insults after a Weaver touchdown: “It’s O.K. In five years, you’ll be working for me.” Some Darien players charged that Weaver players had also used racial slurs, and the teams did get together for a constructive session at Weaver later. If the Darien team had included black players, it is unlikely that its white players would have used
nigger,
and if Darien were integrated on social class lines, it would be equally unthinkable that some team members would taunt opposing players for being poor.
22
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