Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism (65 page)
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Authors: James W. Loewen
BOOK: Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism
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Over the years, many other white supremacist organizations and leaders have also sought the supportive environments of sundown towns. In Aurora, Missouri, in 1911, Wilbur Phelps founded
The Menace,
an anti-Catholic newspaper that had a circulation of 1,000,000 by 1914. Father Coughlin, the notorious radio anti-Semite of the 1930s and ’40s, broadcast from Royal Oak, a sundown suburb of Detroit. His followers smashed windows of Jewish shops in New York City in the early 1940s, emulating the Nazis’ notorious Kristallnacht. Gerald L. K. Smith, a right-wing extremist and radio evangelist in the 1930s and 1940s, devoted his magazine,
The Cross and the Flag,
to exposing the workings of an alleged “international Jewish conspiracy.” When he ran for president on the ticket of the Christian Nationalist Party in 1948, his platform included deporting African Americans from the country. After meeting opposition when trying to locate in the Los Angeles area, Smith moved his headquarters to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, partly because it was all-white.
99
Smith died in 1976, but a passion play and the statue “Christ of the Ozarks,” both sparked by Smith, live on in Eureka Springs. Robert Welch, founder of the far-right John Birch Society, charged that an international Communist conspiracy was behind the 1954 Supreme Court decision that called for schools to be desegregated. The Birch Society has had headquarters in Belmont, Massachusetts; San Marino, California; and Appleton, Wisconsin. All were sundown towns, I believe,
100
and San Marino also kept out Jews.
101
The Menace,
an anti-Catholic newspaper that had a circulation of 1,000,000 by 1914. Father Coughlin, the notorious radio anti-Semite of the 1930s and ’40s, broadcast from Royal Oak, a sundown suburb of Detroit. His followers smashed windows of Jewish shops in New York City in the early 1940s, emulating the Nazis’ notorious Kristallnacht. Gerald L. K. Smith, a right-wing extremist and radio evangelist in the 1930s and 1940s, devoted his magazine,
The Cross and the Flag,
to exposing the workings of an alleged “international Jewish conspiracy.” When he ran for president on the ticket of the Christian Nationalist Party in 1948, his platform included deporting African Americans from the country. After meeting opposition when trying to locate in the Los Angeles area, Smith moved his headquarters to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, partly because it was all-white.
99
Smith died in 1976, but a passion play and the statue “Christ of the Ozarks,” both sparked by Smith, live on in Eureka Springs. Robert Welch, founder of the far-right John Birch Society, charged that an international Communist conspiracy was behind the 1954 Supreme Court decision that called for schools to be desegregated. The Birch Society has had headquarters in Belmont, Massachusetts; San Marino, California; and Appleton, Wisconsin. All were sundown towns, I believe,
100
and San Marino also kept out Jews.
101
Today many right-wing racist groups still find havens in sundown towns and counties. The “Intelligence Report” put out by the Southern Poverty Law Center is the most complete national list of extreme right-wing and racist organizations. Groups on that list are disproportionately headquartered in sundown towns or frequently recruit in them.
102
The Southern Illinois Patriot’s League, for example, is in Benton, Illinois. East Peoria is home to Matt Hale, inventor of the World Church of the Creator, a white supremacist religion that inspired a follower to go on a 1999 shooting rampage in Illinois and Indiana against people of color that ended with three dead and several others wounded. Even when headquartered in larger interracial cities, such organizations repeatedly meet, march, and recruit in overwhelmingly white towns such as Parma, Ohio; Elwood, Indiana; and Simi Valley, California. Richard Barrett runs his Nationalist Movement from his home in Jackson, Mississippi, but held rallies in Forsyth County, Georgia, on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in 1987 and again in 1997. He noted gleefully, “The Census lists zero point zero zero percent of the population of the all-American county as African,” and called it “Fortress Forsyth.”
103
102
The Southern Illinois Patriot’s League, for example, is in Benton, Illinois. East Peoria is home to Matt Hale, inventor of the World Church of the Creator, a white supremacist religion that inspired a follower to go on a 1999 shooting rampage in Illinois and Indiana against people of color that ended with three dead and several others wounded. Even when headquartered in larger interracial cities, such organizations repeatedly meet, march, and recruit in overwhelmingly white towns such as Parma, Ohio; Elwood, Indiana; and Simi Valley, California. Richard Barrett runs his Nationalist Movement from his home in Jackson, Mississippi, but held rallies in Forsyth County, Georgia, on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in 1987 and again in 1997. He noted gleefully, “The Census lists zero point zero zero percent of the population of the all-American county as African,” and called it “Fortress Forsyth.”
103
Many residents in all-white or nearly all-white counties and towns disapprove of white supremacist groups. Nevertheless, the style of rhetoric that we have seen is customary in communities with a sundown legacy confers upon these groups a form of legitimacy. As David Zimmermann said, discussing the KKK chapter in Harrison, Arkansas, “Maybe the Klan is here because it’s comfortable here.” Thom Robb directs the national Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, pastors a Baptist church, and publishes
The Crusader,
a Klan magazine, in Zinc, a tiny suburb of Harrison. He agreed in 2003: “I moved to Boone County in 1972 from Tucson, Arizona, to raise my child in an area that reflects traditional American cultural values.” In 2002, a leader of Aryan Nations announced that his organization was moving to Potter County, in north-central Pennsylvania, precisely because it is so white. Even when located in isolated small towns, these hate groups often have considerable influence through music, literature, and word of mouth with white young people, especially prisoners, throughout the United States. Thus not only do sundown towns and suburbs affect how their own residents think and behave, they also affect the larger society.
104
The Crusader,
a Klan magazine, in Zinc, a tiny suburb of Harrison. He agreed in 2003: “I moved to Boone County in 1972 from Tucson, Arizona, to raise my child in an area that reflects traditional American cultural values.” In 2002, a leader of Aryan Nations announced that his organization was moving to Potter County, in north-central Pennsylvania, precisely because it is so white. Even when located in isolated small towns, these hate groups often have considerable influence through music, literature, and word of mouth with white young people, especially prisoners, throughout the United States. Thus not only do sundown towns and suburbs affect how their own residents think and behave, they also affect the larger society.
104
The impact of sundown towns and suburbs is not limited to whites. The next chapter asks the opposite question: what is their impact on African Americans who
don’t
live in them? Sundown towns and suburbs are based on the premise that African Americans must be kept out because they are likely to be problems. When that ideology reaches African Americans—as it inevitably does—the result is not happy.
don’t
live in them? Sundown towns and suburbs are based on the premise that African Americans must be kept out because they are likely to be problems. When that ideology reaches African Americans—as it inevitably does—the result is not happy.
12
The Effect of Sundown Towns on Blacks
We had realized years ago, to our sorrow, that the housing market, above all else, stands as a symbol of racial inequality.—Daisy Myers, pioneering black resident of Levittown, Pennsylvania, writing in 1960
1
I
N CONVERSATION WITH EACH OTHER, many African Americans believe that when racial privilege is at stake, Caucasians (the term often used) are to be feared. “Whites will stop at nothing,” a sociologist friend said to me. I thought he was overstating his case, but the actions whites have taken to maintain sundown towns and suburbs support his position.
N CONVERSATION WITH EACH OTHER, many African Americans believe that when racial privilege is at stake, Caucasians (the term often used) are to be feared. “Whites will stop at nothing,” a sociologist friend said to me. I thought he was overstating his case, but the actions whites have taken to maintain sundown towns and suburbs support his position.
We have seen that the deepening racism of the Nadir—exemplified by its progeny, sundown towns and suburbs—not only affected where African Americans might live but also how, by sapping their morale. Through the years, sundown towns and suburbs have influenced the thinking, modified the travel behavior, and limited the opportunities of African Americans who never even set foot in them. The ordinances, restrictive covenants, acts of private violence, police harassment, white flight, NIMBY zoning, and other mechanisms used to maintain sundown towns have also contributed, we will see, to a certain wariness in African American culture, leading to a persistence of caution that in turn helps maintain sundown towns today.
In metropolitan areas, sundown suburbs in turn gave rise to overwhelmingly black inner-city neighborhoods and a handful of majority-black suburbs. This residential segregation continues to take a toll on many African Americans in the present, making it harder for them to achieve the cultural capital and make the social connections that lead to upward mobility. The ideology that drives sundown towns and suburbs—that blacks are problems to be avoided—also hurts African Americans psychologically, especially when they internalize the low expectations that result from it.
Feeling Ill at EaseEspecially during the Nadir, travel was difficult and often unsafe for African Americans, and not just in the South. Older African Americans can still recall how trips had to be meticulously planned to reach places with restrooms or overnight accommodations in a timely manner. A resident of Rochester, Indiana, recalled that a black chauffeur died in his car in about 1940 because he was not allowed to stay in a local hotel. He had rented a room for the little white boy he was chauffeuring but was not allowed in himself, and he either froze or was asphyxiated by exhaust fumes. Much more common was “mere” humiliation. Until well after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed segregation in public accommodations such as restaurants and motels, African Americans coped by compiling guidebooks of places that would not harm or embarrass them (Portfolio 26). Families also assembled their own lists and shared them with friends.
2
2
Or they stayed home. Speaking of her childhood in the 1950s, an African American woman said, “We didn’t
go
on trips. My father absolutely refused to take a vacation. Part of that was because he worried about being terrorized on the road.” “Terrorized” is an appropriate word choice, because segregation and especially sundown towns rest ultimately on the threat of terror. Her family lived in Mattoon in central Illinois, surrounded by sundown towns. Not only do these communities tell African Americans that many white people consider them so despicable that they must be barred en masse, they also serve as a reminder that we do not really live under the rule of law where black people are concerned.
3
go
on trips. My father absolutely refused to take a vacation. Part of that was because he worried about being terrorized on the road.” “Terrorized” is an appropriate word choice, because segregation and especially sundown towns rest ultimately on the threat of terror. Her family lived in Mattoon in central Illinois, surrounded by sundown towns. Not only do these communities tell African Americans that many white people consider them so despicable that they must be barred en masse, they also serve as a reminder that we do not really live under the rule of law where black people are concerned.
3
Although any stop for gas, food, or lodging might prove humiliating to the black traveler, sundown towns posed the worst hazards. In other towns, even if hotels and restaurants refused to serve African Americans, they could secure shelter within the black community. Sundown towns had no black community, of course. Worse still, black travelers were acutely aware that they stuck out in these all-white towns, not only as unusual but also as illegitimate and unwanted. Allison Blakely, professor of African American studies at Boston University, recalls that in the mid-1960s, “blacks were afraid to drive through Grants Pass or Medford” in southwestern Oregon. “A black friend of mine put a loaded pistol on the front seat of his car when he drove through those towns.” To this day, some African Americans are very aware of sundown towns and their reputations, even in distant states.
4
4
Even benign experiences in sundown towns made impacts that lasted for decades. Joycelyn Landrum-Brown, a psychologist at the University of Illi-nois–Urbana, grew up in Indianapolis. She wrote about a trip she made with her parents to Greenwood, ten miles south of Indianapolis, in about 1960:
If you will recall, my parents had gone to Greenwood to pick up a puppy from one of my mother’s co-workers who lived there. I overheard the grownups talking about how we had to get out of town because black people were not allowed in town after dark. I remember being terrified sitting in the back seat of our car holding my new puppy as we drove from Greenwood to Indianapolis. I believe this memory is behind my fear of driving rural highways and traveling through small rural towns (particularly in Indiana).
Olen Cole interviewed an elderly African American who as a young worker in the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s rode through Taft, California. “As we entered the city a sign read, ‘Read nigger and run; if you can’t read—run anyway. Nigger don’t let the sun go down on you in Taft,’ ” he told Cole in about 1995. “The importance of this experience is that it remained vivid in [his] memory,” Cole notes. “Many years later he is still able to remember the entire wording on the sign.”
5
5
Sundown town reputations remain vivid and current in African American culture. A 70-year-old black professional woman in an interracial town in central Illinois put it this way in 2002: “You did not stop
anywhere.
There was a lot of fear. There still is. I had to go down to Effingham [a notorious nearby sundown town] recently to observe . . . and I was not happy about it.” Many older African Americans are still reluctant even to enter sundown towns. The former CCC worker went on to tell Olen Cole, “Even today when I visit Fresno, I make it a point to bypass Taft.” An African American professor at Southern Arkansas University related that as of 2001, “blacks don’t stop when they pass through Sheridan,” the town 30 miles south of Little Rock that got rid of its African American population in 1954. A resident of Paxton, a sundown town north of Champaign, Illinois, said in 2000, “I invited a black man who wouldn’t drive into Paxton for Sunday dinner. He’d come [only] if I drove him.” An elderly African American woman living in central Missouri avoids the entire southwestern corner of that state. She is very aware that after whites in Springfield, the prime city of the Ozark Mountains, lynched three African Americans on Easter Sunday, 1906, “all the blacks left out of that area,” as she put it. Neosho, Stockton, Warsaw, Bolivar, and other Ozark towns are almost devoid of African Americans, who fled the entire region, she said; even today, those are “not places where
I
would feel comfortable going.”
6
anywhere.
There was a lot of fear. There still is. I had to go down to Effingham [a notorious nearby sundown town] recently to observe . . . and I was not happy about it.” Many older African Americans are still reluctant even to enter sundown towns. The former CCC worker went on to tell Olen Cole, “Even today when I visit Fresno, I make it a point to bypass Taft.” An African American professor at Southern Arkansas University related that as of 2001, “blacks don’t stop when they pass through Sheridan,” the town 30 miles south of Little Rock that got rid of its African American population in 1954. A resident of Paxton, a sundown town north of Champaign, Illinois, said in 2000, “I invited a black man who wouldn’t drive into Paxton for Sunday dinner. He’d come [only] if I drove him.” An elderly African American woman living in central Missouri avoids the entire southwestern corner of that state. She is very aware that after whites in Springfield, the prime city of the Ozark Mountains, lynched three African Americans on Easter Sunday, 1906, “all the blacks left out of that area,” as she put it. Neosho, Stockton, Warsaw, Bolivar, and other Ozark towns are almost devoid of African Americans, who fled the entire region, she said; even today, those are “not places where
I
would feel comfortable going.”
6
Particularly within their own metropolitan area, African Americans know well which suburbs do not welcome them. Only 9% of African Americans in the Detroit area in the late 1990s said they thought Dearborn, the sundown suburb just west of Detroit, would welcome a black family moving in, while 86% said the family would not be welcome. In a 2002 article in the
Detroit News
titled “Invisible Boundaries Created Dividing Line Between Black, White Suburbs,” David Riddle, a Wayne State University history professor, explained that the violent anti-black events of the 1970s in the sundown suburb of Warren still affected that city’s image three decades later: “When a municipality acquires a reputation like that, I think it’s self-sustaining.” A professor of African American studies at Bradley University in Peoria told why he would not consider moving to nearby Morton: “Clearly what I’ve read about the area influences me. Based on what you know, you don’t feel comfortable raising your family there, and exposing your children to those influences.”
7
Detroit News
titled “Invisible Boundaries Created Dividing Line Between Black, White Suburbs,” David Riddle, a Wayne State University history professor, explained that the violent anti-black events of the 1970s in the sundown suburb of Warren still affected that city’s image three decades later: “When a municipality acquires a reputation like that, I think it’s self-sustaining.” A professor of African American studies at Bradley University in Peoria told why he would not consider moving to nearby Morton: “Clearly what I’ve read about the area influences me. Based on what you know, you don’t feel comfortable raising your family there, and exposing your children to those influences.”
7
Writing about “mere” segregation on the fiftieth anniversary of
Brown v. Board of Education,
Colbert King, who is African American, agreed with the decision’s language:
Brown v. Board of Education,
Colbert King, who is African American, agreed with the decision’s language:
To separate [children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.
“It does affect you, as a child, and later as a grown man,” King wrote, “in ways ‘unlikely ever to be undone.’ There is a wariness you can’t shake.” Historically, the still more hurtful existence of sundown towns and suburbs made many African Americans justifiably fearful, less apt to explore new experiences and locales. Even today, many African Americans do
not
feel that the world is their oyster, ready to be explored and enjoyed. And why should they? It would give anyone pause to realize that merely being in a town after dark can be a life-threatening offense. This worry about acceptance, this feeling ill at ease, is the opposite of “white privilege”—that sense of security felt by upper- and middle-class whites that they will
never
be challenged as out of place.
8
not
feel that the world is their oyster, ready to be explored and enjoyed. And why should they? It would give anyone pause to realize that merely being in a town after dark can be a life-threatening offense. This worry about acceptance, this feeling ill at ease, is the opposite of “white privilege”—that sense of security felt by upper- and middle-class whites that they will
never
be challenged as out of place.
8
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