Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism (72 page)

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Authors: James W. Loewen

BOOK: Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism
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Corbin, a sundown town in the Kentucky Cumberlands, had not relented as of 1990. In his 1991 movie on the community,
Trouble Behind,
Robby Heason asked a young white man if it would be a good thing for blacks to move into Corbin. “Black people should not live here,” he replied. “They never have, and they shouldn’t.” He did not know that African Americans
had
lived in Corbin until whites drove them out at gunpoint in 1919, and his attitude surely boded ill should a black family try to move in. As of 2000, almost none had; Corbin’s 7,742 people included just 6 African Americans; adjacent North Corbin had just 1 African American among 1,662 inhabitants. Around 1990, McDonald’s brought in an African American to manage a new restaurant, but he and his family left before it even opened, reportedly after a cross was burned in his yard.
7
Although the public accommodations section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act did not get enforced in most sundown towns for at least ten years after its passage, since the 1980s, most restaurants and hotels in sundown towns have complied with the law and do now provide food and lodging to transients. Now African Americans can eat in restaurants and sleep in motels in otherwise all-white towns. Buying or renting residential property in neighborhoods is quite another matter.
Even public accommodations can still be a problem in out-of-the-way sundown towns. Speaking of the western half of the Bootheel, in rural southeastern Missouri, Frank Nickell, director of the Center for Regional History, wrote in 2002, “Many restaurants, motels, cemeteries, etc., remain off-limits to African-Americans.” In some sundown towns, African Americans may get served successfully but must endure glares from white customers while they eat. Whites in Erwin, Tennessee, drove African Americans from Unicoi County in 1918. Rebecca Tolley-Stokes, archivist at East Tennessee State University, wrote about a recent incident involving Erwin:
Several years ago I was friends with a woman who worked at a convenience store just off the interstate [in Johnston City, twelve miles north of Erwin]. I was visiting with her one evening when a black couple stopped there for gas and to inquire about a hotel room for the night in the next town, Erwin. Jennifer told them that they would have trouble getting a room if they just showed up. Additionally, she told them that she would call and make the reservation for them because if the owner spoke to someone who she/he thought was black, the owner would tell the caller that their rooms were all booked up.
 
In Erwin, motel operators apparently still wanted to discriminate, but not enough to cause an altercation. Erwin still had no black households as of 2000, and according to Tolley-Stokes, “all the blacks in the area have been warned within their own communities to steer clear of Erwin.” In a few other towns, an altercation seems likely if an African American tries to stay after dark. In 1995, Christy Thompson of Cedar Key, Florida, said about African American tourists, “I saw a couple of ’em not long ago, a black man and woman riding bicycles down by the pier, but I guarantee they didn’t spend the night. They’ve
all
been told there’s only one way in and one way out and you better be out before dark.” That was 1995. What about 2004? Cedar Key had no black households in the 2000 census.
8
Even after the turn of the millennium, there were also still towns that African Americans believed were not safe simply to pass through. “Never walk in Greenwood [Arkansas] or you will die,” an African American college student said, dead seriously, to a group of other students and me at the University of the Ozarks in 2002. The 2000 census listed 17 African Americans in Greenwood, however, including two households, so perhaps his information was out of date. A black undergraduate at the University of Illinois–Chicago told in September 2001 of Beecher, a white suburb of Chicago, “Blacks need to have enough gas to get through.” Certainly they would not want to have to purchase fuel from the Beecher gas station called Knute’s Kountry Korner, whose three
K’
s are no accident, according to the student. Beecher’s reputation in the black community may be warranted; in the 2000 census, the town had 1,993 people, including not one African American.
9
Oral history in and around New Palestine, Indiana, suggests that African Americans do well to be wary of it. If they can help it, African Americans “don’t drive through New Palestine,” according to a former New Palestine resident, who has friends in the community. A black woman moved to New Palestine “somewhere between 1992 and 1995 and lasted two days.” A former teacher tells that there is oral history still current in the school system that the KKK donated land for the New Palestine High School, “with the stipulation the mascot was to be a dragon.” A professor at DePauw University confirmed that New Palestine’s athletic teams had been the Redbirds; “in the 1920s, when the KKK craze hit, they became the Dragons.” School officials contest this and claim “Dragons” is a coincidence. Still, the 2000 census lists New Palestine with no African Americans at all, and to be the first African American family to move into New Palestine would require courage. And what do we make of the comment that the manager of a gas station in Mt. Sterling, Ohio, made in 1991 to an African American woman, then 30 years old, when she stopped for directions: “Girl, you don’t know what danger you’re in”? Was he being helpful? Trying to steer her away from trouble? Or himself trying to intimidate her? Or just being “funny”? Prudently, she did not do the research required to find out, but Mt. Sterling had no black family in it at the time.
10
The Present Moment
 
I cannot know if every town I describe as sundown in the past is still sundown as of 2005. Indeed, I do not think that every town I describe as sundown even in the recent past is still sundown today. The foregoing anecdotes don’t prove that African Americans
cannot
live in Zeigler, Erwin, Cedar Key, Beecher, New Palestine, Mt. Sterling, and other such places, even though the 2000 census does not show a single black family in any of those towns. Proving continuing exclusion to the present moment is difficult,
11
and by its nature the proof must be anecdotal.
We shall consider several examples, beginning with Anna, Illinois. The 2000 census listed 89 blacks among Anna’s 5,136 total population. Anna also had 14 Asians, 49 Mexican Americans, 24 other Latinos, 13 American Indians, and a few persons listing more than one race. At first glance, Anna seems no longer to be a sundown town. But Anna’s 89 African Americans may all reside at the state mental hospital. The 2000 census lists just one family with a black householder in Anna, with just two people, and we cannot be sure they are both black.
12
In 2002, neither the Anna newspaper editor nor the reference librarian could think of a single black family in Anna or in adjacent Jonesboro. “Oh no, there are no black people in Anna today,” a farmer near Anna said in 2004. Is Anna still sundown? A prudent answer would be yes, at least until there is evidence to the contrary, given that the phrase “Ain’t No Niggers Allowed” is still current in and around the town. But I do not know for sure.
13
Has Villa Grove changed—the town in central Illinois that sounded a siren at 6 PM every evening to tell African Americans to be gone? In about 1999, Villa Grove stopped sounding its siren. I had hoped it stopped the practice because residents became ashamed of why it was first put in place, no longer cared to explain its origin to their children or guests, and had reconsidered their sundown policy. No, I learned, it stopped owing to complaints about the noise from residents living near the water tower, on which the siren was located (see Portfolio 9). On the other hand, in 2000 Villa Grove had 8 African Americans among its 2,553 residents, in two households. Perhaps Villa Grove now accepts black families, perhaps not. Certainly many African Americans in nearby Champaign-Urbana still avoid driving through or stopping in the town.
It isn’t always clear, even to a town’s own residents, whether African Americans can live there in peace. A state trooper told of his hometown, Chandler, Indiana, near Evansville. It had been a sundown town complete with sign. Around 1971, a black family moved in, to be greeted by a burning cross in their front yard; “they were run off.” Two years later, a second family tried, and they were not molested; years later their children graduated successfully from the high school. So Chandler seemed to have opened up. But Ronald Willis, who pastored the Methodist Church in Chandler from 2001 to 2004, painted a gloomier portrait. In the fall of 2001, a black family moved into a house across the street from the church, and Willis heard “words of hatred, violence, and intolerance” from members of his own congregation as they dropped off their children for preschool. “Within a few days the family moved.” Willis went on to tell of inhumane acts that he witnessed as late as 2003. The 2000 census credited Chandler with three black households, but their situation seems precarious.
14
What about Martinsville, Illinois, a sundown town near Terre Haute, Indiana? In 2002, I asked an attorney who grew up in Martinsville, “What would happen if a black family moved into Martinsville today?” “I really don’t know,” he replied. “It’s hard to imagine that there’d be a violent reaction, and yet, it wouldn’t surprise me.” As of 2002, none had tried, although two black men had worked for Marathon Oil Company in Martinsville around 1990 and had not been run out.
15
Consider this claim about Fouke, in southwest Arkansas, made by “goneaviking” at the discussion site alt.flame.niggers: “As of 2 PM May 23 2001, it is still nigger free, no niggers bus in, and urine head would piss in his pants if he stopped in that town.” I don’t think “goneaviking” lives in Fouke, but some citizens of Fouke may share this attitude toward African Americans. Smokey Crabtree, who does live in Fouke, confirmed in 2001, “As of this date there are no colored people living within miles of Fouke, so the attention getter, the means to shake the little town up isn’t ‘the Russians are coming,’ it’s ‘someone is importing colored people into town.’ ” The census found two elderly African Americans among Fouke’s 814 residents in 2000, but no household, and I believe “goneaviking” and Crabtree. At the least, they show that considerable animus exists in and about Fouke toward the idea of black residents.
16
It’s pretty clear that North Judson, in northern Indiana, has not given in. A history teacher from that area said in 2001 that a black family moved there in the late 1990s but left within a week, owing to harassment. The 2000 census showed just 1 African American—a child—in the town of 1,675 people. And Elwood, in central Indiana, definitely has not. “Elwood is by reputation still off-limits,” a black former police officer in nearby Marion reported in 2002, and the 2000 census confirmed his judgment, finding no African Americans in Elwood’s 9,455 population. There is no way such a large town could show such a complete absence without continuing enforcement. According to a teacher in a nearby town, in recent years Elwood has hosted
17
a Ku Klux Klan headquarters and an annual KKK parade.
18
The 2000 census
 
In the 2000 census, Scott County, west of Springfield, Illinois, had not one black household. Stark County, northwest of Peoria, had just one. Mason County, between Peoria and Springfield, where oral history says the sheriff used to tell black newcomers to move on, had not a single black family. It is unlikely that entire counties, located near sizable interracial cities, could show such a dearth of African Americans without continuing enforcement. On the other hand, sometimes the census can falsely indicate that a town or county is still sundown, if African Americans have moved in since it was taken. Steeleville, Illinois, 60 miles southeast of St. Louis, had 2,077 people in 2000, with no African Americans. But according to a librarian at the Steeleville Library, since 2001 “about a dozen Mexicans and three or four colored” moved to Steeleville to work at a new plant. So Steeleville may no longer be a sundown town.
19
When the census shows an influx of African Americans, it can also be inaccurate to conclude that a former sundown town now admits blacks. As we saw in earlier chapters, the 2000 census includes African Americans in institutions, live-in servants, and plain errors, and is already five years out of date. For Pinckneyville, Illinois, near Steeleville, the 2000 census shows 1,331 blacks among 5,464 residents, but that includes the inmates, mostly African American, of a large state prison. The census lists five households with a black householder, but two longtime residents I talked with agreed that only one African American couple lived in the town. That couple had lived in town for some 25 years and raised children there. One of my conversation partners asked the other his view of them. “They’re harmless,” he replied. After he left, she said that his comment shocked her. “You see what an insult that is? Would you like that to be said about you? This man is intelligent, he’s very well-spoken, he sat behind me at a funeral and so I know he has a beautiful singing voice. ‘Harmless!’ ” She was disappointed in her friend. I pointed out that his comment was typical sundown town rhetoric—if whites judge a given African American harmless, then she or he can stay—and she agreed. Such a judgment exempts
that
family, while implying that whites still reserve the right to bar blacks who have
not
proven themselves “harmless.” A black resident of nearby Du Quoin said that Pinckneyville’s one black couple was joined by another in 2000 (just in time for the census), but the landlord wouldn’t renew their lease, probably owing to pressure from his white neighbors, so the couple moved to Du Quoin. Thus we cannot simply list Pinckneyville as no longer sundown owing to the 2000 census. Research today is required. In August 2004, a woman who grew up in Pinckneyville wrote: “I was just home this past weekend for a funeral, and while the ‘official’ anti-black rules may no longer be in effect, the talk and the attitudes sure are.”
20

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