Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism (73 page)

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Authors: James W. Loewen

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There is no substitute for firsthand research. Such information, up-to-date at least as of 2002, suggests that Windsor, a small town of 1,100 people in central Illinois, has not changed its anti-black policy. The 2000 census found no African Americans in Windsor, and a businessman who runs a bookstore in nearby Mattoon told a story that explains why:
Just this past summer [2002] a customer came in [from Windsor] and related to me that she was babysitting for a friend’s half-black grandchild. Within a few days of beginning to watch the child she was threatened, a cross was burnt in her yard, and her own children were threatened. She said she had filed a police report but didn’t know if that even made it to a public record. She didn’t seem to think that the officer taking the report cared. One of the gentlemen attending our church grew up in Windsor, and as we reminisced one evening he shared that blacks were definitely not welcome.
21
 
It seems reasonable to use the present tense as of this writing: African Americans
cannot
live in Windsor, as well as most of the other towns described above. But again, that was 2002. Before coming to a conclusion about a specific town as of
this
moment, do your own research.
Sundown Exurbs
 
Not only do many sundown towns remain all-white, but whites are still forming new ones and converting independent sundown towns to sundown suburbs by fleeing to them from newly desegregating inner suburbs. One way to find these new sundown places is by studying what the census calls CDPs—census designated places. These are unincorporated areas that nevertheless contain substantial residential populations, often more than 2,500. Many are new developments that have not yet incorporated and probably will do so by the next census. Many are distant suburbs—“exurbs”—that exemplify urban sprawl. Other CDPs have remained unincorporated for decades because residents are content to have counties supply their schooling, policing, and other services.
CDPs vary from census to census, so I mostly omitted them from my analysis, having my hands more than full with my already impossible effort to learn something about the past of every all-white incorporated town larger than 1,000. I couldn’t help notice, however, that CDPs seemed much more likely to be all-white in 1990 and 2000 than did incorporated places. This trend is discouraging, because it means we are growing new sundown exurbs just as many of our older sundown suburbs are finally giving up their restrictive policies.
Sundown exurbs often breathe new vitality into independent sundown towns that otherwise might become smaller and more obsolete. I anticipated finding such exurbs in metropolitan areas, and I was not disappointed. Independent sundown towns in northwestern Indiana, for example, are filling with whites fleeing sundown suburbs of Chicago as they become interracial. But I had not anticipated finding sundown exurbs around smaller cities with much smaller black populations. In central Illinois, whites depart Peoria for Morton and Metamora. They leave Springfield for Sherman and Ashland. Little sundown towns such as Farmer City, Mahomet, St. Joseph, and Villa Grove have become havens for whites who commute to work in Champaign-Urbana.
White flight from majority-black large cities such as Birmingham or Detroit to sundown suburbs is not news, but flight from smaller cities such as Champaign-Urbana is a new phenomenon, partly because such cities are not very black. Nevertheless, race is definitely a factor in many people’s decision to subject themselves to such commutes. A Champaign-Urbana resident emphasized, “People leave Champaign-Urbana and move out to Farmer City, St. Joe, and so forth,
to
live in an all-white town.” In 2000, Champaign was just 15.6% black and Urbana 14.3%, so five-sixths of their residents were nonblack. Surprised that whites would find living in such a majority uncomfortable, I asked,
“In order
to live in an all-white town?” “Yes,” she replied, and several residents of Mahomet and Monticello agreed. In 2000, Mahomet had 7 African Americans among 4,877 people (0.1%), Monticello 4 among 5,138 (0.1%), St. Joseph 3 among 2,912 (0.1%), and for the purists, Farmer City had 0 among 2,055.
22
Similarly, whites fleeing the African American population of Decatur (19.5%) move to places such as Maroa (0.2%), Niantic (0.0%), and Pana (0.1%), 30 miles south. Consider this conversation I had in 2001 with a spokeswoman for Pana:
[Why do you like Pana?]
Because it’s quiet. We don’t have any—[Breaks off]
We don’t have—[Breaks off]
Well, it’s quiet.
[You say the schools are good. Are they better than Decatur’s?]
Yes . . . We don’t have much of a racial mix here. So we don’t have some of the problems they have. Our kids feel real safe here. There’s no police in the schools. Well, there’s one, but he comes in and goes out. It’s just real quiet here.
 
Her satisfaction with Pana partly owes to its “racial mix”: 4 blacks among 4,514 people, including no black household and no children of school age. Even though Decatur is just one-fifth black, Pana residents are very aware and wary of its African American population. When Jesse Jackson came to Decatur in 1999 to garner publicity for several African Americans expelled from high school for fighting in the stands during a football game, residents of Pana expressed intense satisfaction about their isolation from that kind of fray. As one resident said, “If Jesse Jackson did stuff again in Decatur, you’d hear ‘nigger’ all over McDonald’s in Pana.”
23
The lengths some whites go to avoid African Americans is surprising. The seat of Forsyth County is 40 miles from Atlanta. In 2002, a newcomer relayed that when her family moved to the Atlanta area, “our realtor told us that if we did not like ‘blacks’ then Forsyth was the perfect place for us.” Despite the distance, Forsyth County evolved from independent sundown county to sundown suburb before finally desegregating in the late 1990s. Oak Grove, Missouri, has become a bedroom community for people working in Independence and even Kansas City who seek an all-white environment, even though it lies more than 40 miles east of Kansas City. Whites commute to Birmingham, Alabama, from all-white Cullman, 50 miles away. Whites leave Los Angeles for Bishop, California, 300 miles away, because Los Angeles is “too black,” although this is a relocation, not a commute. In their search for stable white neighborhoods, some white families have moved across the country, leaving the suburbs of large multiracial metropolitan areas for smaller and less multiracial areas.
24
Surely the white-flight prize goes to those who flee Joplin, Missouri. A librarian in the Joplin Public Library told of her neighbor who moved from Joplin to Webb City around 1985, because “his daughter was about to enter the seventh grade and he didn’t want her to go to school with blacks at that age.” The librarian stayed in touch during the relocation process and reported:
At one point [the mother] told me she had found the perfect house for their family, only it was on the wrong side of the street. The line between Joplin and Webb City was that street, and the house she liked was on the Joplin side, so she couldn’t consider it. Eventually they found a house in Webb City.
 
Webb City adjoins Joplin, as the story implies, but the move amazes because Joplin itself was just 2% black. Webb City, on the other hand, had just 1 African American among its 7,500 residents, and that person was not of school age.
25
White flight to sundown exurbs is a national problem. Forsyth County more than doubled in the 1990s, making it the second fastest-growing county in the country. While Forsyth is no longer flatly closed to African Americans, for every new black resident 100 new whites move in. Many of the other fast-growing counties share similar demographics, including Delaware County, 2.6% black, outside Columbus, Ohio; Pike County, Pennsylvania, 3.3% black, outside New York City; and Douglas County, 0.7% black, near Denver. The racial motivation behind this sprawl is clear, at least to Atlanta sociologist Robert Bullard: “That’s not where people of color are.”
26
Neighborhood Associations
 
In addition to sundown exurbs, another innovation threatens to maintain sundown suburbs, morphed into a new form: suburbs hypersegregated by social class. I first noticed this alarming development in 1999, driving past large subdivisions north of Dallas. On one side, for as far as I could see, were “Exclusive Homes from $279,000 to $299,000.” On the other, again stretching to the horizon, were “Exclusive Homes from $299,000 to $339,000,” or thereabouts. The authors of
Suburban Nation
decry this trend: “For the first time we are now experiencing ruthless segregation by minute gradations of income.” If a lot owner tries to build a $200,000 house in a $350,000 development, “the homeowners’ association will immediately sue.”
27
As they did with separation from African Americans, realtors and developers tout class-based segregation as prudent investment strategy. In a 2001 syndicated article, Ellen Martin advised home buyers not to ignore the “financial advantages” of “a prestigious address and a fancy ZIP code.” She quoted Leo Berard, “charter president” of the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents: “You’re almost always better off trading down on the amenities of a home if the payoff is getting into a classy neighborhood.” Then the home is more likely to appreciate in value.
28
Such thinking may be prudent for the individual investor, but the result on the societal level is a dramatic increase in the separation of the rich from the poor, and even from the only slightly less rich. In 1970, as this new economic segregation got under way based on these minute differences in house price, Kenneth Jackson noted that the median household income in cities was 80% of that in suburbs. Just thirteen years later, it had sunk to 72%. According to economist Richard Muth, writing around 1980, the median income in American cities rose at about 8% per mile as one moved away from the central business district. By ten miles away, income doubled. The United States already has more economic inequality than any other industrialized nation; now we are winding up with greater geographic separation between the classes.
Homeowners associations maintain the barriers once residents have moved in. The resulting isolation has unfortunate consequences for the rich, the poor, and the country, just as the previous chapters showed the unfortunate repercussions of sundown towns upon whites, blacks, and the social system. Children of the rich don’t learn working-class skills or develop respect for working-class people, because every nearby family inhabits the same occupational niche as their parents. Poor children, meanwhile, end up with little knowledge of the occupations of the affluent and how to enter them. Separating everyone by class also has negative effects for continuity, because over time families need different kinds of housing. They may begin with an apartment, relocate to a starter home, move up to a three-bedroom ranch, then require a larger house to accommodate the birth of twins or the decline of a parent. Reduced economic circumstances or an empty nest may dictate a smaller home, followed by a condominium when they become senior citizens. If each move requires relocation to another area because each neighborhood—or even the entire suburb—is limited to a given income level and house size, towns may find it difficult to maintain a sense of community.
29
Homeowners associations are multiplying nationwide. By 2000, 42,000,000 Americans lived in neighborhoods governed by these associations. Especially in the fast-growing suburbs of the South and West, almost all new homes now come with a homeowners association attached. Above all else, these associations aim to protect property values. One result is a plethora of rules.
30
Sometimes these rules are eerily reminiscent of an earlier time, such as the common requirement that “all pickup trucks must be out by sundown.” These days, neighborhood associations never mention race, but in earlier times they were quite frank about it. One of the first neighborhood associations, the University District Property Owners’ Association near Los Angeles, was established in 1922 as the Anti-African Housing Association.
31
Gated Communities
 
A related development is the gated community, all of whose units are usually priced within a narrow range. According to author Robert Kaplan, gated communities came to the United States from South America, particularly Brazil. In 1985, gated communities were rare, but by 1997, more than 3,000,000 American households lived behind walls. Mary Snyder, a city planning professor, estimates that eight out often new developments in the United States are gated. Gated communities are particularly prevalent on Long Island and in California. Entire towns have gone gated in Florida, Illinois, and California.
32
Gated communities epitomize defended neighborhoods, providing
no
amenities, not even streets, that are open to the public. Their walls and fences keep the public away from streets, sidewalks, playgrounds, parks, beaches, and even rivers and trails—resources that normally would be shared by all the citizens of a metropolitan area. The rationale for all this exclusion is allegedly relief from crime, and some communities do offer that. But often the security is largely illusory:
33
the gatehouses in many gated communities are never staffed.
34

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