Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism (77 page)

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Authors: James W. Loewen

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Six Arkansas counties still teetered on the verge of being all-white, with only one or two black households in 2000. All lay in the Ozarks: Searcy and Stone, of course, and Fulton, Izard, Marion, and Newton.
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Otherwise, counties in the rest of Arkansas—although not every town—seem willing to tolerate African American residents. The public schools of Sheridan, Arkansas, for example, desegregated around 1992, when students from two small nearby interracial communities were included in the new consolidated high school. In about 1995, the first black family moved back into Sheridan, and in the late 1990s they were joined by three more families—slow progress, but progress nevertheless. A few Appalachian counties in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky may still keep out African Americans—including Erwin, as we have seen—but some of these places also cracked in the 1990s.
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The West
 
Most sundown towns and suburbs in the Far West cracked before 2000. These communities did not have residents who experienced and lost the battle for formal school segregation, but they shared with southern suburbs continued growth in the period 1970–2000. In addition, the West became increasingly multiracial, with continuing immigration of Hispanics and Asians. The West boasted most of the towns noted in earlier chapters as closed to Mexicans and Mexican Americans, Asians and Asian Americans, and Native Americans. But by 1970, most of these communities were open to nonblack minorities. Then they opened to African Americans as well.
The West’s new multiethnic suburbs are very different from its old sundown suburbs. Journalist William Booth summed up research by Hans Johnson and others at the Public Policy Institute of California:
The fastest-growing suburbs, with lots of new, relatively affordable tract housing—the kind of places whites used to fly to—became some of the most ethnically and racially diverse neighborhoods in the state during the 1990s. Ozzie and Harriet now live beside Soon Yoo and Mercedes Guerrero.
 
Asian and Latin Americans have been much less likely than European Americans to bar African Americans from their neighborhoods.
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With upward mobility, however, the anti-racist idealism of these groups may decrease over time, like that of white ethnic groups. Research by Camille Zubrinsky Charles suggests this is happening. She found that when asked to draw their “ideal multi-ethnic neighborhood,” Latinos, especially those from Central America, and Asian Americans were
more
likely than whites to draw them containing
no
African Americans.
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Nevertheless, William Clark found much less segregation against African Americans in southern California in 2002, especially against rich African Americans:
The change in the status of blacks is particularly striking. As late as 1970, rich and poor blacks were equally likely to be segregated from white households,but today in Southern California, high-income black households live in highly integrated neighborhoods. Families with incomes less than $10,000 had an Index of Dissimilarity close to 90—highly segregated
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—while D for those with earnings above $60,000 = 40, reasonably integrated.
 
Some rich suburbs were still overwhelmingly white. Elite Indian Wells had only five black households. But most suburbs of San Francisco and Los Angeles had at least 150 African Americans and may be moving toward “postra-cial” identities. Statewide, using the term
segregated
for census tracts that are > 80% monoracial, only 25% of California neighborhoods were segregated in 2000, down from 43% in 1990.
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Most independent sundown towns in the West are also giving up their policy of racial exclusion. A swath of towns in southwestern Oregon were sundown towns, according to oral history and other sources, including Eugene, Umpqua, Grants Pass, Klamath Falls, Medford, and others. In 2000, Grants Pass had 76 African Americans, Klamath Falls, 96, and Medford, 313, leaving their restrictive pasts behind. Eugene had 1,729, and most were not students at the University of Oregon. Another sundown town, Tillamook, on the coast due west of Portland, had just 7 blacks among its 4,352 residents and no households, so we cannot be sure it has given in.
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But most towns in the Far West have. Kennewick, Washington, which had a sundown sign in the 1940s, had 579 African Americans in 2000. Oregon City, where the KKK drove out the only black citizen in 1923, had no African Americans at all as late as 1980; ten years later it boasted eight families. Taft, California, which like Kennewick formerly had a sundown sign, showed five black households in the 2000 census, at least a beginning.
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The Midwest
 
News from the Midwest is not so encouraging. I estimate that about half of Illinois’s sundown towns have changed. To calculate this estimate, I examined 2000 census data for the 167 Illinois communities that I had confirmed as sundown towns as of mid-2004.
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Of these, 59, or almost 40%, were no longer “all white.” To that total, I added a few towns that had no black households as of 2000 but have opened up since then, such as Steeleville, based on the information that at least two African American families recently moved in without opposition.
I tried to be positive, so I included Vandalia, for example, the state capital for a time in the nineteenth century. In 1960, it had 5,537 residents, of whom not one was African American. In 1962, when Joseph Lyford wrote
The Talk in Vandalia,
the town was openly sundown. He quotes one minister saying ruefully,
We call our town the land of Lincoln, but the hotels won’t rent a room to a Negro, and no Negro can buy property or rent a home in Vandalia. There is an old saying that people in Vandalia are glad to help a Negro as long as he keeps on going right out of town.
 
Vandalia was still sundown as of the late 1990s. A college professor who grew up there wrote:
Sometime in the mid-90s, a black couple moved to Vandalia. . . . The neighbors of this black couple at first were outraged. I heard the couple referred to as “those people,” as in “What are those people doing in our town?” As the neighbors got to know the couple, though, they learned they were really nice people, and then everyone quieted down. After a year or so, the couple moved away. I’m not sure why, but I heard that the wife never felt comfortable in Vandalia. I certainly can’t blame her.
 
By 2000 Vandalia’s numbers had swelled to 6,975, including 1,047 African Americans. Had Vandalia had a change of heart or policy? Not exactly; the 2000 census counted inmates at the nearby Vandalia Correctional Center as part of the population of the city. But also around 1995, ironically, the Ku Klux Klan brought about some improvement. My source continues:
Vandalia was the site of a big KKK rally also sometime in the mid-90s. . . . The rally did have a positive effect on the town in a way, as several churches and groups banded together to hold candlelight vigils to protest the KKK. Many people in Vandalia came forward arguing that racism is not acceptable. Things have gotten better in Vandalia since then. We now have a handful of black families who seem to live and work in the town with no trouble. I don’t hear as many racist comments.
 
Despite Vandalia’s amelioration, however, the professor wanted to remain anonymous, and the 2000 census showed only five African Americans in just two households, not counting its huge prison population. Thus Vandalia may still be a sundown town, but I think it has given up that distinction, since the professor indicated “a handful” of families moved in since 2000.
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As elsewhere, suburbs showed the most improvement. A disproportionate share of the 59 Illinois towns that opened by 2000 were suburbs. Granite City, a suburb of St. Louis, is an example. According to a man who grew up in Granite City and whose father lived there from 1919 to 1997:
Blacks who worked in Granite City (mainly in the steel mills) had to walk directly to the streetcar line to catch the first streetcar out of the city. There was one exception: a janitor who worked for Ratz Drug Store on 19th and State Street. He was known as “Peg” because of his peg leg and was allowed to sleep in the basement of the building.
 
Around 1980 Granite City relented; by 1990 69 African Americans lived among its 32,862 residents, and the 2000 census showed 622. An administrator at Manchester College in Indiana said in 1997 that students from Granite City “are very racist” and have to be worked with closely if they become dormitory counselors. Maybe ten years from now, that will no longer be necessary, for in 2002 as I drove around the town, I saw interracial groups of children walking home from school and using the library together.
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Other Illinois towns, from Anna through Zeigler alphabetically, do not allow as much optimism. Of course, still other Illinois towns may now welcome African Americans, but none has recently knocked at their gates. So I would estimate that more than 40%—and probably at least half—of Illinois’s former sundown towns no longer keep out African Americans. If at least 50% of Illinois’s sundown communities had abandoned their sundown policies, then across the Midwest, my impression is that at least two-thirds have caved in, because some other states seem more progressive than Illinois. In Wisconsin, for example, a higher proportion of sundown towns seem to have lowered their barriers during the 1980s and especially the ’90s. Some places even welcomed them. Fond du Lac, which had had 178 African Americans in the nineteenth century before the Great Retreat, had just 12 in 1970, but 112 in 1990 and 767 by 2000. West Bend had only 31 in 1990, but that included a deputy sheriff, showing considerable acceptance. To be sure, not every Wisconsin sundown town now accepts African Americans. In 1990, eleven Milwaukee suburbs were “violating agreements that they take steps to promote fair housing,” according to the Milwaukee County public works director. Milwaukee’s suburbs averaged just 2% black in 2000, while Milwaukee was 37% black. The Milwaukee metropolitan area remains the second most segregated in the United States, after Detroit, owing mostly to suburban exclusion.
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Many Indiana communities dropped their sundown policies in the 1990s. Portfolio 25 shows the 1970 census for 34 Indiana towns of 1,000 to 2,500 population. Of the eight communities I confirmed as sundown towns in 1970, only one has broken for sure, Zionsville, with 29 African Americans among its now 8,775 residents. Nevertheless, where there had been 26 communities with no African Americans at all, by 2000 there were just 3. There had been no towns with more than one black household, so all 34 might have had sundown policies, with one household or individual—like Granite City’s “Peg”—allowed as an exception.
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Now ten had two or more households.
Among larger towns, Chesterton, in northern Indiana, had only 9 African Americans out of 9,124 people in 1990 and a long history of keeping blacks out. But by 2000, it had thirteen black households, including that of its postmaster, who retired and continues to live there. Clearly Chesterton stopped excluding African Americans around 1990. Valparaiso, a few miles south, admitted them earlier. Merrillville, a suburb of Gary, is now 23% African American. The Northwest Indiana Quality of Life Council recently gave the region a poor rating for its race relations, but at least Chesterton, Valparaiso, and Merrillville have moved beyond exclusion.
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Many towns elsewhere in the Midwest have also begun to let in African American residents. Is Warren, Michigan, just north of Detroit, open? As early as 1990, it appeared to have cracked, having 1,047 African Americans among 144,864 total population. That was the year that John and Cynthia Newell and their young son moved to Warren. Because they were African American, they had a rough time. Skinheads burned a cross on the lawn of their rented home. According to “The Cost of Segregation,” a 2002
Detroit News
story:
In the two years the Newells lived on Campbell near Nine Mile, they were accosted by teen-agers who told them to “go back to Africa” and stuffed their mailbox with “White Power” stickers. “I had a white friend that I lost my friendship with because they kept calling her ‘nigger lover’ whenever we walked to the store,” Cynthia Newell said. “They threw eggs at her when she was with me. All of the neighbors weren’t racist. Some of them wanted to socialize. But they couldn’t because they were afraid for their safety.”
 
Warren was touch-and-go for a while, but by 2000, Warren had 3,697 African Americans, less than 3% but clearly a black presence.
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Whether Owosso, Michigan, is still a sundown town is less clear. In 2000, Owosso had 27 black residents, but that included “kids from Africa in the Bible College,” in the words of local historian Helen Harrelson. In 1942 Owosso had allowed African Americans traveling by bus to be in the bus station but no farther. In 2002, when a member of the Owosso High School class of’42 asked a hotel clerk at his sixtieth reunion, “Are Negroes allowed to leave the bus station?” she considered the question absurd. However, the same year, asked if Owosso was still a sundown town, Harrelson replied, “It hasn’t really changed yet. Sure, they let in one or two, if they behave themselves. I doubt if there are any black kids in the [public] schools.” The 2000 census did show children of school age, among eight households with black householders; I think Harrelson was overly pessimistic.
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