Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism (99 page)

BOOK: Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism
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102
Many organizations on the list, like most other organizations, are headquartered in cities that are too large to be uniracial. A disproportionate share are headquartered in the South, which still has many racists but few sundown towns.
103
Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report,
splcenter.org/intelligenceproject/ip-index.html
, 5/2003; re Simi Valley, see the John Birch Society web site,
jbs.org
, 4/2003; Nationalist web site,
nationalist.org/ATW/1997/feb.html
, 10/1998.
104
Zimmermann quoted in Laurinda Joenks, “Roughness of Citizens Blamed on Lean Times,”
The Morning News,
5/7/2000; Robb quoted in Jacqueline Froelich, “A City Confronts Its Ghosts,”
Arkansas Democrat- Gazette,
4/27/2003; Potter County discussed on
All Things Considered,
National Public Radio, 2/15/2002.
CHAPTER 12: THE EFFECT OF SUNDOWN TOWNS ON BLACKS
 
1
Daisy Myers, “Breaking Down Barriers,”
Pennsylvania Heritage
28, 3 (2002): 12.
2
Shirley Willard, “Black History in Fulton County Since 1920s,” Fulton County Historical Society, Rochester, n.d., unpaginated.
3
Middle-aged Mattoon woman, 2/2004.
4
Allison Blakely, e-mail, 9/2002.
5
Joycelyn Landrum-Brown, e-mail, 8/2002; Olen Cole Jr.,
The African-American Experience in the Civilian Conservation Corps
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999), 25.
6
Mattoon woman, 10/2002; Cole,
The African-American Experience;
Paxton resident, 10/2000; Southern Arkansas University professor, 10/2001; Missouri resident, 7/2002.
7
Reynolds Farley, Sheldon Danziger, and Harry Holzer,
Detroit Divided
(New York: Russell Sage, 2000), 154–55; Gordon Trowbridge and Oralandar Brand-Williams, “Invisible Boundaries Created Dividing Line Between Black, White Suburbs,”
Detroit News,
1/14/2002,
detnews.com/2002/homepage/0201/14/index.htm
, 1/2002; Bradley professor, 2/2001.
8
Colbert King, “The Kings of Foggy Bottom,”
Washington Post Magazine,
2/1/2004, 20.
9
Elderly Arab resident, 6/2002; Orlando Patterson,
The Ordeal of Integration
(Washington, DC: Civitas/Counterpoint, 1997), 46; Susan Welch et al.,
Race and Place
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001 ), 38.
10
David Mendell, “Midwest Housing Divide Is Still Race,”
Chicago Tribune,
6/21/2001,
mumford1.dyndns.org/cen2000/newspdf/chicagotribune0621.html
, 7/2003.
11
Sheryll Cashin,
The Failures of Integration
(New York: Public Affairs, 2004), 9; Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee quoted in Andrew Wiese,
Places of Their Own
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 154, 157.
12
Cashin,
The Failures of Integration,
137–60, 171–75.
13
Gary Orfield, talk at OPEN meeting, Philadelphia, 12/2000; Farley, Danziger, and Holzer,
Detroit Divided,
204; John R. Logan, review of same in
Contemporary Sociology
31, 5 (2002), 519; Light, 6/2002.
14
Cole,
The African-American Experience in the Civilian Conservation Corps,
25; Ronald McGriff, e-mail, 6/2002; Benjamin Johnson, post 8/6/2001,
umb.edu/forum/1/AMST203/member/Forums/s-484415211-.html#47101
6211, 12/18/2002.
15
David Grann, “Firestarters,”
New Republic,
7/20/1998, 17; Richard Stewart, “Desegregation at Public Housing Ripped by Audit,”
Houston Chronicle,
East Texas Bureau, 7/11/1997; Mimi Swartz, “Vidor in Black and White,”
Texas Monthly,
12/1991, 161; Du Quoin resident, 9/2002.
16
Patterson,
Ordeal of Integration,
65.
17
Myers, “Breaking Down Barriers,” 12.
18
Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy,
Anyplace but Here
(New York: Hill & Wang, 1966), 9, quoted in Quintard Taylor,
In Search of the Racial Frontier
(New York: Norton, 1998), 301; Vivian S. Toy, “Stuck in Last Place,”
New York Times,
5/4/2003.
19
Ellis Cose,
The Rage of a Privileged Class
(New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 1.
20
Ibid., 39; Langston Hughes, “Restrictive Covenants,” in Arnold Rampersad, ed.,
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
(New York: Vintage, 1994), 361.
21
Martin Luther King Jr., remarks at Palmer House, Chicago, summer 1965, quoted in
How Long? Not Long
(Chicago: Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, 1986).
22
Student of Joseph Braun’s at Illinois State University, 9/1999, e-mailed by Braun, 11/2001.
23
Dale Harvey and Gerald Slatin, “The Relationship Between Child’s SES and Teacher Expectations,”
Social Forces
54, 1 (1975): 141. James Loewen, “The Difference Race Makes,” in Howard Ball et al., eds.,
Multicultural Education
(Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1998), 53–55, summarizes some of the expectation literature about race.
24
Poussaint quoted in Gordon Trowbridge and Oralandar Brand-Williams, “The Past: A policy of exclusion,”
Detroit News,
1/14/2002, at
mumford1.dyndns.org/cen2000/othersay/detroitnews/Stories/Blacks
. . . , 7/2003.
25
See Claude Steele, in Steele, Teresa Perry, and Asa Hilliard III,
Young, Gifted, and Black
(Boston: Beacon, 2004); Steele and Joshua Aronson, “Stereotype Threat and the Intellectual Test Performance of African Americans,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
69 (1995): 797–811; and J. Aronson et al., “When White Men Can’t Do Math,”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
35 (1999): 29–46.
26
Malcolm X,
Malcolm X Speaks,
quoted in Joseph R. Conlin,
Morrow Book of Quotations in American History
(New York: Morrow, 1984), 327.
27
Kati Haycock, “Passing Grades,”
Trust,
summer 2000, 13.
28
Only affirmative action allows an appreciable number of African Americans into America’s elite colleges, where this capital is most readily acquired. One reason why affirmative action is necessary leads right back to sundown suburbs: African Americans average much lower than European Americans on standardized tests. The reasons are several, but excluding African Americans residentially is one factor, coupled with test bias on the SAT (and ACT). See James Loewen, “Presentation,” “Discussion,” and “A Sociological View of Aptitude Tests,” in Eileen Rudert, ed.,
The Validity of Testing in Education and Employment
(Washington, DC: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1993), 41–45, 58–62, 73–91, and James Loewen, Phyllis Rosser, and John Katzman, “Gender Bias on SAT Items,” American Educational Research Association, 4/1988, ERIC ED294915.
29
Patterson,
The Ordeal of Integration,
9, 20; Barbara J. Fields, “Of Rogues and Geldings,”
American Historical Review,
108 #5 (12/2002), 1401.
30
See Loewen, “Presentation,” “Discussion,” and “A Sociological View of Aptitude Tests,” 41–45, 58–62, 73–91; Loewen, Rosser, and Katzman, “Gender Bias on SAT Items.”
31
This relief, placing Section 8 families in white suburbs, resulted from a related lawsuit against HUD.
32
I relied on several articles by Rosenbaum, but the most accessible compilation of these results is in Leonard S. Rubinowitz and James E. Rosenbaum,
Crossing the Class and Color Lines: From Public Housing to White Suburbia
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
33
Galster summarized in Trowbridge and Brand-Williams, “The Past: A Policy of Exclusion.”
34
Mark Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,”
American Journal of Sociology
78 (1973): 1360–80; Deirdre A. Royster,
Race and the Invisible Hand: How White Networks Exclude Black Men from Blue-Collar Jobs
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 182.
35
Stephanie Simon, “Segregation Still Strong in North,”
Los Angeles Times,
1/19/2003, reprinted in
Holland
(MI)
Sentinel,
3/30/2003,
hollandsentinel.com
, 4/2003; Carolyn Adams et al.,
Philadelphia: Neighborhoods, Division, and Conflict
(Temple University Press, 1991), 53.
36
Former Darien resident, 8/1999.
37
Charles Christian, “Emerging Patterns of Industrial Activity Within Large Metropolitan Areas,” in Gary Gappert and Harold M. Rose, eds.,
The Social Economy of Cities
(Beverly Hills: Sage, 1975), 241.
38
Anne B. Shlay, review of Alice O’Connor, Chris Tilly, and Lawrence Bobo, eds.,
Urban Inequality,
in
Contemporary Sociology
31, 5 (2002): 511.
39
William J. Wilson,
When Work Disappears
(New York: Vintage, 1996).
CHAPTER 13: THE EFFECT OF SUNDOWN TOWNS ON THE SOCIAL SYSTEM
 
1
Thorstein Veblen,
The Theory of the Leisure Class
(New York: NAL/Mentor, 1953 [1899]), 81.
2
This statement is based on its Index of Dissimilarity, D = 85, meaning that 85% of its African Americans would have to move to nonblack areas to achieve a completely neutral distribution of both races.
3
More recent figures, which may not reflect identical methodology, show some narrowing of this gap. According to the
American Housing Survey, 1999,
median owner-occupied housing units in 1999 were valued at $63,400 in the city of Detroit, $168,200 in Boston, and $215,600 in Los Angeles (Census web site,
census.gov/prod/2001pubs
, 5/2004).
4
John Logan et al., “Ethnic Diversity Grows, Neighborhood Integration Lags Behind,” Mumford Center, 12/18/2001, 7,
mumford1.dyndns.org/cen2000/WholePop/WPreport/page1.html
, 1/2003; Reynolds Farley, Sheldon Danziger, and Harry Holzer,
Detroit Divided
(New York: Russell Sage, 2000), 1–2;
American Housing Survey, 1999,
at U.S. Census,
census.gov/prod/2001pubs
, 5/2004; Carolyn Crowley, “Urban Explorers, Crawling and Climbing into the Past,”
Washington Post,
12/30/2001.
5
Farley, Danziger, and Holzer,
Detroit Divided;
Francis X. Donnelly, “Region Pays Price for Reputation,”
Detroit News,
1/21/2002, detroitnews/2002/homepage/0201/21/index.htm, 2/2002.
6
Leah Samuel, “Organ Transplant,”
Detroit Metro Times,
9/10/2003.
7
Jane Jacobs,
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
(New York: Vintage, 1961), Chapter 11, and
Cities and the Wealth of Nations
(New York: Vintage, 1985); William Whyte,
City
(New York: Doubleday, 1988), 288; cf. discussion in Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck,
Suburban Nation
(New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000), 9.
8
Charles Mudede, “How Tacoma Fought Seattle for the Future and Lost,”
The Stranger
9,47 (2000),
thestranger.com/2000-08-10/feature-2.html
, 6/2003.
9
Nick Khan, 9/2002; Red Bud native, 2/2004.
10
Herman Lantz and J. S. McCrary,
People of Coal Town
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971 [1958]), 42; West Frankfort genealogist reported to me, 9/2002.
11
Lesbians more often locate in suburbs, although they do seem to prefer multiracial suburbs, according to Gates. I do not know of research on the relationship of lesbians to creativity and economic development.
12
Gary Gates, “The Demographics of Diversity,” Urban Institute, 6/3/2003, also summarizing Richard Florida’s findings; Tatsha Robertson, “Finding Hope in Gay Enclaves,”
Boston Globe,
1/15/2003.
13
Pew Center for Civic Journalism,
Straight Talk From Americans—2000,
pewcenter.org/doingcj/research/r_ST2000nat1.html#nation
, 6/2003; Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg, “What You Don’t Know About Sprawl,”
USA Today,
2/22/2001.
14
Actually, as of 2000 Oak Park was still just 22% black.
15
Carole Goodwin,
The Oak Park Strategy
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 108–9.
16
Quoted in Thomas Sugrue,
Origins of the Urban Crisis
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 196.
17
Michael Ebner,
Creating Chicago’s North Shore
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 230, 314.

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