Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism (88 page)

Read Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism Online

Authors: James W. Loewen

40
This correction is not normally computed, is unlikely to drop the lower limit as low as 90%, and is at least partly offset by the conservatively calculated standard error described in note 38.
41
Three previous authors have estimated the extent of sundown towns in Illinois. Their estimates are in basic accord with mine. “Illinois: Mecca of the Migrant Mob,” originally published in 1923 by the well-known black sociologist Charles S. Johnson, tells of “Granite City, where [Negroes] by ordinance may not live within the city limits . . . and 200 other towns where they may not live at all.” Johnson’s short essay does not list these towns. My number of likely suspects, 474, is larger than Johnson’s, perhaps because when he wrote in 1923, some towns were still in the process of expelling their African Americans or resolving that none were to be admitted. Also, he may not have included towns smaller than 2,500, and he did not try to research the entire state. Sociologist Roberta Senechal quotes Johnson’s sentence with approval in her fine study of the 1908 race riot in Springfield, Illinois. Writing of towns “that forbade blacks to cross the city limits or remain after dark,” historian John Keiser compiled “a list of some 52 Illinois cities in which such unwritten ‘ordinances’ were said to exist by the local citizens,” and he did not claim to have researched the subject exhaustively. One other book,
Land Between the Rivers,
a 1973 coffee-table book by three professors at Southern Illinois University, briefly acknowledges that sundown towns were widespread in that section of the state: “Many Southern Illinois towns solved the problem simply by refusing to allow blacks within the town boundaries between sunset and sunup.” Such candor is rare; also worth noting is these authors’ nonchalant use—well after the Civil Rights Movement—of the rhetoric that African Americans are “the problem” and keeping them out “solved the problem.” See Charles S. Johnson, “Illinois: Mecca of the Migrant Mob,” reprinted in Tom Lutz and Susanna Ashton, eds.,
These “Colored” United States: African American Essays from the 1920s
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 109; Roberta Senechal,
The Sociogenesis of a Race Riot
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 129; John Keiser, “Black Strikebreakers and Racism in Illinois, 1865–1900” (
Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
65 (1972), 314; and C. William Horrell, Henry D. Piper, and John Voigt,
Land Between the Rivers
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973), 163.
42
Of course, the smaller the community, the more likely that the absence of African Americans is not due to a policy of exclusion.
43
I know I missed sundown towns in this way, because two—Dwight and Vienna—came to my attention during my research.
44
Copperheads were pro-South Democrats, so called by pro-Union Republicans.
45
Magnificent Whistle Stop: The 100-Year Story of Mendota, Illinois
(Mendota: Mendota Centennial Committee, 1953), 332;
Tribune
quoted in Ronald L. Lewis,
Black Coal Miners in America
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987), 85; Tom Trengove, e-mail, 9/2002; male undergraduate, University of Illinois–Chicago, 9/2001.
46
Administrative secretary, University of Illinois, 2/2001.
47
Paul M. Angle,
Bloody Williamson
(New York: Knopf, 1952), 98, 110–15; Carl Planinc, 9/2002.
48
Senechal,
The Sociogenesis of a Race Riot,
129.
49
Two other writers estimated impressionistically the extent of sundown towns in Indiana. Emma Lou Thornbrough’s 1957 comment is reproduced at the head of the chapter. Kathleen Blee, author of the 1991 book
Women of the Klan
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 78, cited Leibowitz as the authority for this sentence: “Sundown laws that prohibited blacks from remaining in town after sunset were enforced, though often unwritten, in nearly every small town in Indiana.”
50
Irving Leibowitz,
My Indiana
(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 208.
51
Frances L. Peacock, “The Opposite of Fear Is Love: An Interview with George Sawyer,”
Quaker Life,
3/2002,
fum.org/QL/issues/0203/index.htm
, 6/2002.
52
These 229 include 212 towns larger than 1,000 in population that were overwhelmingly white in census after census, as well as 17 hamlets with fewer than 1,000 residents that oral and/or written historical sources confirmed as having sundown policies. This number is smaller than in Illinois because Indiana has fewer towns, being a smaller state with a smaller population.
53
These communities are listed at
uvm.edu/~jloewen/sundown
. The number of confirmed sundown towns in Indiana is smaller than in Illinois because I spent less time researching Indiana.
54
The 1970 census is the next after Leibowitz’s 1964 claim. It also allows thirteen years for possible desegregation after Thornbrough’s 1957 statement and follows the 1954
Brown v. Board of Education
school desegregation decision by sixteen years.
55
See
uvm.edu/~jloewen/sundown
for a list of confirmed Indiana sundown towns with evidence.
56
Leibowitz,
My Indiana,
208; Mike Haas, “You Betcha,” post to alt.discrimination, 2/18/2002.
57
The 126 towns, 9 confirmed, and 10 suspects are listed at
uvm.edu/~jloewen/sundown
. I omitted towns smaller than 2,500 for two reasons: out of respect for Wisconsin’s small statewide black population—just under 3% in 1970, less than half Indiana’s—and because I knew I would not have time to investigate any of Wisconsin’s smaller towns on site.
There is some circularity in allowing a state’s small overall black population, which is depressed partly by its towns’ sundown policies, to “excuse” the overwhelming whiteness of its towns. If
all
Wisconsin towns kept out African Americans, then the statewide proportion would be 0%, and I would have to infer that
no
towns were sundown! This may be a larger problem in Idaho and Oregon, the latter owing in part to its law flatly excluding blacks, passed in 1849.
58
These populations are approximate, rounded for the period 1970–2000.
59
Former Sheboygan resident, 10/2002; Grey Gundaker, e-mail, 7/2002.
60
The exception was Doc Pitts, whose story Chapter 10 will tell.
61
Moira Meltzer-Cohen, e-mail, 9/2002.
62
Priscilla Wegars, “Entrepreneurs and ‘Wage Slaves’: Their Relationship to Anti-Chinese Racism in Northern Idaho’s Mining Labor Market, 1880–1910,” in Marcel van der Linden and Jan Lucassen, eds.,
Racism and the Labour Market
(Bern: Peter Lang, 1995), 471–72; Jim Kershner, “Segregation in Spokane,”
Columbia
14, 4 (2000–01),
wshs.org/columbia/0400-a2.htm
, 3/2003.
63
Those nine states, along with Arkansas and Texas, seceded to form the Confederacy, of course.
Table 1
includes Arkansas and Texas because they had large areas that, like West Virginia, opposed both secession and slavery. The northwestern half of Arkansas supplied many recruits for the United States Army after U.S. forces broke the Confederacy’s hold on it. The Confederacy had to occupy much of north Texas, owing to Unionist sentiments there. Early in the twentieth century, Texas became more western than southern. Arkansas and Texas were also the only former Confederate states to desegregate their state universities in the immediate aftermath of
Brown.
Table 1
also includes three other states—Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri—that had substantial areas that were traditionally southern. These states did not secede and, on balance, included more areas that were not traditionally southern.
64
Thornbrough,
The Negro in Indiana,
225.
65
I have not confirmed Belmont as a sundown town but think it was. In 1980, it had 1,420 people including 1 African American. By 2000 it had 11. Burnsville barely reached 1,000 population in 2000. A handful of even smaller Mississippi communities may be sundown hamlets, listed at
uvm.edu/~jloewen/sundown
. I have confirmed one, Mize, population about 300, southeast of Jackson. Mize is the “capital” of Sullivan’s Hollow, a rural area known for past outlawry, including intimidation of African Americans. The fact that Mize is widely known as “No-Nigger Mize” and Sullivan’s Hollow is notorious for the practice implies that sundown towns are unusual enough in the traditional South that even such a small one is remarked about.
66
Putting a practice in the past—“Alabama
had
two sundown counties”—might imply that both counties now admit African Americans, which I don’t know to be true. At the same time, putting the practice in the present might imply that they still keep blacks out today—which I also don’t know for sure. Here as elsewhere (unless context implies otherwise), using
has
means that a town or county kept African Americans (or other groups) out for decades and not that it necessarily does so now. Chapter 14 treats this problem of verb tense at greater length.
67
These counties and towns are listed at
uvm.edu/~jloewen/sundown
.
68
“Threat Against W.Va. Families Is Laid to Klan,”
Pittsburgh Courier,
10/27/1923.
69
I deliberately echo the title of Harry Caudill’s well-known 1963 book about the region’s depressed economic conditions, which unfortunately contains no mention that the region expelled most of its African Americans four or five decades earlier and kept them from returning.
70
This was the school where Martin Luther King Jr. was photographed and the result enlarged and plastered on billboards across the South with the caption “Martin Luther King at Communist Training School.” Neither Horton nor Highlander was Communist.
71
George Brosi, 6/1999; Esther S. Sanderson,
County Scott and Its Mountain Folk
(Nashville: Williams Printing, 1958), 186; John Egerton,
Shades of Gray
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991), 69; Charles Martin, e-mail, 6/2000; cf. “Scottsboro Trial Moved Fifty Miles,”
New York Times,
3/8/1933, 14.
72
William Pickens, “Arkansas—A Study in Suppression,”
The Messenger
5 (1923), reprinted in Tom Lutz and Susanna Ashton, eds.,
These “Colored” United States: African American Essays from the 1920s
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 35; Milton Rafferty,
The Ozarks
(Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2001), 60; use of
Negro
in 2001 is antiquated.
73
Gordan D. Morgan,
Black Hillbillies of the Arkansas Ozarks
(Fayetteville: University of Arizona Department of Sociology, 1973 typescript), 60.
74
William H. Jacobsen Jr., 8/2003; Don Cox, “Linguistic Expert Says Ancient Indian Languages Are Dying,”
Reno Gazette-Journal,
1/2/2002,
sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2002/01/02/state1722EST7955.DTL
, 8/2003; Loren B. Chan, “The Chinese in Nevada,” in Arif Dirlik, ed.,
Chinese on the American Frontier
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 96–97. Elmer Rusco,
“Good Time Coming?” Black Nevadans in the 19th Century
(Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1975), 207.
75
“Tale of Two Cities,”
Pacific Citizen,
1/4/1947; Fred S. Rolater, e-mail, 6/2002.
76
MariaElena Raymond, e-mail, 9/02; Margaret Marsh,
Suburban Lives
(New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 172; Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic,
Home-Grown Racism
(Boulder: University of Colorado Latino/a Research & Policy Center, 1999), 30, 44, 74.
77
Bellingham Souvenir Police Album,
photocopy, no date, 11;—,“The Hindus Have Left Us,”
Bellingham Herald,
9/6?/1907; cf.—, “Hindus Hounded from City,”
Bellingham Herald,
9/5/1907.
78
These include North Fond du Lac, Neenah, Menasha, Kimberly, Little Chute, Kaukauna, and Green Bay.
79
Michael Dougan,
Arkansas Odyssey
(Little Rock: Rose Publishing, 1994), 317; “An Elco Man Says Feeling Is Strong Against Negroes,”
Cairo Bulletin,
2/19/1924; “Attempt Is Made to Dynamite Cauble Home,”
Cairo Bulletin,
3/4/1924; “No Reason for Sending Troops to Elco, Opinion,”
Cairo Bulletin,
3/7/1924; Scott Peeples, “Building Diversity Awareness Day,” Appleton, WI, 4/8/2003, 2, paraphrasing Bob Lowe; Andrew Kirchmeier, 4/2002; Jack Tichenor, 2/2004.
80
Carey McWilliams,
A Mask for Privilege
(New Brunswick: Transaction, 1999 [1948]), 6–7; Michael Powell, “Separate and Unequal in Roosevelt, Long Island,”
Washington Post,
4/21/2002.
81
William Stock, “Nigger Sam,”
Urban Hiker,
37,
urbanhiker.net/archive/febstories/UH-02_03(stock).pdf
, 6/2003; Elizabeth C.Baxter, 5/2003, and e-mail, 5/2003.

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