Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism (90 page)
20
Bishoff, “Monett’s Darkest Hour”; Huber, “Race Riots and Black Exodus in the Missouri Ozarks, 1894–1905,” 10.
21
Tom W. Dillard, “Madness with a Past: An Overview of Race Violence in Arkansas History,” Arkansas Black History Online,
cals.lib.ar.us/butlercenter/abho/bib/MADNESS.pdf
, 2003, 7; Gordon D. Morgan, “Black Hillbillies of the Arkansas Ozarks,” Department of Sociology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, 1973, 60.
22
My web site has a page collecting information on expulsion riots across the nation.
23
The departure of a major employer, such as a railroad, might affect most African American families at once. In that event, however,
some
blacks who worked for other employers—in domestic service, etc.—would remain, and whites would not develop a tradition that they prohibited African Americans from staying the night.
24
Frank U. Quillen,
The Color Line in Ohio
(Ann Arbor, MI: Wahr, 1913), 166.
25
James Allen et al.,
Without Sanctuary
(Santa Fe: Twin Palms, 2000), shows lynching postcards and other souvenir photos.
26
“The Lynching of ‘Nigger Pete,’ ”
Mena Star,
2/16/1986; “The Real Polk County,”
The Looking Glass
(Hatfield, AR), 1/1980, 16; Inez Lane, “Down Back Roads,”
The Looking Glass,
5/1977, 24; “Those Warning Notices,”
Mena Star
7/21/1897; “The Mayor Gives Good Advice,”
Mena Star,
8/17/1898; Shirley Manning, e-mail, 9/2002.
27
James B. Jones Jr., “A Chronological List of Lynchings in Tennessee, 1866–1946,” Southern History Net,
southernhistory.net
, 3/2002; Stewart E. Tolnay and E. M. Beck,
A Festival of Violence
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 219; “Lynch Law in Lacon,”
Lacon Journal,
11/10/1898; Jack S. Blocker Jr., “Choice and Circumstance,” Organization of American Historians, Toronto, 4/1999, Table 5.
28
Burlington
(VT)
Free Press,
6/1/1925.
29
Henson,
History of Franklin County, Illinois,
151; Sally Albertz, e-mail, 5/2002.
30
Howard Goodman, “Bigotry: Oregon’s Sad History,”
Salem Statesman Journal, Oregon Territory
magazine, 2/8/1981, G3-5.
31
Lynwood Carranco, “The Chinese in Humboldt County, California: A Study in Prejudice,”
Journal of the West,
January 1973, 334.
32
All sundown towns with evidence of ordinances are listed at my web site,
uvm.edu/~jloewen/sundown
. Information from readers confirming or disconfirming these towns can be e-mailed to me through that site.
33
Donald M. Royer, “Indiana’s ‘Sundown Ordinances’ in Nineteen Indiana Towns and Cities” (Indianapolis: Indiana Civil Rights Commission, 1965), photocopy in the Indiana University Library, Bloomington; Olen Cole Jr.,
The African-American Experience in the Civilian Conservation Corps
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999), 57.
34
Chapter 8 tells why I think these towns probably did pass such ordinances and describes the difficulty of locating them today.
35
Monticello lawyer, 10/2002; former De Land trustee, 10/2002; De Land official, 10/2002.
36
Jon L. Craig et al., eds.,
Ordinance Law Annotations
(Colorado Springs: Shepard’s/ McGraw-Hill, 1990 [1969]), 433; cf. John T. Noonan, opinion in
Ho v. SFUSD,
9715926, 6/4/1998, at Findlaw,
laws.lp.findlaw.com/9th/9715926.html
.
37
This was the amendment, you will recall, that was passed to guarantee equal rights to all Americans without regard to race. By 1917, the Court had effectively gutted it so far as its utility for improving the rights of African Americans.
38
Charles S. Johnson,
Negro Housing
(New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969 [1932]), 36–40; Susan D. Carle, “Race, Class, and Legal Ethics in the Early NAACP (1910–1920),”
Law and History Review
20, 1 (2002),
historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/20.1/carle.html
, 8/2004; T.J. Woofter Jr.,
Negro Problems in Cities
(New York: Harper & Row, 1969 [1928]), 71; Peter M. Bergman and Mort N. Bergman,
The Chronological History of the Negro in America
(New York: Mentor, 1969), 367, 380;
Buchanan v. Warley,
245 U.S. 60.
39
Actually, scores of “exclusively white” towns dotted the North and West by 1915, some much larger than North Chattanooga, but people in North Chattanooga were oriented toward southern cities and towns, where sundown policies were rare.
41
Indianapolis, for example, passed a residential zoning ordinance in 1926.
42
W. A. Low and V. A. Clift, eds.,
Encyclopedia of Black America
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), 446.
43
Vincent Jaster, “Education in Brea,” interviewed by Cynthia Churney, California State Uni-versity–Fullerton, Oral History #1720, 4/10–24/1982, 40.
44
Although Arthurdale had no African Americans until at least 1990, I do not know for sure that it was set up on a white-only basis.
45
Decatur, IL, resident, 20/2001; Martinsville native, 10/2002.
46
Emma Lou Thornbrough, edited and with final chapter by Lana Ruegamer,
Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 2–3; Thornbrough,
The Negro in Indiana
(Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1957), 225–26; former resident of Crawford County, e-mail, 9/2002.
48
My web site lists these towns, along with others to be added as information comes in.
49
Willie Harlen, letter, 10/18/2002; David Roediger, e-mail, 8/2003.
50
Jim Clayton, e-mail, 11/2002; Judy Tonges, e-mail, 9/2002.
51
Niles resident, e-mail, 11/2002.
52
Lorenzo J. Greene, Gary Kremer, and Antonio Holland,
Missouri’s Black Heritage
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993), 107, 147.
53
Stephen Vincent studied two small African American communities in east-central Indiana that went into a similar decline, and for the same reasons. He concluded, “The special bond shared by these [black] families and their surrounding white neighbors was loosened if not altogether undone in the late nineteenth century.” Stephen A. Vincent,
Southern Seed, Northern Soil
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 127.
54
Robert Azug and Stephen Maizlish, eds.,
New Perspectives on Race and Slavery in America
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986), 118–21, 125; Robert C. Nesbit,
History of Wisconsin,
vol. III:
Urbanization and Industrialization, 1873–1893
(Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society, 1985), 437–38. Nesbit dates the community to 1848, but in 1860 only 10 blacks lived in the whole of Grant County, compared to 98 by 1870.
55
Edwina M. DeWindt, “Wyandotte History; Negro,” typescript, 1945, in Bacon Library, Wyandotte, MI, 20–21; southern Illinois woman, 10/2002.
56
“Mass Meeting, Bell City, Mo. Resolutions,” from Frank Nickell, Center for Regional History, Southestern Missouri State University.
57
DeWindt, “Wyandotte History; Negro,” 2.
58
Chesterton Tribune,
1/26/1922; Edward H. Sebesta, e-mail, 7/2002.
59
Dorothy K. Newman et al.,
Protest, Politics, and Prosperity
(New York: Pantheon, 1978), 144.
60
Deborah Morse-Kahn,
Edina: Chapters in the City History
(Edina: City of Edina, 1998), iii, 56–59.
61
Ibid., 56–59, 61, 94–95; Joyce Repya, 9/1999.
62
Chamblee native, 3/2003; former mayor, 3/2003.
63
Kathryn P. Nelson,
Recent Suburbanization of Blacks
(Washington, DC: HUD Office of Economic Affairs, 1979), 13.
64
Thomas L. Philpott,
The Slum and the Ghetto
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 154.
65
Patrick M. McMullen, “Gated Communities,” entry for
Encyclopedia of Chicago,
draft, 10/17/2000; Albert F. Winslow,
Tuxedo Park
(Tuxedo Park: Tuxedo Park Historical Society, 1992), 64–66.
66
Richland and Norris were not exactly suburbs but new communities near huge new military-industrial entities. The developers of Park Forest felt pressured by the FHA to set up their city for whites only. The original plan for Boulder City, Nevada, was also influenced by Howard’s ideas, but that plan was never carried out. Also, one restauranteur defied the federal czar of Boulder City and hired a black cook.
67
Edward J. Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder,
Fortress America
(Washington, DC: Brookings, 1997), 19; Cynthia Mills Richter, “Integrating the Suburban Dream: Shaker Heights, Ohio,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1999, 19; Allan Hepburn, review of Catherine Jurca’s
White Diaspora, Journal of American History
89, 4 (2003), 1572; “Blacks in Greenbelt,”
otal.umd.edu/~vg/mssp96/ms12/expla.html
, 10/2002; Zane Miller,
Suburb
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1981), 128;
campus.murraystate.edu/academic/faculty/Bill.Mulligan/Kyv.htm
, 9/2003; Mike Davis,
City of Quartz
(London: Verso, 1990), 161–67; Robert Parker, “Robert Parker Discusses Afro-Americans in Boulder City,” interview with Dennis McBride, 11/9/1986, Banyan Library web site, banyan .
library.unlv.edu/cgi-bin/htmldesc.exe?CISOROOT=/Hoover_Dam&CISOPTR=56&CISOMODE=1
, 11/2004; Dennis McBride, “The Boulder City Dictator,”
Las Vegas Review-Journal,
lst100.com/part1/ely.html
,11/2004.
68
John H. Denton quoted by Michael N. Danielson,
The Politics of Exclusion
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 31; Frank Harold Wilson,
Footsteps from North Brentwood
(North Brentwood, MD: Historical Society, 1997), 8; Darwin Payne,
Big D
(Dallas: Three Forks Press, 1994), 216–17.
69
Larry McClellan, “Phoenix,” entry for
Encyclopedia of Chicago,
draft, 10/1/1999.
71
De Land official, 10/2002.
CHAPTER 5: SUNDOWN SUBURBS
1
Supplied by Joyce Repya, associate planner for Edina, 9/1999.
2
“A Northern City ‘Sitting on Lid’ of Racial Trouble,”
US News & World Report,
5/11/1956, 38–40; David L. Good,
Orvie: The Dictator of Dearborn
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 40–41, 264, 386–87; Reynolds Farley, Sheldon Danziger, and Harry Holzer,
Detroit Divided
(New York: Russell Sage, 2000), 154–55; August Meier and Elliott Rudwick,
Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 12.
3
Andrew Wiese,
Places of Their Own
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 49.
4
Kenneth T. Jackson,
Crabgrass Frontier
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 283–84; M. P. Baumgartner,
The Moral Order of a Suburb
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 6; Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall,
Chain Reaction
(New York: Norton, 1992), 229, 231.
5
John Palen,
The Suburbs
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995), xiii, 3–7; Lizabeth Cohen,
A Consumers’ Republic
(New York: Knopf, 2003), 255.
6
Moving to the suburbs was hardly the obvious path to “the good life.” From Johannesburg to Lima to Jakarta, suburbs are inconvenient places where poor people live who must travel miles to the central city to work or attend cultural events. In nineteenth-century America, elegant rowhouse districts such as Boston’s Beacon Hill were what American families wanted as they grew more affluent.
7
Larry Peterson, e-mail, 3/2004.
8
Ford quoted in Jackson,
Crabgrass Frontier,
75.