Is your hometown listed here?

[gollygee]

This isn't about Michael Brown - I started reading this book just before he was killed. Timing coincidental. But this book is fascinating me. It makes me curious how many of our hometowns are listed. My hometown is listed but it says my town isn't a sundown town but still has some problems with racism (which sounds accurate to me.)

http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/content.php?file=sundowntowns-whitemap.html

Anyway, share what it says if you want, and if the description sounds correct or not to you.

(Here's more info about the book http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/sundowntowns.php )

[In_The_Wind]

1. My hometown and the town where I live now are not on the list.

I'm not surprised.

[yeoman6987]

2. Nope

No Anne Arundel (county) or Arnold Maryland (where I live)

[Ms. Toad]

3. Not terribly reliable.

One of the local communities listed is well over 90% black.

One community I lived in is listed - probably correctly. The one I currently live in is not listed - but possibly should be. I am not aware of specific incidents - but it is relatively conservative and there are only a handful of African Americans who live here.

[gollygee]

4. Well this is about towns that were historically sundown towns

Ferguson was historically an all white suburb, though not specifically sundown. But anyway a town could have been sundown for decades and then there could have been a population shift.

[Ms. Toad]

6. Well - on that basis, the city I taught school in for more than a decade should also be listed

It was one of the original white flight cities (along with the first city I mentioned). It is the city which triggered bans on "For Sale" yard signs in the region because when a for sale sign went up, it triggered panic about the race of the person likely to buy it, triggering the neighbors to stick up for sale signs. Both cities went from nearly 100% white to nearly 100% African American in less than a decade (the same decade). Neither were friendly to African Americans prior to the population shift.

So - either both should be listed, or neither should be.

[gollygee]

14. He doesn't claim his information is complete

In fact, that's why he made the website - to collect information. There are so many sundown towns, and so many of the towns work to hide that history (to the extent of "losing" copies of the newspaper that deal with it) that he has no way of finding out which are and aren't on his own.

He lists his email address so people can send him information about other towns.

[cyberswede]

5. Nope - not the town in which I was born, or the town where I grew up, or the town where I live

[dipsydoodle]

7. No.

.

[nolabear]

8. Tremendously interesting! Not just sundown towns

But other towns listed, like the experimental all African American ones. Seattle apparently was vicious to Native Americans and Asians.

Btw many of the towns with later dates, like the mid to late 1900s were rich areas.

[WinkyDink]

9. I live/have lived very near to the PA examples of Nazareth, Jim Thorpe, Lansford: They are NOT

"sundown" anything.
ETA: Nesquehoning, also.

I think what the author did was use demographic profiling and decided towns comprising mostly white ethnic Catholics (Italian, Irish, Slovak, e.g.) and Orthodox (Greek, Russian) must be racist.

[Whiskeytide]

10. Very interesting. I'm from Alabama...

... and I recall that several of the communities listed were well known in the 70s and 80s for being openly unfriendly to blacks - as well as any other outsiders.

I looked, at least briefly, at most of the states on the map. I found it odd that the states with the most "sundown" communities were - by a pretty significant margin - the Northern Great Lakes states and many mid-west states. Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Indiana, Iowa - all had a lot more entries than the traditional southern states of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. Arkansas was the one Southern state that did seem to have a lot.

I suppose population differences would contribute some to that, and I also suspect in many southern states, at least back in the day, it was often more understood than articulated via a sign or ordinance. Also, I suspect that in the century following the Civil War, most blacks were still in the South and already part of the population in many cities. Kind of hard to have sundown laws when a black population is already there.

[gollygee]

15. He talks about this in the book

but you're right. They're almost entirely outside of what he calls the "traditional South." In fact, my area - the Great Lakes area - has the most.

[Maeve]

11. Not my hometown, but my current town is a 'possible'

Not surprisingly--it's heavily Appalachian-settled, lower-middle-class town with a mostly black "suburb"; fairly recently farming area in Central Ohio. We have a biracial family on our street, but there were only a couple black kids in school when my kids were young.
Not what we would have chosen, but the home prices were right at the time...and the schools are better than Columbus City schools. Thanks for the link!

[etherealtruth]

12. Ah ... most definitely where I grew up

It is listed as an historical but not current sundown town ... sounds accurate to me

[RebelOne]

13. My county here in Georgia is listed.

But as of 1860 it was strongly Democratic. That is not true today as it is strongly Republican, but not a sundown area.

[Recursion]

17. Yeah, Democratic in 1860 meant something entirely different (nt)

[Recursion]

16. I had forgotten about It, Mississippi

(Prounounced "eat", incidentally.) I don't think it's a town anymore (and wasn't even in the 90's) but they still have signs up and I think a gas station.

[Art_from_Ark]

18. My hometown is listed

It used to be a "sundown town", until sometime in the mid- to late-1970s when the demographics started to shift.

There was one event I remember as a kid that was unsettling to me. An African-American couple had moved into a house that was about 4 or 5 blocks down from me. They had some neat sports cars-- An MG and a Triumph. I was pretty young at the time, but I thought the cars were neat, and I wanted to meet the owners. But I never got that chance, because some asshole threw a brick through one or both of the windshields, and the couple left soon after that. That was probably 1969 or 1970.