Sundown towns: a hidden dimension of American racism

Abstract

Provocative and engaging, Sundown Towns grabs its readers by the jugular and forces them to think long and hard about northern whites' treatment of African Americans.The heart of the discussion centers on what the author deems the phenomenon's nadir from 1890 to 1930.At bottom, this is a very important book, one that deserves to be readand mulled over-by the general public and scholars alike.With a barrage of evidence, largely anecdotal but also drawn from interviews, memoirs, newspapers, and statistical analyses, Loewen overwhelms his readers with an irrefutable assertion: northerners, especially those in the Midwest, have long discouraged if not prevented blacks from settling in their midst.These efforts have taken countless forms, including blatant posted signs, most prevalent in southern parts of the Midwest, warning blacks to leave their locality by sundown.The implicit threat of violence was unmistakable.Sundown notices, however, were (and remain) merely the slightest tip of a very large iceberg, seemingly as prevalent in Iowa as in other northern states.Loewen observes, for example, that white Iowans twice rejected referendums to give its extremely small African American population voting rights in the mid-nineteenth century, only agreeing on a third attempt; that the number of Iowa counties with 10 or more African Americans decreased from 38 in 1890 to 28 in 1930; and that evidence points to strong efforts at exclusion in a swath of Iowa counties along the Missouri border.Attempts to dissuade blacks have taken both obvious and subtle forms over the years.Most have been informal: planned housing communities have routinely refused to sell homes to non-whites; African Americans were barred from better-paying jobs; white-driven riots and lynchings sent clear messages; and African Americans were barred or discouraged from attending schools with whites.In addition, blacks on high school sports teams have been subjected to open, flagrantly racist taunts; African Americans seldom found restaurants, hotels, and gas stations that would take their business, in essence preventing long-distance travel; police profiled and arrested blacks at an alarming rate; newspapers simply ignored anti-black behavior; and African Americans have long been invisible to local historians.Loewen emphasizes not just the pattern but the impact of sundown towns on all concerned.Even today most residents of all-white

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