Plowshares and Prison Bars: Southwest Wisconsin's Black Settler Pressure from UU congregationssome of which moved to or formed in white suburbs in the 1960s precisely because they were homogeneouscan prompt communities to take these steps, especially when that pressure comes buttressed with solid information about their sundown past. Historical census datacollected by Loewen and his colleaguesshows the city had a population of 19 Black people in 1880, but by 1930 that number had dropped to zero. Look over the information provided and come to your own conclusion. History and Social Justice Website Copyright 2023, Using Lies My Teacher Told Me and Teaching What Really Happened, Resources for Teaching with Lies My Teacher Told Me, Teachers Corner: Teaching with Lies My Teacher Told Me, Contact Jim Loewen to Speak to Your Group, Causing Change With Lies My Teacher Told Me, Works Inspired or Influenced by Lies My Teacher Told Me, Useful Quotations about History and Social Justice, Native American Issues, Including the Explorers, Teaching Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, Civil Rights Movement to Modern Times: c. 1945 Now, Alphabetical Map of Sundown Towns by State, How to Research and Teach About Sundown Towns, Using Research Information to Help a Sundown Town Overcome Its Past, Loewens Work on Standardized Testing Used by Others, Embarrassing Questions about Standardized Tests. Iused that in supporting La Crosse [as] a sundowntown because the university,which should have a more diverse community, doesnt have a more diverse communitythan the local community. DeRocher said she decided to research what in La Crosses history built such a racist environment and was directed to Loewens book by a history professor. admin@abhmuseum.org, Special days closed - Thanksgiving, Christmas Day. This History Has Been Hidden in Plain Sight. Less attention is paid to the racism that existed in places like the Midwest that often took different forms, including what were called "sundown towns." This has left many African Americans unable to get family-supporting jobs. Many towns drove out their black populations, then posted sundown signs. ' . They are protesting activities of Father James Groppi, the white priest who has led Black open housing demonstrations the last 16 consecutive nights. Sometimes no specific act of violence or formal policy oftentimes African Americans were made to feel unwelcome.. And Black Americans in particular have a unique relationship to the prejudices in this country today. Or maybe write a piece for us about your favorite destination. According to Roedeger, former sundown counties in Wisconsin provided Trump with 256,000 more votes over Clinton . The Vietnam War Crimes You Never Heard Of. If so, attend its next meeting, after talking with its leader. Today, some still exist in various forms, enforced now by tradition and fear rather than by rules. In an effort to help others avoid sundown towns or better prepare them to travel through one, Black people created their own helpful resources. A sundown town is not just a place where something racist happened. Robins emphasized those points, and argued there's a need to broadenwhat's considered a sundown town to include the way people of color are policed, treated as suspicious and made to not feel welcome in communities today. It is an entire community (or even county) that for decades was all white on purpose. More promising still is the fact that more than half of all former sundown towns no longer exclude anyone and now boast an increasing (though small) number of African American households. Once Reconstruction ended, southern states immediately set up a system that looked a lot like slavery. Note: We moderate submissions in order to create a space for meaningful dialogue, a space where museum visitors adults and youth can exchangeinformed, thoughtful, and relevant comments that add value to our exhibits. That racism often took on different forms, including what were known as "sundown towns," communities that didn't allow people of color to be in the municipality after dark. Just click on a state to see an alphabetical list of all the sundown towns we know about, think may been sundown towns, and have managed to get up onto the site. First, it must admit it. We moderate submissions in order to create a space for meaningful dialogue, a space where museum visitors adults and youth can exchangeinformed, thoughtful, and relevant comments that add value to our exhibits. The term meant. "Don't let the sun go down on you in this town.". Viola Abbitt in Conversation. That racism often took on different forms, including what were known as "sundown towns," communities that didn't allow people of color to be in the municipality after dark. Their rise also coincided with growing labor competition between white American and Chinese workers, and widespread anti-Chinese sentiment across the U.S. that's not what a sundown town is. I resolved to write a book about the Sundown Town phenomenon. Two historians answer a WHYsconsin question about their history in Wisconsin. Sundown Towns: Racial Segregation Past and Present and 'Give me your driver's license.'". [] Sundown Towns Past and Present. According to AP News, these towns are inhabited by a majority of white people who insist that "Black and white residents get along really well." "Class War" is Back in the Headlines. Anna and Jonesboro are twin towns, population 7,000, in southern Illinois. Connecting sundown towns and votes for Trump in Wisconsin It is an entire community (or even county) that for decades was "all white" on purpose. A sundown town is a community that for decades kept non-whites from living in it and was thus all-white on purpose. There's often less focus on the racism that existed, and continues to exist, in places like the Midwest. Together, Robins and a team of researchers documented Black life in the Fox Valley after the period known as Reconstruction which was itself controversial in Wisconsin following the Civil War. Some towns are not and never were sundown towns but are listed for other reasons. A great deal of that wealth is in the equity of their homes. To my amazement, twenty people came down, and they told me stories about every town around Decatur. We really lost the community memory of Black presence, The history of 'sundown towns' in Wisconsin. An editorial cartoon archived at the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia in Big Rapids, Michigan. Even streetcars and railroad waiting rooms now isolated blacks in separate sections. Here are the sundown towns we currently know of in America. Also, institutionalized persons (in prisons, hospitals, colleges, etc. Sometimes entire counties went sundown, usually when their county seats did. Such obvious signs may be out-of-fashion now, but the location of good family-supporting jobs far from where most African Americans are able tolive has the same effect. "That memory is not included in the Appleton history at all, and so now we have a way to include more voices and have a more inclusive view of 'What is Appleton, who lived here, and what was life like?'". Real estate agents can also play a role by steering a client away from a particular neighborhood. In Teaching What Really Happened (2009), he gives teachers solutions to the problems described in his earlier works. Commercial promotions, impersonations, and incoherent comments likewise fail to meet our goals, so will not be posted. All Rights Reserved. 8 min to read] [], [] many other municipalities in the U.S., Douglas County used to have a sundown ordinance that was enacted in 1917 and repealed in 1974. When asked to think about the history of racism in the United States, many people think first about slavery and segregation in the South. Plenty of Northern and Western towns and cities had Sundown laws stating that no black person could be found within the city limits after [], [] only signs were posted on bars, motels, and restaurants. Why Did Madison Write the Second Amendment? Across the country, city neighborhoods grew more and more segregated. It WAS a Sundown town based on the criteria listed. Usually they say nothing about African Americans or racial exclusion, but there can be surprises. Fran Kaplan, EdD has been an educator, social worker, writer, and racial justice activist for nearly fifty years. Current Sundown Towns in the U.S. - Distractify Thats one reason why all former sundown towns should take Loewens three-step program or another formal step to put their white supremacist pasts behind them. A look at the past, present and future of racial restrictions in Wisconsin. Instead, they were allowed to settle in only the oldest, most rundown neighborhoods in industrial cities. Some progress has taken place across the country. Some communities had signs posted at the edge of town using racial slurs or other overtly racist language, warning people of color tonot "let the sun go down on you in our town. In Wisconsin, three towns are classified as having "surely" been sundown towns: Appleton ; Janesville; and Mequon, according to a database of possible sundown towns across the U.S. originally . Most white Americans have no idea such communities exist, or they think such places exist mainly in the Deep South. More than 400 lived in Michigans Upper Peninsula. Horses and cattle were owned by a lot of people in Compton. Annotated Bibliography Whiteness: Framed, De-framed and Counter-Framed. Green Bay had a near draft riot, mostly of Belgians, around Nov. 10, 1862. Ask them, Who else should I talk with? Is there a genealogical society? ', Sometimes just the threat of violence sufficed, especially where whites were many and blacks few, wrote Loewen. Since finishing my book, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, I have hoped that Unitarian Universalists would step up and take the lead in abolishing the barriers that keep these communities from accepting black residents. Mississippi, for instance, has no more than 6, while Illinois has at least 456. Lambries said when she asked around about this history locally, there weren't many interested in providing answers. "In reality, we have documented first-hand experiences dating back to the 1700s," Robins said on WPR's "Central Time.". And, she said, making the state's history of racial exclusion more widely known is part of that. If a city has a history of being a sundown town what does that tell you ?They drove out the black people and to this day some are populated with white supremacist and neo nazis black people would get harassed or killed when they go to these cities, "Every time you come into town, or you go into a gas station, or in a store, people look at you," Victoria Vaughn explained to AP News. Sundown towns are communities in which Black people were not welcome, Diddy set to headline Invest Fest 2023, presented by Earn Your Leisure, North Carolinas divorce law is clearly an outlier. Dr. Bruce Mouser, who taught history at UWL,passed away in December 2019. These schools struggle to educate many children stressed by the racism and poverty their families have suffered over generations. Sundown Towns by State - Tools For Racial Justice Sadly, the Great Migration sparked racism across the country. Begin gently, maybe by asking what the towns major employers used to be. For smaller towns, count the number of African Americans in the manuscript census for 1930 and prior decades. The Bible forbids homosexuality and race mixing Sodom and Gomorrah evils, [] we say that thats just a little bit of our land that was left. They were far less common in the South, in part because the South had its own racial system of Jim Crow segregation,Stephen Berrey, a professor ofAmerican culture and history at the University of Michigan, saidin arecent interviewon WPR's "Central Time.". Category : Sundown towns in the United States by state Celeste Headlee and Camila Beiner. Data for 1990 and 2000 is at census.gov via Census 2000.. Racial slurs, personal attacks, obscenity, profanity, and SHOUTING do not meet the above standard. With racial segregation, most white Americans get their only exposure to black American life through the distorted lens of many television news programs. I was like, oh my gosh, from what I already read about La Crosse, and the way he describes sundown towns, La Crosse could be considered a sundown town, said DeRocher. Berrey said the rise of sundown towns came at a time when there was growing labor competition between American and Chinese workers, and a growing number of Black people moving North to flee racial violence as part ofthe Great Migration. They would not be accommodated at restaurants, parks, hotels, or schools used by whites. How Sundown Communities Were and Are Maintained. For example, African Americans reached every county of Montana. African American senior citizens in the nearest multiracial town may know about your town, at least by reputation and sometimes with telling details. Most Americans have no idea how much race relations worsened between 1890 and the 1930s and not just in the South. In March 2015, the City Council of Goshen, Indiana, passed a resolution acknowledging its history as a sundown town. The Green Book A Lifeline for Black Travelers | whatcherylsaid Namesakes: AfricaTown, a 153 year-ago-old Alabama community founded to preserve West African cultural ties, becomes sister-city with another Africatown, an initiative to save Black Seattle | Ark Republic, Nevada Law Bans Racial Mascots In Schools And Sundown Sirens Z LANE, Nevada Law Bans Racial Mascots In Schools And Sundown Sirens Fresh News Breaking, Good trouble & the redline Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion, Rutherford B. Hayes (1877 - 1881): A 29th Retrospective. Students at UWL circa 1920. Sundown towns also range across the income spectrum. Whites fled to suburbs or parts of the cities with better housing. Sundown towns werent always all-white. This was "Until the '60s, even the late '60s." Another resident also confirms that Appleton is a sundown town. Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself, Inheriting Home: The Skeletons in Pas Closet, Service Seeks Reconciliation Over 1916 Lynching. Sociologist James Loewen, an anti-racism advocate who spoke at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in 2016, wrote in his book "Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism" that "a sundown town is any organized jurisdiction that for decades kept African Americans or other groups from living in it and was thus 'all white.'" In 1968, all this began to change. In the 1930s-40s the Federal government set up the FHA (Federal Housing Administration) program. White families possess ten times the wealth of black families. Sometimes the nearest newspaper outside the town in question will be more forthcoming. In Wisconsin, three towns are classified as having "surely" been sundown towns: Appleton ; Janesville; and Mequon, according to a database of possible sundown towns across the U.S. originally . The Dirty, Deadly History of Depleted Uranium Munitions, The Comics Writer Who Became a Legend-and a Martyr of Argentina's Dirty War, Emily Meggett, Preserver of Gullah Geechee Foodways of the Coastal South, Dies at 90, Documents Confirm Direct Ancestors of King Charles III Involved in Slave Trade, Academic Freedom is Vital to Developing the Critical Abilities Society Needs. Even though proud to be overwhelmingly white, elite sundown suburbs try to avoid being known for it. Most, however, were still unable to leave the South. If you enjoy our perspective on travel and Black culture, please sign up for our newsletter. On another map, dots help users understand whether an area is a sundown town, with a legend that includes "don't know," "surely," "unlikely/always biracial," and "Black town or township.". In many towns, discrimination simply went underground. [], This was the good ole days and what needs to happen today. "I don't even remember when I first heard the term, but somebody was talking about it and (said), 'You know, 'sundown town,'' and I'm like, 'What's a sundown town?'". How to find out if your community intentionally excluded African Americans. And she went on to assure me, That all happened a long time ago. I understand [racial exclusion] is still going on? I asked. Ask the librarian in charge of the local history collection if he or she knows anything about the absence of African Americans. has created a database of sundown towns on its History and Social Justice website. Erik Daily, La Crosse Tribune. a sundown town is a redlined white neighborhood, often a suburb, but sometimes a small town, where the only black people allowed in the town are laborers like maids and landscapers, and by law they must leave by sundown. Sundown Towns on the above map represent a tentative listing of those found in Wisconsin because research is ongoing. That racism often took on different forms, including what were known as "sundown towns," communities that didn't allow people of color to be in the municipality after dark. James W. Loewen, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (Touchstone, 2006), 3. There were an estimated 10,000 communities across the U.S. that qualified as sundown towns at their height in 1970, Loewen said. What many also avoid are the economics of segregation, a set of easily calculated mathematical equations. We cannot classify an all-white town as a sundown town unless we have evidence about its racial policies. Lambries said when she asked around about this history locally, there weren't many interested in providing answers. Keep updated on the latest news and information. How Does a City Choose to Remember its Past? Another 21 communities in Wisconsin are considered "probable" sundown towns, including Ashland, Wausau, Sturgeon Bay, Port Washington, South Milwaukee and Evansville. Another 21 communities in Wisconsin are considered "probable" sundown towns, including Ashland, Wausau, Sturgeon Bay, Port Washington, South Milwaukee and Evansville. The name comes from signs that used to be posted telling minorities to be gone before the sun set for the day. In certain situations, police arrested people of color. A sundown town is a community that for decades kept non-whites from living in it and was thus all-white on purpose. Category:Sundown towns in Wisconsin - Wikipedia Compton was also very rural at this time. Ironically, the Deep South has almost no sundown towns. A Appleton, Wisconsin L La Crosse, Wisconsin M Mequon, Wisconsin S Sheboygan, Wisconsin His margin in the sundown areas exceeded 256,000 votes. Sadly, African Americans are often still barred from these communities. Many communities remain all-white today; whether blacks can reside safely and comfortably within them remains unclear. This category has the following 24 subcategories, out of 24 total. Category:Sundown towns in Wisconsin Pages in category "Sundown towns in Wisconsin" The following 4 pages are in this category, out of 4 total. Special days closed - Thanksgiving, Christmas Day. Who's Really to Blame for America's Lousy Transit Systems? There are also many sundown suburbs and neighborhoods and even entire counties. These towns openly discriminated against Black residents and visitors, and violence was a common tactic. Sundown towns, also known as sunset towns, gray towns, or sundowner towns, are all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States that practice a form of racial segregation by excluding non-whites via some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation, and violence. This video explains the government programs that created this situation. Lambries said when she asked around about this history locally, there weren't many interested in providing answers. In the West, another 50 or more towns drove out their Chinese American populations. "Sundown towns" like Anna were places where Black people were allowed in during the day to work or shop but had to be gone by nightfall. "Sundown towns" like Anna were places where Black people were allowed in during the day to work or shop but . As well, thats a reason to confirm every sundown town, even if it no longer keeps people out. Hosted by Tougaloo College, Tougaloo, MS, 39174 and facilitated by Pantheon. The Vietnam War Crimes You Never Heard Of. In 1990, the median owner-occupied house in Tuxedo Park, perhaps the wealthiest suburb of New York City, was worth more than $500,000 (the highest category in the census). A sign in Detroit, Michigan, where a race riot took place in 1943. She co-curated Lynching: An American Folkway, a comprehensive digital transmedia anthology published by Biblioboard for libraries and tablet users. Some towns and neighborhoods have stayed white by dint of DWB violations (harassment by police for driving while black), realtor steering, shunning, and other bad behavior by white individuals; violence or threats of same (sometimes directed against the children of the family); and other informal policies. Sundown towns included not only small rural villages but also larger cities like Appleton, La Crosse, and Janesville. His research is particularly useful in its assessment of the outcomes of the Civil Rights Movement and the sustained efforts of longtime activists at promoting equality by mobilizing the civil rights laws of the mid-sixties. Also, check vertical files (newspaper clippings) on blacks, Negroes, segregation, Ku Klux Klan, and related topics. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); ABHM On-Line These are areas across the country that prohibit Black people from being in public after the sun sets. There's often less focus on the racism that existed, and continues to exist, in places like the Midwest. Phone: (414) 209-3640 They were unable to settle in the kinds of small communities they had inhabited in the South. Retrieved from UW-System Archives, Melissa Touche (Baca), Social Justice ReporterFebruary 16, 2020, Sociologist James Loewen, an anti-racism advocate who spoke at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in 2016, wrote in his book Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism that a sundown town is any organized jurisdiction that for decades kept African Americans or other groups from living in it and was thus all white. This story was inspired by a question shared with WHYsconsin. Sundown suburbs developed a little later from 1900 and 1968. "All white" is in quotes because some towns allowed one black family to remain when they drove out the rest. Others passed laws barring African Americans after dark or prohibiting them from owning or renting property. Of course, there is no doubt that sundown towns existed in the South and that white Southerners pushed Black people out of their communities. This allowed maids and workmen to provide unskilled labor during the day. Most sundown towns expelled their black residents, or agreed not to admit any, between 1890 and 1940. Sundown Towns: The Ugly Truth of America's Past - Medium In the fall of 2001, I visited my hometown of Decatur, Illinois, to headline the second Decatur Writers Conference. Sundown Towns by State - History and Social Justice When asked to think about the history of racism in the United States, many people think first about slavery and segregation in the South. UWL alumni Jennifer DeRocher, who now works as an assistant librarian at the La Crosse Public library,chose to do her history senior capstone research project on La Crosses history as a possible sundown town. But we had what were called Sundown Laws, where people of color could not be in any of the major cities after nighttime based on these [], [] In Loewens view the true nadir only began when Northern Republicans ceased supporting Southern blacks rights around 1890, and it lasted until the Second World War.