Sundown Towns – An American Secret
By
John C Abercrombie
Today is day 27 of 28 and we look at the effects that the fear and lack of knowledge bestows on American citizens. We look at Sundown towns – Towns where it is illegal or common practice to harrass Blacks just for being there after sundown.
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The earliest legal restrictions on the nighttime activities and movements of African Americans and other ethnic minorities date back to the colonial era. The general court and legislative assembly of New Hampshire passed “An Act to Prevent Disorders in The Night” in 1714.
Whereas great disorders, insolvencies and burglaries are oft times raised and committed in the nighttime by Indian, Negro, and Mulatto Servants and Slaves to the Disquiet and hurt of her Majesty’s subjects, No Indian, Negro, or Mulatto is to be from Home after 9 o’clock.
Notices emphasizing and re-affirming the curfew were published in The New Hampshire Gazette in 1764 and 1771.
While the myth that Blacks were so happy enslaved, the truth is that Whites were completely scared out of their minds that slaves would retaliate. This gave rise to laws that mandated slave owners must carry guns to church as this was an optimum time for a slave revolt. Laws were passed to prevent more than a small number of Blacks ever congregating because of fear. A fear that seems to live today.
Following the end of Reconstruction, thousands of towns passed laws that prohibited Blacks from being in town after sundown. This included all previously enslaved and free and shows the extreme fear on the behalf of White people.
The sundown towns were part of the imposition of Jim Crow laws and resulted in segregationist practices. In most cases, the exclusion was official town policy or was promulgated by the community’s real estate agents via exclusionary covenants governing who could buy or rent property. In others, the policy was enforced through intimidation. This intimidation could occur in a number of ways, including harassment by law enforcement officers. Though widely believed to be a thing of the past—racially restrictive covenants were struck down by the Supreme Court in its 1948 Shelley v. Kraemer decision—many hundreds of towns continue to effectively exclude black people and other minorities in the twenty-first century.
In 1844, Oregon, which had banned slavery, banned African Americans from the territory altogether. Those who failed to leave could expect to receive lashings under a law known as the “Peter Burnett Lash Law”, named for Provisional Supreme Judge Peter Burnett. No persons were ever lashed under the law; it was quickly amended to replace lashing with forced labor, and eventually repealed the following year after a change in the makeup of the legislature. However, additional laws aimed at Blacks entering Oregon were ratified in 1849 and 1857, the last of which was not repealed until 1926. This remained law in Oregon and was the foreshadowing of future laws restricting where minorities could live, not only in Oregon but other jurisdictions.
Outside Oregon, other places looked to laws and legislation to restrict black people from residing within cities, towns, and states. In 1853, all blacks were banned from entering the state of Indiana. Those who were caught in the state and unable to pay the fine were punished by being re-enslaved and sold at auction. Similar bans on all Black migration were passed in Michigan, Ohio, and Iowa.
New laws were enacted in the 20th century. One example is Louisville, Kentucky, whose mayor proposed a law in 1911 that would restrict Black people from owning property in certain parts of the city. This city ordinance reached public attention when it was challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court case Buchanan v. Warley in 1917. Ultimately, the court decided that the laws passed in Louisville were unconstitutional, thus setting the legal precedent that similar laws could not exist or be passed in the future. This one legal victory did not stop towns from developing into sundown towns. City planners and real estate companies used their power and authority to ensure that White communities remained White, and Black communities remained Black. These were private individuals making decisions to personally benefit themselves, their companies’ profits, or their cities’ alleged safety, so their methods in creating sundown towns were often ignored by the courts. In addition to unfair housing rules, citizens turned to violence and harassment in making sure Black people would not remain in their cities after sundown. Whites in the North felt that their way of life was threatened by the increased minority populations moving into their neighborhoods and racial tensions started to build. This often boiled over into violence, sometimes extreme, such as the 1943 Detroit race riot.
Since the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and especially since the Fair Housing Act of 1968’s prohibition of racial discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing, the number of sundown towns has decreased. However, as sociologist James W. Loewen writes in his book, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (2005), it is impossible to precisely count the number of sundown towns at any given time, because most towns have not kept records of the ordinances or signs that marked the town’s sundown status. He further notes that hundreds of cities across America have been sundown towns at some point in their history.
Additionally, Loewen writes that sundown status meant more than just that African Americans were unable to live in these towns. Any Black people who entered or were found in sundown towns after sunset were subject to harassment, threats, and violence, including lynching.
The Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education ruled segregation of schools unconstitutional in 1954. Loewen argues that the case caused some municipalities in the South to become sundown towns: Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky saw drastic drops in Black populations living in those states following the decision.
This makes it seem like law enforcement still believes these laws exist and must be enforced.
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Sundown Towns
Cullman, Alabama
Looking at the Worst Towns in America: Sundown Towns | Prism of the Past
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Welcome to Prism of the Past, a weekly series about historical events, people, and situations, from the fascinating to the forgotten.
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Book
Sundown Town
Who we are is not always who we must be to survive. In 1898, Big Henry Stevens leads hundreds of African-American coal miners and their families from Alabama to Illinois. When they arrive, the miners learn the mine owners lied to them. Instead of good pay for honest work, they were strikebreakers crossing picket lines. With no money and nowhere to go, they were stuck. Meanwhile, the fledgling United Mine Workers of America was prepared to do whatever was necessary to stop the unsuspecting miners—including murder. Sundown Town is based on the true story of the resultant war between these two groups who simply wanted what they felt best for their families and friends.
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Sundown Towns examines thousands of all-white American towns that were – and still are, in some instances – racially exclusive by design.
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real case histories that illustrate the unique challenges posed to African Americans and how they were solved
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Uncle Phil – Brotha Didn’t Realize He Was In The Infamous Sundown Town In Vidor, Texas
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—Isabel Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South—and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America
We all think we know the South. Even those who have never lived there can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War,Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits of the region are stranger and more complex than much of the country tends to acknowledge. In South to America, Imani Perry shows that the meaning of American is inextricably linked with the South, and that our understanding of its history and culture is the key to understanding the nation as a whole.
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Sundown Towns | Dark History
Sundown Towns are places people of color know they are not welcome after dark. Despite claims they are not, Sundown Towns still are very much a thing.
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We know what the definition of racism is – it’s prejudice or discrimination against people of different races. A racist person believes that his or her race is superior and that other races are inferior.
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Sundown towns was a term I heard for the first time in my life after moving with my wife and 7 month old daughter almost 3,000 miles. I was very familiar with the workings of the system, being exposed to the worst that law enforcement had to offer to Blacks.
There are many towns that practice this, although there are few laws on the books enforcing it. More than once, I have been forced to question if the practice is alive and well.
The practice grown out of ignorance. People operating on fears and myths that lump all people in the same basket as a few. Knowledge is the bright spot in determining the future success of our country. You must consider that if you feel immune, you should only ask your question, if this succeeds, who is next?
Lets work to end the madness.