WEBVTT - How Did Sundown Towns Say the Quiet Part Out Loud? 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:07.720 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff, 0:00:07.760 --> 0:00:14.000 Lauren vogelbam here. Before the nineteen seventies in America, before 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:18.079 the Civil Rights movement made national legal footholds and abolishing 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:22.840 racial segregation and discrimination, if you happened to be not white, 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:27.760 many places around the country implicitly or explicitly stated that 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:31.040 it was best for you to not hang around after nightfall, 0:00:31.680 --> 0:00:35.159 that it would be dangerous for you or sometimes deadly. 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:40.160 These places also strongly discouraged black people from living there, 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:43.519 and sometimes other people of color or of otherwise differing 0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:48.960 backgrounds too, such as Jewish Americans or Chinese Americans. These 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:52.199 places got the name sundown towns because they made it 0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:56.040 clear that not all were welcome after sunset, often with 0:00:56.120 --> 0:00:58.880 a sign posted at the city limit saying something to 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:01.480 the extent of don't let the sun go down on 0:01:01.520 --> 0:01:06.520 you here, perhaps accompanied by a slur of choice. And now, 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:10.440 the nineteen seventies are not ancient history by any means, 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:14.600 and some places like this are still operating as such today. 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:18.039 They may not be as blatant about their bigotry as 0:01:18.040 --> 0:01:21.360 they once were with literal signs, but they're still there. 0:01:21.840 --> 0:01:27.039 From small towns to swank neighborhoods to huge suburbs. For 0:01:27.120 --> 0:01:29.520 the article, this episode is based on How Stuff Works. 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:33.560 Spoke with sociologist James Loewen back in twenty twenty. He 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:37.280 literally wrote the book on the subject. It's called Sundown Towns, 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:42.559 a Hidden dimension of American Racism. He said, our history 0:01:42.600 --> 0:01:45.399 textbooks give us a picture of the United States where 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:47.880 we started out great, and we've been getting better, but 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:52.800 kind of automatically ever since. It isn't true. Sometimes we've 0:01:52.840 --> 0:01:56.640 gotten worse, and race relations is one of the areas 0:01:56.760 --> 0:02:02.120 where we got worse. After the Civil War and reconstruction, 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.640 African Americans and other Black Americans who had been forced 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:09.440 or born into slavery were freed and given some rights 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:12.720 under the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution. 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:18.440 But then progress stalled, and around eighteen ninety things started 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:23.080 getting worse for at least the next fifty years. Llewen 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:26.800 explained that the slide began with three seemingly disparate events 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:29.920 in December of eighteen ninety, all of which deserved their 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:34.160 own episodes, but in brief, there was the massacre at 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:38.040 Wounded Knee in South Dakota, in which US Army forces, 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:41.200 who were there to quash an upswell of Lakota culture 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:45.200 killed as many as three hundred Lakota men, women, and children, 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:48.440 a signal that Native Americans were not to be full 0:02:48.480 --> 0:02:53.440 participants in America's future. Then, in Mississippi, in response to 0:02:53.480 --> 0:02:57.000 those new amendments to the US Constitution, the state legislature 0:02:57.120 --> 0:03:01.160 drafted a new state constitution that essentially stripped voting rights 0:03:01.160 --> 0:03:05.840 from black citizens. And back at the national level, the 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:09.400 US Senate failed to pass the Lodge Bill, which would 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:13.239 have restored voting rights by explicitly protecting Black Americans from 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:17.160 being disenfranchised of their votes. It had previously passed in 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:20.280 the House, but was filibustered by conservatives in the Senate 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:22.880 and was dead in the water by eighteen ninety one. 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:28.240 Llewen said, even in the North, it became impossible to 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:31.360 claim that we were trying to be an unracist society, 0:03:32.000 --> 0:03:37.480 and so we went in the opposite direction. In the South, 0:03:37.640 --> 0:03:40.400 Jim Crow laws were being passed, and you can see 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:44.560 our whole episode about that. But they codified segregation and 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:47.800 made life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness harder for 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:52.240 black Americans. Partially in response to that, what's called the 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:55.520 Great Migration kicked off in the nineteen teens, in which 0:03:55.600 --> 0:03:58.880 millions of black people left the rural South for basically 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:02.680 anywhere else but mostly the Northeast, the Midwest, and the 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:08.320 West coast. Not everyone there was welcoming. More states took 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:13.200 voting rights away from black residents. Both history and contemporary 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:17.359 politics encouraged or emboldened white communities across the country to 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:23.200 view black people as non citizens, as undesirables. They pushed 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:26.479 black migrants and residents out of small towns and into 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:30.200 big cities, and often into specific neighborhoods in big cities. 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:34.240 In response, some white city residents with the means to 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:39.599 do so, fled to developing suburbs. Llewen in his book 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:45.599 defines sundown towns as any unorganized jurisdiction that for decades 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:48.599 kept African Americans or other groups from living in it, 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:54.400 and was thus all white on purpose. All white didn't 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:58.760 necessarily mean one hundred percent, but these places reduced people 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:01.279 of other backgrounds and skins in tones to a tiny 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:05.720 fraction of their population. Exceptions might have included a singular 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:09.960 family or live in domestic workers, in white households, people 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:13.760 living in hospitals, prisons, or colleges, or children of color 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:19.600 living with white families. Some communities literally physically forced black 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:23.520 people from their homes and neighborhoods. Some erected signs warning 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:28.680 them away. Some passed ordinances prohibiting black people from living there, 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:32.560 owning homes there, or going to school there. Some used 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:37.040 threats of violence or actual violence to keep them out. 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:40.480 These were the places that Victor Hugo Green warned black 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:43.760 motorists and families away from in The Green Book. You 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:46.960 can see our episode about that, But basically, the Green 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:50.240 Book was a pamphlet updated annually from nineteen thirty six 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:54.080 through nineteen sixty four that listed safe businesses and places 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:58.480 to stay if you were traveling while black. At the 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:03.040 height of Sundown Towns nineteen seventy, that's six years after 0:06:03.160 --> 0:06:06.880 the Civil Rights Act passed, researchers think that there were 0:06:06.920 --> 0:06:12.120 around ten thousand such places across the United States. Loewen's 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:16.440 original research, based on census numbers and oral and written histories, 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:20.200 shows that, for example, of the six hundred and seventy 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:22.960 one towns in Illinois with more than a thousand residents, 0:06:23.440 --> 0:06:27.360 seventy one percent were all white, and almost all of 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:32.960 those were all white on purpose. Loewen wrote, there's reason 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:37.560 to believe that more than half of all towns in Oregon, Indiana, Ohio, 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:41.800 the Cumberland, the Ozarks, and diverse other areas were also 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:47.120 all white on purpose. Sundown suburbs are found from Darien, Connecticut, 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:51.080 to La Jolla, California, and are even more prevalent. Indeed, 0:06:51.320 --> 0:06:57.000 most suburbs began life as sundown towns. Loewen kept a 0:06:57.080 --> 0:07:01.480 database of confirmed and possible sundown town He passed away 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:05.440 in twenty twenty one, but it's still being maintained. It's 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:08.760 a long list, covering every state in the lower forty eight. 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:12.480 It shows that the vast majority of sundown towns were 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:16.120 clustered in the northeast, the Midwest, the central plains, and 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:20.000 the west coast. In other words, outside of the Deep South. 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:23.960 Some places may simply have had black communities that were 0:07:24.000 --> 0:07:28.040 too large to drive off. Just for example, a Mississippi 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:31.000 had only six possible sundown towns that we know of, 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:36.080 compared with Illinois four hundred and fifty six. Places that 0:07:36.160 --> 0:07:40.040 are white on purpose proliferate less now from overt means 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:43.400 and more through the inertia of the past and methods 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:48.400 that are quieter and perhaps more sinister, by community leaders 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:52.680 suggesting that black people may be more comfortable elsewhere, by 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:56.720 whispers and cold shoulders by majority white police forces and 0:07:56.800 --> 0:08:01.480 public school educators, and by politicians who stoke fear with 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:04.840 claims that people with a different skin color or whose 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:10.520 family immigrated here recently, bring crime and other problems. Allewen 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:13.720 first published his book on sundowntowns in two thousand and five, 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:18.360 and a lot has happened since then, including some of 0:08:18.400 --> 0:08:22.120 these places having faced up to their racist past, albeit 0:08:22.320 --> 0:08:27.400 often with resistance. Loewen said, what people will say is 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:30.040 that was the old days. Why bring it up now? 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:34.440 I tell them two things. First, the reputation of the 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:38.160 town lives on and makes it stay overtly white, if 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:41.440 not all white, until you do something, until you make 0:08:41.480 --> 0:08:46.440 it unstay. And two, you are still legitimizing those people 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:48.480 in the town who think it was okay the way 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:54.000 it was. It's encouraging that during the height of the 0:08:54.000 --> 0:08:57.839 Black Lives Matter movement in twenty twenty, dozens of recovering 0:08:57.920 --> 0:09:04.000 sundowntowns held blmllys, one of them for example was Glendale, California. 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:07.319 At one time in the early nineteen hundreds, the city 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:10.880 had a black population of less than zero point two percent. 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:14.920 The city now has about two hundred and fifty thousand people, 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:19.120 and the black population is still only two percent. In 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:23.000 September of twenty twenty, the city passed resolution acknowledging its 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:27.600 racist past, apologizing for it, and condemning it, becoming the 0:09:27.600 --> 0:09:31.040 first city in the state to do so at the time. 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:34.920 The founder of the organization Black in Glendale, one Tanita 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:39.000 Harris Ligans, told the city council. I'm grateful that there 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:41.720 are community members who understand this is not just a 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:44.320 piece of paper, but that it comes with the energy 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:48.840 of atonement. And now do the work required behind it, 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:53.640 honor the contributions of the Diverse Community Coalition, and act 0:09:53.720 --> 0:09:57.760 on meaningful policies and programs that improve Black representation in 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:04.199 Glendale on all fronts. The work is continuing in many ways. 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:08.600 Other cities have come forward to recognize and renounce their 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:13.240 past practices, but even the identification of former sundown towns 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:17.000 is still a work in progress. It is an unpleasant 0:10:17.000 --> 0:10:20.720 reckoning to make, but this means that we don't know 0:10:20.840 --> 0:10:23.720 the true extent of the problem, which means we're not 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:27.040 fully equipped to discuss it and move forward in more 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:32.320 equitable ways. Researchers are on it, though, and Loewen's database 0:10:32.480 --> 0:10:36.360 is still collecting information. To see if your town or 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:39.440 county has a history as a sundown town, or to 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:43.280 add local information. You can check out the database for yourself. 0:10:44.040 --> 0:10:48.760 It's hosted by Tougaloo College, a historically black college in Jackson, Mississippi, 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:54.840 at Justice dot Tugalu dot edu. That's Justice dot tu 0:10:55.200 --> 0:11:04.040 g a l Oo dot edu. Today's episode is based 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:07.520 on the article Sundown Towns Hiding Racism right in the 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:10.560 Open on how Stuffworks dot com, written by John Donovan. 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:14.120 Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:17.720 Stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:20.880 more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:24.320 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.