Text/Fast Wind
Sundown Towns, a poetic name, is a nightmare for black people.
Warning signs for Sunset Town
For much of the 20th century, thousands of all-white Towns in the United States banned Blacks from entering after nightfall, and these towns and neighborhoods became known as Sunset Towns. Sunset Town was usually allowed to pass blacks during the day, especially if they worked there. But they had to leave after dark, or they risked arrest, beatings, and even murder from white residents.
Sunset Town is the living Human Eradication Project
In 1951, a three-day riot took place after a black bus driver, Harvey Clark, moved his family to Cicero, Chicago. 4,000 white men attacked his apartment, and the family escaped, but the white man set fire to the entire apartment.
Cicero's riots in 1951
The origins of Sunset Town can be traced back to colonial times, when in 1759 New Hampshire banned non-white people from walking at night on the grounds that "blacks would drink at night, steal, and riot." Since then, many urban communities have either explicitly or implicitly let blacks know they were not welcome there.
First, they used exclusivity laws to make these areas less attractive to African Americans, and second, they resorted to violence, especially when white police officers and residents intimidated black travelers who drove by, warning them not to stay in the town for too long.
A shot of a black civil rights activist shooting a white man
This may be inconceivable because it is well known that after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery in the United States, blacks were legally equal to whites, but many white legislators in the South deprived African Americans of countless rights through discriminatory policies. In 1919, an armed white mob in Corbin, Kentucky, blatantly rounded up about 300 black men, women, and children, violently driving them to a train bound for other towns.
In those times, many blacks began to migrate away from the South, and from 1916 to 1970, more than 6 million blacks migrated from the South to the North, the Midwest, and the West. They had hoped to live a good life elsewhere in the United States, but unfortunately, racial discrimination is everywhere, even in the North.
Stills from the American drama Lovecraft Country, which reflects the history of Sunset Town
The southern town of Sunset would be a straightforward warning to the Negroes. For example, a notorious sign hanging outside Alex, Arkansas:, don't let the sun set in this county. Further south, in the town of Mena, Arkansas, the tagline was an advertisement: "Cool summer, mild winter, no blizzards, no blacks." ”
Northern, Midwestern, and Western towns may not have such naked warning signs, but they are equally inclined to enforce these rules with brutal violence. Historic Route 66 is a famous example: by the 1930s, 44 of the 89 counties bordering the highway were Sunset County.
Route 66 was once a black no-go destination
In 1920, in Duluth, Minnesota, three black circus performers were kidnapped by a white mob from a local prison, beaten in the street, and hung from a telephone pole. Decades later, in Vienna, Illinois, when a black man escaped from prison, a group of white thugs took to the streets and set fire to nearly all African-American homes, forcing nearly all black residents to flee.
At the beginning of the last century, the American people lynched black people
It's hard to know exactly how many sunset towns there are in the United States, and sociologist James Rowan estimates that at its peak in 1970 there were as many as ten thousand sunset towns across the country.
As sunset towns grew longer and longer, a black travel writer named Victor Green wrote a Green Book for Black Motorists, a "survival guide" for black travelers that included a list of restaurants, hotels, shops, and other businesses that welcomed them.
Black Motorists Green Book
Today, while Sunset Town is thought to have disappeared, some black travelers insist they still exist in some form. In 2020, a black hiker named Marco Williams described his uneasy experiences while traveling to Kentucky. He said: "The cashier told me that you had better not be here after dark." It's a sunset town. ”
And the few black residents who used to live in Sunset Town describe how they feel when they go out: "Every time I go out, there are always a few pairs of eyes staring at me, which makes me uneasy. ”
References: "Sundown Towns", "Inside The Little-Known History Of America's Sundown Towns"