Prometheus 6

So I sent out the link to Leave or Die to one of my email lists. Got back a little more detail.

Shining a light on sundown towns
Large number of whites-only communities surprised author
01:24 PM CST on Monday, November 7, 2005
By JEROME WEEKS / The Dallas Morning News

Vidor, Texas, is infamous for driving away black residents. Considered a Ku Klux Klan stronghold, Vidor has excluded African-Americans to the point of violence. It gained national notoriety in 1992-'93 by foiling a court-ordered desegregation of public housing in East Texas. The nine black people, including five children, who moved there were driven out by protests and threats.

And you may well be living in a similar community and not know it.

According to a new study, whites-only discrimination has prevailed in thousands of areas across the country, North and South. While Vidor is an extreme example, the same principle of whites-only residency has been in effect in other communities, not through outright threats but through local laws, social pressures, police harassment and land buyouts.

These are places such as Grosse Pointe, Mich., and Darien, Conn.

All of Idaho.

And Highland Park in Texas.

Such towns may even be in the majority among incorporated areas in America, says James W. Loewen in Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (New Press, $29.95). That means thousands of segregated places that Dr. Loewen calls sundown towns because of the sign that used to stand outside a number of the worst (in some cases, well into the 1990s). It warned blacks not to stay after dark.

One critic has called the book "a hand grenade." But Dr. Loewen says he was as shocked as anyone by his data: "I came to this conclusion kicking and screaming."

Want more? Check the Wikipedia entry for "Sundown Towns." Or if you really want to get deep, check Dr. Loewen's web site. His book is the basis for the linked review and it may be even more detailed than the Leave or Die site...I'm not done going through it yet. But here's the mere introduction to the introduction to his book (said intro is a 21 page pdf , by the way).

"Is it true that ‘Anna’ stands for ‘Ain’t No Niggers Allowed’?" I asked at the convenience store in Anna, Illinois, where I had stopped to buy coffee.

"Yes," the clerk replied. "That’s sad, isn’t it," she added, distancing herself from the policy. And she went on to assure me, "That all happened a long time ago."

"I understand [racial exclusion] is still going on?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied. "That’s sad."

—conversation with clerk, Anna, Illinois, October 2001

Yeah, that's sad, alright...

Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism author: James W. Loewen asin: 156584887X