What is a "sundown town"?

[cabell]

pennski commented on my last entry wondering about the phenomenon of "sundown towns," which I had mentioned. Since many people in the US are probably unaware of this phenomenon as well, I thought I'd give it its own entry.

The term "sundown town" comes from town line signs like the one posted at the city limits of Manitowoc, WI in 1960. (aardvark_gumbo and I

Comments

[belleweather]

Also in the early 30s, Edina, Minnesota had a sign at the city limit reading "Not one Negro, not one Jew."

This cracks me up, considering that Edina has long been trying to annex it's nearest neighbor, St. Louis Park, which is quite possibly the most Jewish suburb anywhere outside of New York.

[cabell]

Yeah, I assume that St. Louis Park IS a Jewish suburb largely because Jews were excluded from surrounding communities.

[moiety_tx]

The area we grew up in definitely has towns like this too. You remember what Anna stands for, right? :( It's also very much what I always heard about New Madrid.

[cabell]

Anna is mentioned in Loewen's article for the UU, yeah. I hadn't specifically heard that about New Madrid, but based on what I know of the family history of a classmate whose family was FROM New Madrid, it's not surprising...

[cabell]

Do you have sources for that? That's Loewen's assertion on the genesis of the term, and in general I trust his research. I'm sure the phrase did exist prior to the sign; it's also possible that other, similar signs existed but that the one in Manitowoc was referenced more directly when the term was introduced.

I would reiterate that sundown towns as manifestations of strict residential segregation at the town-level were far more prevalent in the North than in the South, however.

[cabell]

Ah, okay. Loewen himself writes in his UU article:

"Sundown towns are communities that for decades-formally or informally-kept out African Americans or other groups. They are so named because some marked their city limits with placards like the one a former resident of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, remembers from the early 1960s: 'Nigger, Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On You In Our Town.'"

http://www.uuworld.org/life/articles/90579.shtml

The minor difference there is the substitution of the word "down" in the Manitowoc sign versus "set" in the Hawthorne one. One could argue that it's thus slightly linguistically closer to the term, but obviously the connotations/denotations are virtually the same. You're right that I should specify from signs LIKE this. I'm curious, though, if Loewen gives any examples that do actually come from the South.

[balancingforce]

At the 2000 Census, Manitowoc had 202 persons identifying as Black, 31,713 as white, and about 2100 as other races. They are clustered in small groups of five to twenty-five persons in a series of blocks scattered primarily on the south end and the center of the city.

County-wide 2007 estimates list 415 black persons out of 80,928

[the_moonshiner]

I checked out Loewen's database and just found out I grew up in a fucking sundown town. God dammit.