Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism“Don't let the sun go down on you in this town.” We equate these words with the Jim Crow South but, in a sweeping analysis of American residential patterns, award-winning and bestselling author James W. Loewen demonstrates that strict racial exclusion was the norm in American towns and villages from sea to shining sea for much of the twentieth century. Weaving history, personal narrative, and hard-nosed analysis, Loewen shows that the sundown town was—and is—an American institution with a powerful and disturbing history of its own, told here for the first time. In Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere, sundown towns were created in waves of violence in the early decades of the twentieth century, and then maintained well into the contemporary era. Sundown Towns redraws the map of race relations, extending the lines of racial oppression through the backyard of millions of Americans—and lobbing an intellectual hand grenade into the debates over race and racism today. |
Contents
26008 Part 2 | 45 |
26008 Part 3 | 135 |
26008 Part 4 | 227 |
26008 Part 5 | 297 |
26008 Part 6 | 377 |
26008 Backmatter | 453 |
26008 Photo credits | 525 |
| 527 | |
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according African Ameri African American families African Americans lived all-white towns Anna Arkansas black family black household black population California census chapter Chevy Chase Chicago Chinese Americans Civil Rights colored Comanche County Darien decades Democrats desegregation Detroit drove e-mail example exclusion expulsion grew Grosse Pointe high school historian housing Illinois independent sundown towns Indiana interracial James Loewen Jews Kenilworth Klan Ku Klux Klan lynching Martinsville metropolitan area miles Missouri move Myakka City Nadir nearby Negro neighborhoods neighbors never nigger North northern Ohio ordinance overwhelmingly white Ozarks Pana Park Pinckneyville problem race relations racial racism realtors Republican residential segregation residents of sundown shows social South Springfield stay strikebreakers suburban sundown county sundown policies sundown signs sundown suburbs sundown towns tells Texas tion told towns and suburbs University Press Villa Grove Washington West white supremacy workers Wyandotte York