Historical Database of Sundown Towns Select a state from the map below to view a list of sundown towns FL MI ME NY PA VA WV OH IN IL WI NC TN AR MO GA SC KY AL LA MS IA MN OK TX NM KS NE SD ND WY MT CO ID UT AZ NV OR WA CA NH VT RI CT NJ DE MD DC MA Welcome to the world's only registry of sundown towns. (Hindman died in 1998.). 'Sundown towns': Midwest confronts its complicated racial legacy Towns like Utica, Ohio, and Goshen, Ind., are beginning to come to terms with a legacy of racism that has largely evaded. In the familys first few months in Anna, Atarah and Amiyah received some naive questions from their white classmates. Like what? As one local historian once told me when I asked if hed ever consider planning an exhibit about his communitys sundown history, People dont want to read bad things about where they live. So, why hasnt it? Hartline grew up in Cobden, the town just north of Anna. The Sundown Towns interactive map uses the Sundown Towns Database to show the distribution and location of sundown towns across the United States. He calls black people animals. They were not to lash out or fight. But the activity spread after the Civil War and during the Reconstruction era. And I think it has to be said that what your son has done is nothing short of a miracle. He said he cant think of a single incident in Anna that had race at its center that had taken place in his years of public service. Any website our stories appear on must include a prominent and effective way to contact you. In 2017, in the aftermath of the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a white Anna resident named Tabitha Tripp said at a Union County board meeting that she was concerned about hate incidents in the county, and she asked the county commissioners to consider a resolution, identical to one that had recently passed the Illinois House, condemning hate groups. The term meant. History and Social Justice Website Copyright 2023, Using Lies My Teacher Told Me and Teaching What Really Happened, Resources for Teaching with Lies My Teacher Told Me, Teachers Corner: Teaching with Lies My Teacher Told Me, Contact Jim Loewen to Speak to Your Group, Causing Change With Lies My Teacher Told Me, Works Inspired or Influenced by Lies My Teacher Told Me, Useful Quotations about History and Social Justice, Native American Issues, Including the Explorers, Teaching Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, Civil Rights Movement to Modern Times: c. 1945 Now, Alphabetical Map of Sundown Towns by State, How to Research and Teach About Sundown Towns, Using Research Information to Help a Sundown Town Overcome Its Past, Loewens Work on Standardized Testing Used by Others, Embarrassing Questions about Standardized Tests. My talk was held at the Springfield public library which, I must point out, is officially named Lincoln Library, The Public Library of Springfield, Illinois. In 1990, the median owner-occupied house in Tuxedo Park, perhaps the wealthiest suburb of New York City, was worth more than $500,000 (the highest category in the census). The look on their faces was terror, Smith said. 43 would require employees prove that their protected characteristics were a motivating factor for being discriminated against when previously the requirement was that simply showed it was a contributing factor., The NAACP also referenced anecdotal examples of hate crimes, and data which showed Black motorists were 75% more likely to be pulled over and stopped and searched by police enforcement than their white counterparts. Sunset in Anna, Ill. Well I was interested in this, but the town I grew up in Montana, is on this and it shouldnt be. He added, It was just a racist town.. I picked up the book in part because its author, James W. Loewen, a sociologist who taught at the University of Vermont and at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, is from Decatur, Illinois. That made her feel like her blackness was seen as a threat. https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/08/26/sundown-towns-black-travel. Cairos population, roughly 2,500, is now about half of what it was in 1990, though people began leaving earlier. Yet when Smith ran the idea by friends and school guidance counselors, just about everyone asked her the same thing: Dont you know what A-N-N-A stands for? That (especially in the Northeast) has everything to do with immigration and climate, not racism. The high school was good and it had a strong sports program. I have to do what women and mothers have to do, Smith said. So is the Anna City Council, the Anna Police Department and every teacher at Anna-Jonesboro High School, the public high school serving Anna. Around 1980, Annas black population grew to about a few dozen residents. And it was sitting right next to the population sign. Ive heard about some version of this sign from a few people in Anna, but I have yet to find physical proof of it a document, a photo, anything. Its before 9 a.m., and Ive already encountered more Abraham Lincoln-related memorials and municipal signage than I thought possible. I was surprised by the number of northern Wisconsin towns and cities listed. Cairo has long been emblematic of a future that Anna fears: the decline of a once-thriving town. Sundown towns are communities that for decadesformally or informallykept out African Americans or other groups. It is time these stories become a more visible part of our states history. I was born here and lived in the south for many years, so I dont see skin color, said Hunter, who retired in May after nearly two decades on the force. And most of you can't even stand ten toes down on the reality of this country cause you want to remove history instead.Keep up the good work!! Cicero had such a reputationin the late 1960s that civil rights marches were held there on the subject of housing discrimination. Well, it's history and I like to learn. These towns openly discriminated against Black residents and visitors, and violence was a common tactic. Whether youre a local history buff, a genealogy whiz, a researcher, teacher, student, librarian, coffee shop owner or community organizer, I hope youll try to answer that question with me. Though Brumleve said many residents supported the preservation of the Union, Evans support was contingent on the continuation of slavery, and his letters show his increasing contempt for the war as the Lincoln administration took steps toward emancipation. She described what she saw and he knew she was in Anna. If Anna has changed, how? NBC Universal, Inc. Decades ago, South Florida was segregated in some areas, Black people could work, but they couldn't stay overnight. The whole world., Annas Walmart draws a more diverse crowd. How fortunate we are to have so little of darkest Africa among us, the Gazette wrote in January 1903, adding that it would be presumptuous to place the negro in the places where only white men should fill as long as this is a white mans country.. This allowed maids and workmen to provide unskilled labor during the day. But the city is still commercially alive. Id ask. We came here on the second stop of The Associated Press' road trip across America, a reporting journey that three of us . Where were sundown towns in Illinois? Sign up for The Weekly Dispatch, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country. Thats why shes interested in looking at how sundown towns operate. "Sundown suburbs" could be even larger, such as Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles; Levittown, on Long . I worked nights for 13 years. The Union County Museum sits about five miles north of Anna in Cobden, a community known for its apple and peach orchards. Unfortunately, I grew up in this area. So stupid to publish this crap. Nokomis. Racial covenants in the deeds. They led James to a pair of steel arches that spanned the intersection in the center of Cairos commercial district, which was crowded with thousands of onlookers, most of whom came as word spread about James arrest. Growing up near Phoenix, Smith said her familys friends called them the Huxtables, a reference to the upper-middle class black family of The Cosby Show. She feels her parents, and the high standards they set, prepared her well for her current life: If anybody was going to come to Anna, God picked somebody that had the right credentials to be able to come here, she said. He recalled an incident in 2016, when he was leaving the Farm Fresh milk store after school. For the small, independent towns all around the state that are still all white or almost all white, its like the civil rights movement never happened, he told me. I love all the obvious white (and racist) people coming in here telling Black people about our experience and that we need to provide proof as to why their beloved sundown town shouldnt be on the list. Like many other small towns, Anna has lost industry. Green Book Sites. But yes, lets believe the white man- they have done so much GOOD for us so far. AP Road Trip: Racial Tensions in Americas Sundown Towns. AP NEWS, 20 Apr. 24 Farnsworth Street | Boston, MA 02210 "Green Book" takes its title from a travel guide book published between 1936 and 1966 called "The Negro Motorist Green Book" that helped Black people avoid particularly hostile areas, such as sundown towns, as they drove through the country. The term "sundown town" applies to places that, via policy, violence or both, barred black people from town after dark; as the book explains, the phrase is derived from "the signs that many. "I imagined I would find maybe ten of these communities in Illinois, where I planned more research than in any other single state, and perhaps fifty across the country. I cant tell what color anybody is at night, Hunter said. Sundown towns, or grey towns, were all-white neighborhoods in the United States that used discriminatory local laws, intimidation, or violence to keep their town all-white. There are some shes decided not to have over: Im not that uppity friend that Im too good for them now, but Im not introducing them to my friends here. I first learned about Anna in a book called Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, about the thousands of communities across the country that, for much of the 20th century, kept themselves white. If you share republished stories on social media, wed appreciate being tagged in your posts. He had a friend who lived in Anna and had spent weekends there. Note: This story contains graphic descriptions of violence. This story is not subject to our Creative Commons license. Most people I met in Anna, Illinois, wish the racist lore behind the citys name would go away. Anna, Illinois in 2020 is trying to shed the reputation that it has of being a sundown town. On the map towns are shown using different colors, which indicate the 'confirmation status' of each town shown (ranging from 'possible' to 'surely'). Bae, drive fast and keep going, she remembers him saying. Some people still do. In Lovecraft Country, the journey begins in Chicago. Anna is a city of a little more than 4,000 people located in the middle of Union County, where soybean fields and flatlands to the north give way to the forests and sandstone canyons of southern Illinois. Ignorance? He disagreed. Annas historical resistance to black people is, and has long been, well known in the region. [Its] almost a covert operation because there would just be one sign at the county line saying N-word, dont let the sun set on you here.. The question is: How? The man was white. An Anna resident named Randy Miller, who is white, said that most people in town, including him, dont know of any specific incident that led Anna to become known as A-N-N-A. One boy, Amiyah told Smith, yelled to her, Come on, blackie, and get in the photo. Amiyah looked at him, turned around and walked away. I think the whole world needs to change not just Anna. Loewen discovered that many of the sundown towns would burn signs and that theres no official record that some existed at all which shows people continue to erase the dirty parts of our history that we dont want to remember, Taylor says. In response to a comment, I think that the KKK originated in Pulaski TN. Taylors latest book, Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America," examines the historical role and the impact of the Green Book a travel guide printed from 1936 to 1967 to help Black Americans find safe places to stay, shop and eat on the road. Ma https://twitter.com/digitalsista/status/1411762780718391296. What a bunch of manure. You may also be interested in exploring interactive maps exploring the enduring legacy of Redlining Maps on the racial distribution of American towns and cities. Its a shame that wording is even out there when it comes to Anna, Hartline said. Just own it. He historically situates the rise of the sundown town movement in the years following the Civil War; describes the mechanisms of violence, threats . He said people his age in the surrounding counties know about the lore of A-N-N-A and consider Anna to be just a bad place for people that are different.. Smith told me her family feels pressure to always be on its best behavior. For much of the 20th century, Anna was almost entirely white, except for a handful of black residents at different times. He declined to be interviewed for this story. But these incidents happened. Trust me, I have lived in many states, and traveled to all, and know that racism exists. They are so named because some marked their city limits with placards warning specific groups of people to stay away after the sun went down. Taking information from James W. Loewen's database at http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/sundowntownsshow.php?state=IL, this map gathers together two categories, towns and counties that. Hes been Annas mayor for nearly 20 years, and he served in its Police Department for 15 years before that. Sundown Towns. Not sure why everyone is interpreting your town being on this map as it being a Sundown Town. I wish we had more diversity on our staff, said Brett Detering, the schools principal. Giacomazzo, Bernadette. Its a part of our heritage, but were changing that, Dexter said. I beg to differ. We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. Michael Hunter leaned forward in his camouflage-printed office chair. We just learn from each other, Arieh said. Snopes and the Snopes.com logo are registered service marks of Snopes.com, A photograph shows a sign in a "sundown town" in 2022 that reads "Whites only within city limits after dark. They then dragged his body through the streets, set it on fire and later cut off his head and stuck it on a hitching post. In a way, though, it doesnt matter. People around the area, not just in Anna, have called him derogatory names based on his race, he said. I think that articles and misinformation like this lead to more racism and ignorance. PERU, Ill., Sept. 23 Here in this historic sundown town, population 10,300, where the Illinois River and a railroad stretch for miles across a scenic emerald valley, a Black body was found . Not surprising, but still horrifying nonetheless. Schenectady and Troy are also decently populated for the region. The term "sundown town" is familiar to many African Americans. Travelers had no way of knowing where the sundown towns were located because there wasnt a map until James Loewen researched and wrote the book Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, she says. Smith thought hers was the only black family in Anna when she arrived, though she thinks a few more families have moved in since. A Historic Travel Guide to Jim Crow America. There was one exception: the Sales family. Sundown Towns by State. History and Social Justice, https://justice.tougaloo.edu/sundown-towns/using-the-sundown-towns-database/state-map/. Later that night, I realized what shook me most about our conversation: He didnt pause before he said what he said. He complains that black soldiers are treated better than white soldiers. Many sundown towns held on with a firm grip during the twentieth century. To advertise their actions, the towns sometimes posted sundown signs on the highway or in the railroad station. Some posted. He worked odd jobs, according to the 1910 census, and she was a washerwoman, cleaning clothes. That's the proof. Even today, southern Illinois has more in common culturally with Kentucky and Missouri than with its other neighbors; for years, Confederate battle flags were draped on a storefront on Annas Main Street without much objection. Sundown towns, also known as sunset towns, gray towns, or sundowner towns, are all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States that practice a form of racial segregation by excluding non-whites via some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation, and violence. Between the 1890s and the 1940s, Sundown Towns became a popular trend in Northern states. Im just sorry we have to talk about that. He added: That is not the Anna I know.. If one came here from a link, they expected a recent map, not historical data. The green ones with white letters. As it visually illustrates the pervasiveness of sundown towns across the country, it . Safety is a priority and this is sadly, still needed. You cant sell our material separately or syndicate it. So I went in, too. Seeing this honestly gives me hope that people can and do change.. Assumption. The sundown town was really a way that the North and West patrolled and monitored race without having the dirty signs of saying 'colored only' or 'whites only,' she says. Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Much of his research on sundown towns led him back to his home state, where I now live and which I wanted to better understand. ". And until people are willing to at least acknowledge that its there, theres not going to be any change.. Its pure fiction. Your map link has an extra h at the beginning of the address, resulting in an error when you click on it. The sign can be seen in a scene where Shirley's driver, played by Viggo Mortensen, drives their car through a sundown town: While sundown town signs are no longer a prevalent feature on America's roadways, racial discrimination can still be an obstacle for Black drivers. Incorrigible people incapable of empathy or evolution. I hopped into the backseat of Taylors blue station wagon, and a man named Gregory Walker, 69, sat in the passenger seat. That meant a lot to her. To my astonishment, I have found 500 sundown towns in Illinois aloneand now estimate that, by 1970, their peak, 10,000 existed in the United States." I took a seat at the bar. He didnt look around the room to see whether anyone could hear us. What Im talking about is seeing him bring that community together. Things do change. Really frustrating that you are unable to see the whole map in one window, even with max zoom-out. Read on below to see how we crunched the numbers and how Stanford end up as the most racist place in Illinois. Years before, when she was new to Illinois and living in Murphysboro, about 25 miles north, she got lost driving somewhere on U.S. Highway 51 after dark and called her husband for directions. Then, in a moment that would lodge itself in regional memory, a 23-year-old white woman from Anna was found dead in November 1909 in an alley in Cairo. Keep up the hard work! ANNA, it reads. They dont deserve the economy. About 100 steps away is the grave of Anna Pelley, marked by a sculpture of a woman on her knees, crying, with the inscription: A life sacrificed but remembered by friends.. Her eldest son, Arieh Hart, had an idea. But there are some black people here, and more, it seems, during the workday. Taylor says during her travels she came across so-called sundown towns all-white communities or neighborhoods that intentionally exclude Black people and other minorities through discriminatory systems. Thank you! You cant use our work to populate a website designed to improve rankings on search engines or solely to gain revenue from network-based advertisements. A man two stools over from me struck up a conversation. You may be showing yours by using the term, colored people.. Instead, he found hundreds, from neighborhoods on Chicagos North Shore to suburbs in the center of the state to small towns in southern Illinois, such as Anna. This is the kind of thing that makes her wish she had moved to Anna sooner. Logan Jaffe is the engagement reporter for ProPublica Illinois. Some white parents, particularly upset about the post featuring Arieh, spoke to administrators about it, Smith said. But the stories of how these communities became or stayed mostly white are often unknown, ignored or not fully told. TrackingNumber.org I've just tracked a package sent to me in London from California. Was Your Town a Sundown Town? . Hunter told me that when hed pull over black motorists, they would sometimes tell him during traffic stops that they knew what Anna stood for and why hed stopped them. Signs were sometimes posted saying things like, "Whites only within the city limits after dusk," and other times the message was carried by reputation. 2021, https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-race-and-ethnicity-violence-db28a9aaa3b800d91b65dc11a6b12c4c. The term sundown town applies to places that, via policy, violence or both, barred black people from town after dark; as the book explains, the phrase is derived from the signs that many of [these places] formerly sported at their corporate limits signs that usually said Nigger, Dont Let the Sun Go Down on You in __.. Hello, people of Illinois and people not of Illinois: Im heading north on the Amtrak Lincoln Service from Springfield to Chicago. I told Walker about Easter Smith and Arieh Hart. The lights were on at a place called the Brick House Grill, and if you were out on South Main Street on a Friday night in February, chances are, thats where you were going. Credit: Vignesh Ramachandran/ProPublica Illinois), (Source: Mapbox. After a white supremacist mob intimidated Black schoolchildren on the banks of Lake Lanier in 1968, a WSB-TV reporter interviewed Cumming citizens about the incident. Sorry not buying that this map is backed by any real data. Also, cant close or minimize the key, which covers a large block of the map at all times. Smith shrugs it off. It was new since the last time I had been in town. Glens Falls, does NOT. ", In May 2022, an image went viral that supposedly showed a sign in a modern-day "sundown town" that read "whites only within city limits after dark.". But there aren't any "sundown" places, including the one's marked on the map near me, that I would tell someone to not visit because of the color of their skin. A Walmart and fast-food chains now cluster in Annas east end, near U.S. Highway 51. If I had a document for every racist experience towards me, I'd fill out at least a good half inch binder (I'm not black). Watkins said he . One woman who works in the area and who is black told me she hates it when shes assigned a shift in the town. Lexington. On the contrary, between about 1905 and 1968, about 80 percent of all suburbs of Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and other northern cities went sundown. However, ALL of the towns in Vermillion, Vigo (Terre Haute), and Parke counties should be on this map. I can tell you from clicking on the places Ive lived- for one just because theres not a lot of colored people living there does NOT mean its a sundown town! She told her husband that Anna was the place they needed to be. I always knew I grew up in a pretty racist area, but I went through the list of TX sundown towns on this map and there were 10 within a 30 mile radius of my hometown. PEKIN For years, some Illinois towns had the reputation of being a "sundown town," a city where it wasn't safe for Black people to be after dark. The Klan was started in Indiana so no surprises with the distribution of red dots. When Atarah made the high school basketball team, someone sent her a screenshot of a message telling her teammates to be nice to her because she is black. The information surrounding upstate New York is slightly inaccurate. There are a bunch that I would recommend avoiding after dark, but that would be for anyone regardless of skin color due to high crime rates. It's a skill.I did a thread for those saying there is no proof. When I called James Taylor, the man I had met at the Anna Walmart months before, he told me there was someone in Cairo I should meet. He purposely listed towns with few Black people in past Census because he says that is a great starting point. They are so named because some marked their city limits with placards warning specific groups of people to stay away after the sun went down. High 44F. How The Legacy Of Sundown Towns Affects Black Travelers. BuzzFeed News, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adeonibada/sundown-towns-racism-black-drivers-tiktok. Smith, 38, moved to Anna in 2016 with her six children: Arieh, 19; Atarah, 18; Amiyah, 16; Arojae, 15; Asaiah, 12; and Aseana, 11. We have official accounts for ProPublica on. [It looked] just like that, he added. As he told me about Annas origins, he pointed me to a book of letters published in the Jonesboro Gazette, written by the newspapers editor, James Evans, who left his job in 1862 to join the 109th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment for the Union Army but who, along with seven other officers from the 109th, was discharged from the Union Army for disloyalty. If you are already discussing your communitys history of racial exclusion, please email me. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact. Our local, county and state police would never tolerate that, and neither would our governor nor the people of our great state. In fact, many of Annas earliest residents were from Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.