Often as a suburb formed or shortly thereafter, it got rid of black residents who lived there prior to incorporation. Sundown suburbs formed a little later, mostly from 1900 to 1968. Between 18, thousands of independent communities across the United States drove out their black populations or took steps to forbid African Americans from living in them. “Sundown suburbs” could be even larger, such as Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles Levittown, on Long Island and Warren, a Detroit suburb. Sometimes entire counties went sundown, usually when their county seats did. Independent sundown towns range in size from hamlets like Alix, Arkansas, population 185, to large cities like Appleton, Wisconsin, with 57,000 residents in 1970. 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.” The term itself was rarely used east of Ohio, but intentionally white communities were common in the East, indeed throughout the nation-except in the traditional South, where they were rare. Sundown towns are communities that for decades-formally or informally-kept out African Americans or other groups. To my astonishment, I have found 500 sundown towns in Illinois alone-and now estimate that, by 1970, their peak, 10,000 existed in the United States.
Initially, 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 resolved to write a book about the Sundown Town phenomenon. But yes, every one of these towns prohibited black residents, and so, that evening, the idea that intentional sundown towns were everywhere in America, or at least everywhere in the Midwest, hit me right between the eyes. Growing up, I knew these towns were all white, but it never occurred to me that this might be on purpose. To my amazement, twenty people came down, and they told me stories about every town around Decatur. In the fall of 2001, I visited my hometown of Decatur, Illinois, to headline the second Decatur Writers Conference.Īt the end of my address, which was on ideas I explored in my best-selling book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, I mentioned my ongoing research on American towns that are intentionally all white-sometimes known as “sundown towns.” I invited those who knew something about the subject to come forward and talk with me.
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