Sundown Towns: The Ugly Truth of America’s Past
HBO Max’s “Lovecraft Country” shines a light on racism in the North
In HBO’s new series “Lovecraft Country,” the three main characters find themselves driving through a “sundown county” when they are stopped by a racist sheriff. Although they hadn’t committed any crimes, the sheriff made it clear that their crime was being Black in a county where Blacks were not allowed to be seen past dark.
It’s a particularly chilling scene as the sheriff informs them they have only minutes left to get out of the county limits before the sun goes down. If they don’t make it, he tells them he will kill them and there is no question this is no empty threat.
They can’t go over the speed limit to get out on time for fear of being pulled over. The sheriff follows them excruciatingly close in a slow-motion car chase scene that leaves the viewer holding their breath.
Sci-fi monsters show up later on, but their dangers pale in comparison to the nightmarish behavior of the humans in this show. It’s painfully obvious who the real monsters are here.
The North’s dark past
And surprisingly, this scene is not set in some small town in the Deep South, but in Massachusetts. The very same states that fought against slavery in the Civil War systematically removed Black Americans from their small towns and cities and made sure nobody who wasn’t white was able to move in.
Though many are familiar with the segregated past in the South, sundown towns north of the Mason-Dixon line are lesser-known. Everyone knows of the “no colored allowed” signs in storefronts, separate drinking fountains, and segregated buses of the Deep South. But the idea of completely barring an entire race of people from a locale is less familiar to most of us.
Strangely, the phenomenon seems to be mainly a northern one. Relatively few sundown towns in the South have been identified. The South had many deplorable methods for keeping Black Americans down, but sundown towns weren’t one of them.
Sundown towns were real
Sadly, it’s more than a plot device in a TV series. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that sundown cities and counties existed all across America. And though the ordinances were typically not on the books, there are many anecdotal stories to find when you start digging into it.
But the evidence goes beyond anecdotal. The census tells the tale. A city’s population may go from hundreds or thousands of Black residents at one census taking to zero at the next. It doesn’t take much speculation to understand they were driven out of town and kept out.
The most comprehensive look at the history of sundown towns comes from historian James W. Loewen. In Loewen’s book, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, he pieces together the evidence for sundown towns by combining oral history with the census.
His website is filled with resources, maps, and other information. He even has a database listing every known and suspected sundown town across the US.
They ranged from small towns to affluent suburbs
According to the Encylopedia of Arkansas, Alix, Arkansas, a small town outside of Franklin County, was reported to have a large sign at the city limits that read something I don’t want to repeat here. Suffice to say, it made it clear who was not welcome after dark in Alix.
But it wasn’t only rural towns as small as Alix. In Illinois, many wealthy suburbs show up in Loewen’s database for sundown cities such as the bustling suburb of Naperville. Naperville is located about 30 miles west of Chicago and is often voted as one of the best places to live in America.
But Naperville has a troubled past rarely mentioned. It’s listed in Loewen’s database as “surely” being a sundown town. Several stories are recounted including one about two Ph.D. scientists that tried to relocate to the area in the 1960s for their jobs. Though they had Ph.D. degrees, they said real-estate agents would not sell them homes in Naperville. They could not buy a home near their work.
Former Underground Railroad stations were no longer places of refuge
You can visit a former Underground Railroad site today at Graue Mill located in Oakbrook, Illinois. The mill was a haven for escaped slaves on their way to freedom. The mill is still there, and the water wheel still runs. The building is now converted to a museum where school children can learn about slavery and the Underground Railroad that helped escaped slaves find freedom in the North.
But what isn’t mentioned in the museum is that after the Civil War, the town of Oakbrook was no longer a safe place for Black Americans to stay overnight. According to Loewen’s website, it was a “possible” sundown town. Indeed, the entire county of DuPage, which was home to many Underground Railroad stations, was possibly sundown.
The Green Book
In Lovecraft Country, one of the characters writes a guidebook for Black Americans to be able to safely travel across the country without fear of harassment. And just like sundown towns, this part of American history is real.
The “Negro Motorist Green Book” guided Black Americans away from dangerous areas across America and listed restaurants and lodging where they could safely frequent. Largely unknown to whites, the book written by Victor Hugo Green, sold 15,000 copies per year and could be found in Esso gas stations across the US.
“There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment.” — Victor Hugo Green
The effects linger today
The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) was established in the 1930s to help Americans reeling from the Great Depression find affordable housing. This is how many Americans began to build up equity in their homes, grow their wealth, and distribute it to their children. This is where the American dream was born.
But Blacks were routinely denied loans and could not benefit from the Federal government’s programs. It kept the American dream firmly out of their reach. By being removed from their homes and banned from many cities across the US, Blacks were denied the buildup of prosperity and wealth that lead to the successes many white Americans benefit from today.
In another way that the past influenced the future, David Roedeger, a Kansas University professor, believes that Donald Trump’s narrow victory in Wisconsin in 2016 can be attributed to the white-only status of much of the small towns in the state. According to Roedeger, former sundown counties in Wisconsin provided Trump with 256,000 more votes over Clinton. Clinton won the non-sundown counties by 230,000 votes. To summarize, two-thirds of Trump voters in Wisconsin came from formerly sundown counties.
“The white supremacist past and present lived in sundown towns, and especially in sundown suburbs, continues to provide oxygen for reaction and to extinguish possibilities for transformation.” — David Roedeger
The lore of the open road is at the heart of the idea of the independent American spirit. Getting in your car and heading down the highway wherever it leads, signifies freedom. Anything can happen, and the opportunities seem limitless.
Yet it takes the adventurous fun out of a road trip if you have to consult a guidebook before you stop for dinner to make sure you won’t be murdered on your way back to your car.
In a promising hope that things have changed is an addition to Loewen’s website with lists of Black Lives Matter protests that were recently held in former sundown towns. As the website states, “a successful BLM rally is surely a heartening step for a community to take.”
