Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism by James W. Loewen Read Free Book Online

the 2000 census counted 44 African Americans. One black couple lives in El Dorado Springs and seems to get along all right. Nevertheless, Cedar County in 2005 has yet to reach the level of black population and interracial cooperation that it showed in the 1890s. 4
    Swaim’s fine account, summarized above, provides the texture of the Great Retreat from one Missouri county, but neither Swaim nor the other historian quite say how it all began. The initial “how” in Cedar County may be lost to history by this point. But in many other places, we do know how counties and towns went sundown, or how they were created that way in the first place. This chapter examines the variety of methods by which town after town across America excluded African Americans, mostly after 1890. We begin with violence because it was the most important. Moreover, threat of violent force underlies many of the “softer” methods: ordinance, informal actions by police and public officials, freezing out blacks from social interaction and from institutions such as schools and churches, buying them out, and other forms of bad behavior by white residents of the town. By dint of these methods, independent sundown towns were created, mostly between 1890 and 1930. Sundown suburbs were created a little later, mostly between 1900 and 1968, by a panoply of methods, among which violence and intimidation were also prominent.

Creating Sundown Towns and Suburbs by Buyout
     
    Some independent sundown towns bought out their African Americans to achieve all-white status. Especially in suburbia, buyouts were also often used to get rid of black would-be residents. I have collected examples of buyouts to keep blacks from completing purchases in Somerset, New Jersey; Astoria, Oregon; and many points in between. Indeed, buying out the lone African American family that dared to buy in a sundown suburb was so common that Lorraine Hansberry made such an offer the central plot element in her play A Raisin in the Sun. 58
    Buying out was not always kinder and gentler, because usually the offer was not to be refused, accompanied by a clear threat. In 1922, residents of Liberty Township in northern Indiana “have been worked up to a frenzy regarding the removal of a colored family, consisting of six persons into that vicinity,” as reported in the Chesterton Tribune. “The race problem, as far as Liberty township is concerned,” was “amicably settled” when the black would-be resident sold the property to a trustee of the township and returned to Gary “with his wife and four children.” Now “Liberty township is at peace with the world again,” the newspaper concluded. “Amicably settled” may be a euphemism for the resale process, however, given that all of Porter County was sundown at the time and for five decades thereafter. Perhaps the “frenzy” played some role in inducing the black family to sell.
    Often, as in Porter County, the offer came from the local government. In that case, the black family usually had no choice; if they refused to sell, the jurisdiction then claimed that the land was required for a park or other public purpose, condemned it, and bought it.
    Chapter 7 tells how Sheridan, Arkansas, induced its black population to leave in 1954 in response to Brown v. Board of Education. One man, Jack Williams, owner of the local sawmill and the sawmill workers’ homes, was principally responsible. He made his African American employees an extraordinary buyout offer: he would give them their homes and move them to Malvern, 25 miles west, at no cost to them. This turned out to be a proposition they couldn’t refuse, according to my source, who lived in Sheridan at the time, for if a family refused to move, he would evict them and burn down their home. Another longtime resident corroborated this account: “He wouldn’t have them in school here. He had little shacks for them. He told them they could have the shacks and move them out, or he would burn