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

them down.” Not unreasonably, blacks “chose” to accept the buyout and move to Malvern in response to this ultimatum. A few other African Americans lived in Sheridan— not in Williams’s employ—but what could they do? The preacher, the beautician, and the cafe owner suddenly found themselves without a clientele. They left too.

Regardless of the Creation, the Result Was the Same
     
    How a town went sundown—owing to a violent expulsion, a quiet ordinance, or a more subtle freeze-out or buyout—made no consistent difference over time. Either way, African Americans lost their homes and jobs, or their chance for homes and jobs. Either way, the town defined itself as sundown for many decades, and that decision had to be defended.
    The white townspeople of Sheridan, Arkansas, for instance, were probably no more racist than residents of many other Arkansas towns until 1954. Indeed, they may have been less racist than many: as Chapter 7 tells, they almost chose to desegregate their schools in response to Brown, a step taken by only two towns in Arkansas. After the 1954 buyout, however, Sheridan’s notoriety grew. As a lifelong resident said in 2001, the town “developed a reputation that was perhaps more aggressive than it really deserved. For years, black people wouldn’t even stop in Sheridan for gas.” In fact, Sheridan probably deserved its new reputation. Although originally prompted by a single individual, no Sheridan resident lifted a voice to protest the forced buyout of its black community. On the contrary, two different Sheridan residents said in separate conversations in 2001, “You know, that solved the problem!” Implicitly they defined “the problem” as school desegregation, or more accurately, the existence of African American children. With a definition like that, inducing blacks to leave indeed “solved the problem.” Having accepted that “solution,” whites in Sheridan were left predisposed to further racism. According to reports, they posted signs, “Nigger, Don’t Let the Sun Set On You Here.” Long after non-sundown towns in Arkansas desegregated their schools, Sheridan fans developed a reputation for bigotry when their high school played interracial teams in athletic contests. This reputation grew in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Sheridan played rival Searcy, a majority-white town, but not a sundown town. Searcy had a talented African American on its roster, and when he got the ball in games played in Sheridan, white parents and Sheridan students would yell “Get the nigger” and similar phrases. 70
    The methods blur into each other on a continuum. Towns that went all-white nonviolently frequently employed violence to stay that way. A city official in tiny De Land remembers as a child in about 1960 overhearing an adult conversation to the effect that a black family recently moved into De Land, but there was a mysterious fire in their house and they left. “De Land had a sundown rule,” the adults went on, “so what did they expect?” In this case, the passage of an ordinance probably contributed to private violence by heightening white outrage at the violation of community mores. Whether a given town became all-white violently or nonviolently, formally or informally, does not predict how it will behave later. 71
    Because suburbs got organized later than most independent towns, after the Nadir was well under way, a much higher proportion of them were created as sundown towns from the beginning, as the next chapter shows.

5
     
    Sundown Suburbs
     
    No lot shall ever be sold, conveyed, leased, or rented to any person other than one of the white or Caucasian race, nor shall any lot ever be used or occupied by any person other than one of the white or Caucasian race, except such as may be serving as domestics for the owner or tenant of said lot, while said owner or tenant is residing thereon. All restrictions, except those in paragraph 8 (racial exclusion), shall terminate