Sundown Towns: Racial Segregation Past and Present

Scholar-Griots: James W. Loewen, PhD; Fran Kaplan, EdD; and Robert Smith, PhD

Photo Editor: Fran Kaplan

“Is it true that ‘Anna’ stands for ‘Ain’t No Niggers Allowed’?” I asked at the convenience store in Anna, Illinois, where I had stopped to buy coffee. “Yes,” the clerk replied. “That’s sad, isn’t it,” she added, distancing herself from the policy. And she went on to assure me, “That all happened a long time ago.” “I understand [racial exclusion] is still going on?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied. “That’s sad.” — conversation with clerk, Anna, Illinois, October 2001.

– James W. Loewen, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (Touchstone, 2006), 3.

Anna and Jonesboro are twin towns, population 7,000, in southern Illinois. In 1909, after a “spectacle lynching,” Anna and Jonesboro expelled their African Americans. Both cities have been all-white ever since. It is common knowledge that black people are not allowed to live there. Such places are often called “sundown towns,” owing to the signs formerly posted at their city limits – signs that usually said “Nigger, Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on You in __.” Anna-Jonesboro still had such signs in the 1970s.

Sundown Towns Are Almost Everywhere 

Sundown towns highlighted in orange on this map represent a partial listing of those found in Wisconsin. Research is ongoing. Image courtesy James Loewen.

A sundown town is a community that for decades kept non-whites from living in it and was thus “all-white” on purpose. Some allowed a non-white household or two as an exception. Anna and Jonesboro are not unique or even unusual. Beginning in about 1890 and continuing until 1968, white Americans established thousands of towns across the United States for whites only. Many towns drove out their black populations, then posted sundown signs. Others passed laws barring African Americans after dark or prohibiting them from owning or renting property. Still others just harassed and even killed those who violated the custom. Some sundown towns also kept out Jews, Chinese, Mexicans, Native Americans, or other groups.

Sundown towns range in size from tiny villages to cities. There are also many “sundown suburbs” and neighborhoods – and even entire counties. Sundown communities also range from rich to poor. Outside the traditional South – where sundown towns are rare – probably a majority of all incorporated places kept out African Americans. For example, in 1970, 71% Illinois towns with over 1000 people, for example, had been all-white in census after census.

A sign in Detroit, Michigan, where a race riot took place in 1943.

This History Has Been Hidden in Plain Sight 

Even though sundown towns were everywhere, there was almost no information on the topic until sociology professor Jim Loewen researched and wrote about it. Most white Americans have no idea such communities exist, or they think such places exist mainly in the Deep South. Ironically, the Deep South has almost no sundown towns. Mississippi, for instance, has no more than 6, while Illinois has at least 456. Historians in sundown communities do not discuss this, because it would reflect badly on their communities.

Why Sundown Towns Arose

After slavery and the Civil War ended in 1865, blacks began moving everywhere – for about twenty-five years. Most, however, were still unable to leave the South. Once Reconstruction ended, southern states immediately set up a system that looked a lot like slavery. This system became known as “Jim Crow.” Under Jim Crow, blacks could not vote. They would not be accommodated at restaurants, parks, hotels, or schools used by whites. Even streetcars and railroad waiting rooms now isolated blacks in separate sections. Lynchings and other forms of violence against blacks rose to their highest point.

Most Americans have no idea how much race relations worsened between 1890 and the 1930s – and not just in the South. In fact, black Americans were the targets of racial violence and discrimination in the North, East, and West as well. Still, there was a greater opportunity for family-supporting jobs and a better life outside the South, so millions of blacks left in one of the largest immigrations in history. This is known as the Great Migration – and it transformed America.

For example, African Americans reached every county of Montana. More than 400 lived in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. City neighborhoods across the country were fairly integrated, too, even if black inhabitants were often servants or gardeners for their white neighbors. Between 1890 and the 1930s, however, all this changed.

By 1930, although its white population had increased by 75%, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was home to only 331 African Americans, and 180 of them were inmates of the Marquette State Prison. Eleven Montana counties had no blacks at all. Across the country, city neighborhoods grew more and more segregated.

How Sundown Communities Were – and Are – Maintained

Sadly, the Great Migration sparked racism across the country. Whites feared black immigrants, and they established sundown towns around the country.  Most sundown towns expelled their black residents, or agreed not to admit any, between 1890 and 1940. Sundown suburbs developed a little later – from 1900 and 1968.

Racial covenants, written agreements with white property owners, helped keep Seattle's black community confined to a ghetto. To see a sample of such an agreement, click the link on "covenant" to the left.

There were also race massacres in which white mobs attacked black neighborhoods, burning, looting, and killing. Across America, at least 50 towns, and probably many more than that, drove out their African American populations violently. At least 16 did so in Illinois alone. In the West, another 50 or more towns drove out their Chinese American populations. Many other sundown towns and suburbs used violence to keep out blacks or, sometimes, other minorities.

Instead of the “Promised Land,” black migrants found that Jim Crow had made the journey North, too. They were unable to settle in the kinds of small communities they had inhabited in the South. Instead, they were allowed to settle in only the oldest, most rundown neighborhoods in industrial cities. Whites fled to suburbs or parts of the cities with better housing.

In the 1930s-40s, the Federal government set up the FHA (Federal Housing Administration) program. This made home ownership affordable for millions of average Americans. However, property values and eligibility for loans were tied to race, so blacks got almost none of the loans. There were also written covenants and informal “gentlemen’s agreements” between realtors and sellers to exclude blacks from white neighborhoods. Owning a home in a valued neighborhood is how most average Americans save money and pass it on to their children. This critically important method of building family security and wealth was denied to most African Americans.