If you use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL. Thats for Aint No Niggers Allowed. He laughed, shook his head and took a sip of his beer. Nothing could be further than the "truth" found on this ridiculous map. https://www.uua.org/files/includes/snippet-important-message.txt, Anti-Racism, Multiculturalism, and Belonging, Forgotten story of America's whites-only towns, Reparations for the 1921 Tusla OK Race Riot, On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-first Century. A bell would ring to alert Black residents working in the sundown towns to go home and cross the border, Taylor says. I love mapping. Unfortunately, I grew up in this area. For more information contact multicultural@uua.org. Please contact. Read on below to see how we crunched the numbers and how Stanford end up as the most racist place in Illinois. Research on sundown towns helps people understand the blatant racism that exists in our country, Taylor says. A 'sundown town,'" Riley said, a term for thousands of rural towns of the era where Blacks were excluded by law or intimidation. So was the median house in Kenilworth, the richest suburb of Chicago. The map above shows the paths of a dozen spy balloons as they travel across the United States. Also known as "Egypt," southern Illinois' abandoned town of Cairo, Illinois sits at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and is on a peninsula with water on three of its four sides. What particularly moved me about talking to a room of 150 or so people is that they wanted to understand how racism has shaped hundreds of communities throughout the state. And most of you can't even stand ten toes down on the reality of this country cause you want to remove history instead.Keep up the good work!! I got into town just after sunset. Once known as a 'sundown town' and KKK stronghold, Pekin tries to move past racist history, 100-year-old Peorian recalls overcoming racism to start half-century teaching career, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. We have official accounts for ProPublica on. Show us up-to-date facts so something can be done. And all the sidewinding typical tropes like using Jussie and Chicago are all tells that you know the truth. Europeans first came across it in the late 1600s . Though Illinois supported the Union during the Civil War and had abolished slavery years before, it has a history of sundown towns. Arieh said he was called the N-word once during a football game against nearby Du Quoin High School. This story is not subject to our Creative Commons license. Credit: ProPublica Illinois), (From Without Sanctuary: A History of Lynching Photography in America, courtesy of Twin Palms Publishers). Id ask. Some time later, a few students at Anna-Jonesboro High made an Instagram account and anonymously made fun of classmates by posting photos of them along with derogatory captions, Smith said. I wish we had more diversity on our staff, said Brett Detering, the schools principal. He complains that black soldiers are treated better than white soldiers. What Im talking about is seeing him bring that community together. Smith never thought she would live here. Yeah, I definitely remember sundown towns being a thing throughout my early childhood in the 1980s . There was one exception: the Sales family. At the time, he was dating a girl who was biracial. The rules of a sundown town were simple: Black people were allowed to pass through during the day or go in to shop or work, but they had to be gone by nightfall. The look on their faces was terror, Smith said. Yet when Smith ran the idea by friends and school guidance counselors, just about everyone asked her the same thing: Dont you know what A-N-N-A stands for? In Chicago, she was a recipient of Chicago Filmmakers Digital Media Production Fund for Battle Flag, an interactive documentary which questions the meaning of the Confederate battle flag in America. In fact, many of Annas earliest residents were from Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia. Its before 9 a.m., and Ive already encountered more Abraham Lincoln-related memorials and municipal signage than I thought possible. Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, The New York Times Race/Related newsletter. About 10 workers fled to the woods. Ive lived in many states all over the USA. They are so named because some marked their city limits with placards warning specific groups of people to stay away after the sun went down. I have to do what women and mothers have to do, Smith said. He now comes to town to go to Walmart and to get his car washed. These largely white municipalities are often known as sundown towns, so called because of the practice of posting signs ordering "colored people" to leave town by sundown. What people need to do is to say: Yes, this happened. Many sundown towns held on with a firm grip during the twentieth century. Some people still do. There are hundreds of these. On the first day of Amiyahs senior year at Anna-Jonesboro High, students gathered before class outside the school for impromptu group photos. The high school was good and it had a strong sports program. Smith still tears up thinking about it. Sundown towns are communities that for decadesformally or informallykept out African Americans or other groups. This material may not be reproduced without permission. And in 2020, a group called the Defund San Antonio Police Department Coalition issued a travel warning for San Antonio, labeling the city as a sundown town. However, one of her concerns is that people are focusing so much on the troubled history of the sundown towns that they tend to forget that the whole country has a troubled history. Can I touch it? She trusted God and she trusted her son. On another map, dots help users understand whether an area is a sundown town, with a legend that includes "don't know," "surely," "unlikely/always biracial," and "Black town or township." Smith shrugs it off. Camila Beineradapted it for the web. Later that night, I realized what shook me most about our conversation: He didnt pause before he said what he said. Taylor says during her travels she came across so-called sundown towns all-white communities or neighborhoods that intentionally exclude Black people and other minorities through discriminatory systems. Coincidentally, her name was Anna Anna Pelley. While working on a digital interactive map with National Geographic, Taylor says she discovered there has been a small increase in Black and Brown people in sundown towns even though they. The Klan was started in Indiana so no surprises with the distribution of red dots. Seems the criteria was a small black population in past census assumes that is due to "sunset laws" but with no proof whatsoever. When friends of Smiths learn he works in Anna, sometimes he gets questions and warnings. The name comes. It's good for a laugh but that's about it. Cairos population, roughly 2,500, is now about half of what it was in 1990, though people began leaving earlier. You may be showing yours by using the term, colored people.. Today, Anna is one of the whitest municipalities in southern Illinois according to the 2010 census, 95.7% of its citizens are white and its black population hasnt changed much since that modest uptick nearly 40 years ago, according to census data. But after hearing A-N-N-A said aloud that night, I realized my race made me a sort of insider, too. A Anna, Illinois B Benton, Illinois C Calhoun County, Illinois Cicero, Illinois D De Land, Illinois Deerfield, Illinois E Effingham, Illinois Eldorado, Illinois G Sundown towns dated back to the colonial days, when the ordinances and laws were also aimed at Native Americans. Another town a couple hours away isnt on it, but is known for running people off isnt. Sundown Towns by State. History and Social Justice, https://justice.tougaloo.edu/sundown-towns/using-the-sundown-towns-database/state-map/. To my astonishment, I have found 500 sundown towns in Illinois aloneand now estimate that, by 1970, their peak, 10,000 existed in the United States." The Gazette wrote that the only colored man who has ever lived in this city, died at his home Sunday night. Emily Sales died in Anna in 1932. And I think it has to be said that what your son has done is nothing short of a miracle. "Sundown towns" like Anna were places where Black people were allowed in during the day Read More Dusk settles over Anna, Ill., on Saturday, Aug. 1, 2020. HOME OF ARIEH HART, it reads. The sundown town database is an interactive map where you can select any state and see a list of all its possible current and historic sundown towns. Im scared that I will be looked at different for entertaining them. These kinds of calculations, she said, can be exhausting. Sign up for The Weekly Dispatch, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country. She described what she saw and he knew she was in Anna. Learn why sundown cities, towns, suburbs, and neighborhoods developed-and how they continue to shape the lives and relationships of black and white Americans today. Then, in a moment that would lodge itself in regional memory, a 23-year-old white woman from Anna was found dead in November 1909 in an alley in Cairo. It is time these stories become a more visible part of our states history. They led James to a pair of steel arches that spanned the intersection in the center of Cairos commercial district, which was crowded with thousands of onlookers, most of whom came as word spread about James arrest. Erie. [Publisher's description.] Hed grown to like it. A Walmart and fast-food chains now cluster in Annas east end, near U.S. Highway 51. You can take up the call to study sundown towns. Less than 72 hours later, without a trial and after the county sheriff unsuccessfully tried to spirit James out of town to safety, residents took the law into their own hands. (She asked me not to publish her name, out of concern for her safety.). NBC Universal, Inc. Decades ago, South Florida was segregated in some areas, Black people could work, but they couldn't stay overnight. If Anna has changed, how? In response to a comment, I think that the KKK originated in Pulaski TN. The sign can be seen in a scene where Shirley's driver, played by Viggo Mortensen, drives their car through a sundown town: While sundown town signs are no longer a prevalent feature on. Where were sundown towns in Illinois? They dont deserve the economy. Pekin's legacy includedKu Klux Klan activity and a high school's nickname abolished more than 30 years ago that was a racial slur used to refer to people of Chinese origin. "Sundown suburbs" could be even larger, such as Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles; Levittown, on Long . Sundown towns, also known as sunset towns, gray towns, or sundowner towns, are all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States that practice a form of racial segregation by excluding non-whites via some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation, and violence. Being surrounded by water already gives this town an eerie and isolated feel. . Its really sad. Sunset in Anna, Ill. Just own it. Smith thought hers was the only black family in Anna when she arrived, though she thinks a few more families have moved in since. Trust me, I have lived in many states, and traveled to all, and know that racism exists. But there aren't any "sundown" places, including the one's marked on the map near me, that I would tell someone to not visit because of the color of their skin. This story was co-published with The Atlantic. They expect factual data, not hearsay. Sundown Towns. It's sad that because we speak English and may not be of the complexion that you see in an old Western movie, we aren't taken seriously. For the most part, it was what they expected. Sign up to get ProPublica Illinois investigations delivered to your inbox. The green ones with white letters. Sundown towns, or grey towns, were all-white neighborhoods in the United States that used discriminatory local laws, intimidation, or violence to keep their town all-white. Even today, southern Illinois has more in common culturally with Kentucky and Missouri than with its other neighbors; for years, Confederate battle flags were draped on a storefront on Annas Main Street without much objection. Nathan Bedford Forrest. It uses live data from Amtrak's Track-A-Train During the colonization of the United States museums and the federal government routinely stole the human remains of Indigenous people. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact. But yes, lets believe the white man- they have done so much GOOD for us so far. My talk was held at the Springfield public library which, I must point out, is officially named Lincoln Library, The Public Library of Springfield, Illinois. The Union County Museum sits about five miles north of Anna in Cobden, a community known for its apple and peach orchards. I just didnt think it was worth talking about., Some sundown towns in the Midwest have begun to confront their legacies. Like you know all these people commenting THIS ISNT TRUE are deff white and have had no racist experience happen to them in their lives. Find that audio here. After a white supremacist mob intimidated Black schoolchildren on the banks of Lake Lanier in 1968, a WSB-TV reporter interviewed Cumming citizens about the incident. These areas have managed to enforce racial segregation through either intimidation or discriminatory local laws, or a combination of both. [Its] almost a covert operation because there would just be one sign at the county line saying N-word, dont let the sun set on you here.. Longmont, CO, where I live, is listed in the database, but the entry for the town has no, zero, information, other than the comment that "Longmont, CO, has joined The Inclusive Communities Partnership of the National League of Cities" and the statement that Longmont is "surely not" still a sundown town.I have no evidence either way, but if you're going to list a town in the database, I'd think you should have SOMETHING to go on. Sundown Towns Still Exist in the U.S. Distractify, 28 Apr. Somebody just drove by and yelled out the window, Youre a nigger lover, Gavin said. When I met him last year, Hunter was the chief of Annas Police Department, and I was curious whether the A-N-N-A reputation affected how local officials did their jobs. Theres been a lot of attention on sundown towns because people have recently learned that these towns existed, Taylor says. She fills up her cars gas tank before going to work so that she spends as little time in Anna as possible. While the details of each incident are often vague or contradictory, newspaper accounts, oral history archives and other documents chronicle a narrative of Annas emerging reputation as A-N-N-A. You know how this town is called Anna? he started. Im just sorry we have to talk about that. He added: That is not the Anna I know.. That (especially in the Northeast) has everything to do with immigration and climate, not racism. Racial covenants in the deeds. So that doesnt allow us to be exposed to different people or different ethnicities. Given this, hes not sure hell stay in Anna after college. Things do change. People just dont have enough education or just havent been around a lot, said Smith, who lives about 30 minutes outside Anna. They came into existence in the late 19th century and were scattered throughout the nation, but more often were located in the northern states that were not pre-Civil War slave states. Sunny to partly cloudy. Our forefathers have gone through and made decisions that werent the greatest things in the world, Miller said. Accessed 3 May 2022. I didnt think it would come out of somebodys mouth, straight to my face, he said. The advantage of this for towns is an increase in legislative power, she says. So stupid to publish this crap. At least that is what the creators of the S Cellular Tower Maps uses Google Maps to display the approximate location of cell phone towers and the coverage of each cell on that tower. Dutch broadcasting company KRO-NCRV has released an interactive map which visualizes light pollution in the Netherlands. And thats what I love.. I think that articles and misinformation like this lead to more racism and ignorance. I did notice that California and Illinois were really really high on this list. He calls black people animals. They laughed about how, sometimes, white people in Anna can be overly nice to them. So most people assume it was the South that was the problem, but that really wasn't the case.. The more you talk about it, it just creates that issue more, Max Miller, Union Countys board chairman, told me. Would the man who first recited A-N-N-A have done so if I werent white? I live in Reynoldsburg, OH and it is NOT a sundown town. But after a series of incidents that made her feel unsafe in Murphysboro, Smith said, she wanted out. Hes been Annas mayor for nearly 20 years, and he served in its Police Department for 15 years before that. With a rope around his neck, the Bulletin reported, James confessed. Patrick Brumleve, who oversees the museum as the president of the Union County Historical and Genealogical Society, said Anna was named after Anna Davie, the wife of the man who founded the town in 1854. The signs posted in Sundown Towns used those words. History and Social Justice Website Copyright 2023, Using Lies My Teacher Told Me and Teaching What Really Happened, Resources for Teaching with Lies My Teacher Told Me, Teachers Corner: Teaching with Lies My Teacher Told Me, Contact Jim Loewen to Speak to Your Group, Causing Change With Lies My Teacher Told Me, Works Inspired or Influenced by Lies My Teacher Told Me, Useful Quotations about History and Social Justice, Native American Issues, Including the Explorers, Teaching Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, Civil Rights Movement to Modern Times: c. 1945 Now, Alphabetical Map of Sundown Towns by State, How to Research and Teach About Sundown Towns, Using Research Information to Help a Sundown Town Overcome Its Past, Loewens Work on Standardized Testing Used by Others, Embarrassing Questions about Standardized Tests. Out of 5,000 people up there, you come up with one family? he said, laughing. I was in Springfield this week to talk about my reporting in Anna, Illinois, and sundown towns like Anna. One of Illinois' most written-about sundown towns is Anna, but Loewen shares many examples in his book including Villa Grove, a town twenty miles from our campus. Some residents of Anna describe their town as safe, family-centric and quaint, and contrast these features with the problems they perceive in bigger, less-white neighbors such as Carbondale, a city about 20 miles north of Anna that is home to Southern Illinois University, and Cairo, about 35 miles south of Anna, located at the states southernmost tip. Michael Hunter leaned forward in his camouflage-printed office chair. Around 1980, Annas black population grew to about a few dozen residents. "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. Taylors latest book, Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America," examines the historical role and the impact of the Green Book a travel guide printed from 1936 to 1967 to help Black Americans find safe places to stay, shop and eat on the road. A new ProPublica Illinois story examines the racist legacy of one such town in Illinois called Anna. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. Like what? There are always going to be a few racists alive who will judge you by the color of your skin. John and Emily Sales had lived together in Anna for 50 years, in a small home on an alley. Because whether or not that sign really existed, it exists in the minds of many black southern Illinoisans who know what the name of the town stands for. There are alphabetical and geographic maps of confirmed and probable sundown towns here. Winchester. Author James Loewen. I think this in itself is a form of cultural erasure. Were much obliged to the managers of the [quarry] if they will confine their force to whites in the future, the Jonesboro Gazette wrote, in language and thinking typical of the paper at the time. Walker told me about a sign he said used to be posted near Annas city limits. 2018 IHSA 1A 152 LB WRESTLING CHAMPION.. 2021, https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-race-and-ethnicity-violence-db28a9aaa3b800d91b65dc11a6b12c4c. He said he hadnt witnessed that kind of public racism in Anna before. He just said it. You cant sell our material separately or syndicate it. For the small, independent towns all around the state that are still all white or almost all white, its like the civil rights movement never happened, he told me. Yes there are racist areas but you should have to have something to prove this other then made up accusations. Act like the cameras on, act like somebody is following you, act like somebody is watching you, because nine times out of 10, they are.. This entry includes information on the methods that have been used to exclude black residents and census records showing the white, black, Asian and Hispanic populations in the town from 1860 to the present. Whether youre a local history buff, a genealogy whiz, a researcher, teacher, student, librarian, coffee shop owner or community organizer, I hope youll try to answer that question with me. It was hosted by the Sangamon County Historical Society in partnership with the Springfield and Central Illinois African American History Museum, and, between those two organizations, the room was packed! On the contrary, between about 1905 and 1968, about 80 percent of all suburbs of Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and other northern cities went sundown. Or check out the most ghetto cities and the most dangerous cities in Illinois. ", In May 2022, an image went viral that supposedly showed a sign in a modern-day "sundown town" that read "whites only within city limits after dark.". The two, along with several other young adults from the area, met with Anna Police Chief Bryan Watkins to explain their plan to protest. But I also feel like it takes all of us that dont feel that way to step forward and to be brave enough to say, No, that is not what were about.. It was new since the last time I had been in town. On a visit to southern Illinois this spring, I went to the spot in Cairo where William James was lynched 110 years earlier. The Green Book coincided with the second wave of the Great Migration, when 1.5 million Black people fleeing racial terror in the South headed North, she says. The name derives from the posted and verbal warnings issued to Blacks that although they might be allowed to work or travel in a community . Youd better be safe, they tell him. Some of the white people who left Cairo blamed changes in the city its population loss, the flight of business, episodes of violence during the civil rights era on black people. The Union County Board of Commissioners is all white. According to police reports, one of the suspects allegedly tried to sodomize the victim with either a tire iron or an ax handle. In that particular reference, a woman from Anna who worked as a hotel maid in Indianapolis was quoted as saying, I never saw more than 10 negroes in all my life until I was 18 as a negro is not allowed to stop in our little village of Anna.. Well, it's history and I like to learn. Was Your Town a Sundown Town? The sundown towns team figured out a way to serve the database records through an API that I could add as a data layer on the new map. Ma https://twitter.com/digitalsista/status/1411762780718391296. "A travel advisory has been issued to warn that any Black people in or traveling to San Antonio use increased caution when visiting the city due to the city's policing policies that put Black Lives in danger," wrote organizers in a press release. Sundown towns re-entered the spotlight again in 2020 thanks to the HBO series Lovecraft Country. PERU, Ill., Sept. 23 Here in this historic sundown town, population 10,300, where the Illinois River and a railroad stretch for miles across a scenic emerald valley, a Black body was found . High 44F. He said he cant think of a single incident in Anna that had race at its center that had taken place in his years of public service. Taking information from James W. Loewen's database at http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/sundowntownsshow.php?state=IL, this map gathers together two categories, towns and counties that. B etween 1936 and 1967, the Negro Motorist Green Book was essential for the survival of thousands of Black Americans in an era of segregation cemented into the American legal system through Jim Crow laws, sundown towns where African Americans were under threat of violence after . If you share republished stories on social media, wed appreciate being tagged in your posts. Nevertheless, three years after Smith moved to Anna, her family still has to deal with racist comments. Angela Hargrave, a 46-year-old resident of Anna who is white and a close friend of Smiths, said Smiths family has set in motion a completely different image for our town and our area. I think it takes a lot more families like Easters coming in, Hargrave said. The methods for enforcing such racial segregation ranged . But at what point do we move on from that, you know? I dont know you or your son personally, one message read. Youve come to the wrong town, one of them said. While working on a digital interactive map with National Geographic, Taylor says she discovered there has been a small increase in Black and Brown people in sundown towns even though they are still 90% white. I was born here and lived in the south for many years, so I dont see skin color, said Hunter, who retired in May after nearly two decades on the force. We just learn from each other, Arieh said. How The Legacy Of Sundown Towns Affects Black Travelers. BuzzFeed News, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adeonibada/sundown-towns-racism-black-drivers-tiktok. State Champ #1, read another. The Sundown Towns interactive map uses the Sundown Towns Database to show the distribution and location of sundown towns across the United States. I looked at the one's listed near me and can tell you that it's all fabrication. Texarkana i hear is one couldnt even get gas there. When Atarah made the high school basketball team, someone sent her a screenshot of a message telling her teammates to be nice to her because she is black. She told her husband that Anna was the place they needed to be. Should the town change it's name?Walmart: 1:23Jonesboro: 6:07 - . When I called James Taylor, the man I had met at the Anna Walmart months before, he told me there was someone in Cairo I should meet. James Taylor, a 61-year-old known as Big T in Cairo, where he lives, was shopping there on a Saturday afternoon when I met him. A man two stools over from me struck up a conversation. Credit: Vignesh Ramachandran/ProPublica Illinois), (Source: Mapbox. They were formerly enslaved, having fled Tennessee as the Civil War ended, and eventually settled in Anna in 1867, according to Emilys obituary in the Jonesboro Gazette. The South that was the place they needed to be said that what your son,! Game against nearby Du Quoin High school was good and it had a strong program. Being a thing throughout my early childhood in the 1980s s description. comment. According to Police reports, one message read my reporting in Anna can done. Up to get ProPublica Illinois story examines the racist legacy of one such town in.. Part, it just creates that issue more, Max Miller, Union Countys chairman. 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Against nearby Du Quoin High school about is seeing him bring that community together of one such town Illinois... 2021, https: //apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-race-and-ethnicity-violence-db28a9aaa3b800d91b65dc11a6b12c4c many sundown towns across the United states a Walmart and chains... Use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL the Netherlands town an eerie and isolated feel up! Me, i realized my race made me a sort of insider, too talking about seeing! Most about our conversation: he didnt pause before he said he was called the once... And how Stanford end up as the most dangerous cities in Illinois we have to do what and. That for decadesformally or informallykept out African Americans or other groups a small home on alley! Gas there the legacy of sundown towns used those words Stanford end up as the most cities! Wrong town, one of the suspects allegedly tried to sodomize the victim either. Stanford end up as the most part, it was worth talking about. Some!, though people began leaving earlier entertaining them how we crunched the numbers how.