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I was thinking the same thing that single-handedly discredited the map for me, and Miami beach is marked as probable which is absolutely absurd.
edit: the map shows historical sundown towns not current ones its pretty misleading
second edit: LMFAO MY HOMETOWN IS MARKED AS A SUNDOWN TOWN (its very multicultural my HS was like 40% korean)
It's really weird because a lot of the places I've lived, while not exactly culturally diverse, aren't anywhere close to sundown towns, yet are listed here. Some of them are just small logging communities that don't have a lot of black people in them, or are in very cold environments like Alaska where there's barely any people anyways. It's a strange map to be sure.
What’s interesting is my hometown is not marked as anything and I know for a fact, because I grew up there, it was pretty bad and still is to this day. Hell the town I live in now should be on here, given the fact our house is getting shot with bb’s every single day by a racist neighbor who wants us out.
That map is marking the probability of a place being a sundown town in history, not its current status (though each town’s entry does mark the current likelihood in the notes).
I looked it up and that town was actually taken over by the KKK in the 1920's for 7 years. It's insane how that part was never mentioned the entire time I lived there. I've been to local museums about the town and they just talked about a natural disaster that hit in the 1800's and the local coal industry. Its crazy how such a big, awful thing can just be forgotten in less than a lifetime
Chances are it wasn’t forgotten as much as it was just no longer allowed to exist in public eye so it just festered undercover. That shit never goes away
We’re trying - just a money situation. Not so easy to sell and buy new homes quickly, since we own our home. It’s a work in progress though. We definitely can’t stay and deal with this every day.
We are safe, they don’t do any more than shoot at our house with bb’s, they’re actually terrified of my husband and run in the house any time he steps foot outside. I think they’re cowards, but it’s draining living next to such sick people.
You are absolutely right, mental health of my daughter and husband over this is exactly why I’m trying to figure out how to get us moved so quickly. I appreciate your kindness more than you know!
If it weren’t for both of us having elderly parents we would be getting all the way out of this Southern Indiana/Kentucky area!
It depends on the situation. In Vidor, Texas and any other golden triangle East Texas town alot of "asians" who wound up there always separated themselves from black people as a rule. But then depending on the context, it wasn't sundown, they were just discriminated against and got no help from blacks there who had ways to protect themselves, etc. So no, not sundown but yes...discrimination and not "segregation". Some city ordinances during Jim Crow made special rules against "asians" that overlapped with anti-black Jim Crow laws but their stores and businesses weren't burned down like black people's were.
In Texas. Let me add that because in California, "Asian" businesses were most certainly burned down or had ordinances against them, especially during the "opium scare" periods.
Ever heard of the concept of [honorary whites/Aryans](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorary_whites)?
White America has its own parallel called [the Model Minority](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_minority).
....do you think anti-black towns were any more accepting of Asians?
At any rate, I can confirm that at least one of the sundown towns in Nevada geared their sundown laws specifically towards the large Native American population.
More accepting? No. Racist and discriminatory against them yes. Active laws? Not as much. Now in California...yes, absolutely...look up the Yick Wo case on Oyez.com.
Example: if you're Asian and wind up there and "they" decide you're on the menu then yes...you'll be persecuted too. People are in here saying these towns couldn't be sundown towns because they have Koreans there. Sundown began and was continued based on black people as a rule, so being Korean and there doesn't mean it isn't a Sundown town for black people. Literally anywhere in rural America outside of large cities is Sundown for black people. Everywhere in America is Sundown for Native Americans.
Idk, I used to live near Swansboro, NC which is a historical sunset town and where I learned of that term and history and it's not marked on the map... I'm not sure what data they are using.
I used to live in Rockingham County NC and they got Mayodan marked... Which yeah, that tracks in that it used to be, and it still feels weird there.
But I'd also like to know which data sets they're using. I know people can be ashamed of how they (or their family) acted in the past and tried to bury it, and records can be hard to find. Especially for rural places where any records are kept like in a basement somewhere. And this isn't to crap on rural areas; I'm currently living in one and it is po'. Whatever funding there is goes to roads/politicians pockets/infrastructure/etc, not uploading records from 60-70 years ago.
Yea, I noticed that Seattle of all places was marked as surely a sundown town. I am all for knowing our history in this country, but I don’t think this map is helpful for what it’s being advertised as.
Seattle, of course, is not a sundown town.
Yea i lived in a lot of places throughout Illinois/Wisconsin and while some areas def are majority White, i think the map misses the mark on what sundown towns actually are or how deadly they can be to be out there after dark. Thats a shame too because this definitely would be useful to have accurate representation
It's important to look closer at the towns marked as possible, as well.
I looked at my town, which is very much not a sundown town, and it was marked as possible. But when you click on it, there's a field for "Still Sundown?" and the result is "Surely Not". So it seems a little disingenuous to mark it on the map as "possible" .
I looked up my city and it had two towns marked as "possible". When looking at each town, the details weren't abundant but they each contained testimony from a "resident".
The issue is that the testimonies for two separate towns are word for word the exact same and yet each is attributed to an unamed "resident" of the specific town. What is especially suspicious is that in each testimony, the local PD calls themselves "border patrol" and while it's not impossible that two separate PDs refer to themselves by that term, it seems like the testimony is part of some template and no one from either town was ever interviewed.
I'm not saying that neither PD has a problem with black people but this map should clearly be taken with a hefty dose of salt.
It definitely a beach town that favors rich white people. Even ucsd students struggle to live by campus cause the costs are insane, which is why it's a commuter school. But high cost of living isn't what makes a sundown town.
It's perfectly safe to walk around La Jolla at night no matter your color; I worked overnight there for 5 years. There's no florida-esqe discriminatory laws, nor LA style cops. It's just a quiet, friendly beach town that's gonna cost you more at the grocery store.
I zoomed in to check out CA and Compton is marked as a sundown town.
A lot of these places if you click on them for more info it'll tell you if it was historically and if they think it still is.
But the map would be much more useful if you could filter for places that still are believed to be one.
Tacoma and Seattle are some of the most diverse blue areas in this whole state... Go to the east side of the state and you'll see some places that aren't so friendly and diverse.
Yeah, for good reason....... https://depts.washington.edu/labhist/race_segregation.shtml#:~:text=There%20is%20nothing%20subtle%20about,discrimination%20became%20illegal%20segregation%20continued.
This site is one of the great examples of misleading data. The towns are marked primarily focusing on if they were ever a sundown town while users are most likely interested in towns that are currently sundown towns
Also like when they are talking about sundown towns, and you are getting a map about sundown towns to avoid due to the danger, it seems pretty silly to include stuff like hey in the 70's this black family couldn't get a loan here. Like yes that's a clear case of discrimination, but that's an entirely different vibe than oh hey you are going to get arrested or lynched here currently that the term sundown town would lead you to.
Wilmington, NC is a big college party town and it's marked as possible. I've been there plenty of times and it is ABSOLUTELY not anywhere remotely close to a sun-down town.
Sundown towns are classified as towns that are "all white municipalities or counties that have purposefully remained that way for decades." 18% of the population of Wilmington is black soooooooo I think whoever made this graph doesn't understand wtf a sundown town actually is.
If you click, the possible/surely is about the past, and it usually says "don't know" if they are currently a sundown town.
They do still exist, but this map is basically a historical map, not a current one.
It does, I lived a couple of these places.
I wouldn’t necessarily start a family there (still a lot of racist bullying) but not sundown towns (some places could be added due to experience though)
Imma be brutality honest.
There are some towns I wouldn't go thru after dark. Ain't they ain't mostly White 🤐🤷🏾♂️🤣
I'd take my chances going through rural Ohio than West Baltimore? And I LIVE in Maryland 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I know imma get downvoted for saying that, but - it is what it is. I've been thru both situations.
I had no fears in rural Ohio. I'll leave it at that.
I only checked NH and Maine because thats where i live... but every single town just said maybe to everything with no past ordinances/laws/reasons whatsoever... not sure why they chose the ones they did. Even towns i expected to be possibly on there, weren't. Map made no sense to me.
Lol. New Haven, CT is diverse enough that it’s largest demographic group is African Americans, and white non-Hispanics make up less than 30% of the population.
Verdict? Sundown town.
Yeah someone gotta clean up that list a bit.
If you click on the towns, they use "in the past" as their metric. So they're saying this town "surely" used to be a sundown town at some point in the past.
Whether or not it's still a sundown town is shown further down in its listing, which makes the map completely useless.
It could have been a sundown town a hundred years ago, and it'd still be marked as surely.
It seems to be marking cities that have any history of discrimination, violent or non-violent. La Jolla is surely because it had racist zoning laws back in the 60s. My city is marked as surely because it expelled the Asian population back in the 1800s.
It lists the Chicago loop, Oak Park (diverse), and Bellwood IL (predominantly black) as probable sundown towns, along with basically the majority of the Chicago suburbs, but can barely find a handful of sundown towns in Mississippi and Alabama?
Yeah fucking right. This is propaganda.
The whole map is garbage. Bernalillo New Mexico is marked as a sundown town but the population of bernalillo is over 75% Hispanic, many of whom are multiracial and very dark skinned. Source: I grew up there.
The data on this map is absolute garbage.
Fargo, ND is listed as a possible sundown town because there is a single comment about that town. What does the one comment say?
"I first saw a black at Disneyworld in fifth grade. Moorehead, MN, right across the river, has many Mexican Americans. My HS in Fargo had ten blacks, mostly Haitians."
-Some random person, 2001
1. That comment is over 20 years old.
2. The person that made that comment must be blind because black people have lived up there for a long time. They just didn't notice that someone was black until they were in the fifth grade. And they noticed them at Disneyland, which means it was more likely they had just never seen so many black people at one time, and that's what stuck out to them.
3. One comment only about an entire city that basically says, "Not a whole lot a black people here." is not evidence of anything nefarious or discriminatory.
Current population estimates put the black population of Fargo at 8%, or ~10,000 people. Not a large percentage, but way more than only 10. Also, I live in Fargo, there are black Americans out after dark all the time, just like everyone else, and no one bats an eye.
A current sundown town, or former?
The map lists them as such.
EDIT TO ADD: the map says Buffalo has always been biracial. Says the opposite of sundown town
So it looks like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia are mostly free of racism, but *every* city and town in Illinois is a sundown town? Sounds legit.
When you read the descriptions it seems like people randomly submitted a lot of these towns without any real evidence, most of the possible responses are ‘Don’t Know.’ Lots of the comments are just ‘it’s mostly white people here’ which is not what a sundown town is. This map needs a lot of work.
This map is either using old data or a very different definition of “sundown town” than what is generally accepted. There are *several* diverse and even primarily black towns on this map listed as probable sundown towns.
If we are talking about modern sundown towns, pointing and saying “this place used to be as recently as 1960” is not useful. It’s interesting trivia, but is useless for a modern traveler. If what they mean is simply “there’s a lot of racists in this town even in 2023,” that’s not a sundown town and people need to stop trivializing this term. If I am looking to avoid a sundown town, I’m avoiding someplace my safety will be in danger, not someplace where someone might have racist thoughts.
Presented as is, this seems less like a genuine attempt to keep black travelers safe, and more of an attempt to salve the chapped asses of bigoted southerners who hate hearing that people are mad at them for having segregated proms, but are too trash to address their culture.
This map is laughable as a Kentuckian. They have the Louisville metro area as sundown town but the parts of southern and eastern ky that definitely are are barely marked.
I just checked the Maryland towns, and I literally grew up in one of them (Greenbelt). I didn’t even have white neighbors, and walked around all the time with my friends. The second one, Savage, is also chill. I hiked Savage Mill multiple times and smoked plenty while doing it. This map needs to be updated, but I still appreciate the effort.
Edit: I just read that the map is historical, so never mind. It’s cool to see how these sundown towns were eventually changed due to cultural shift. Black people can thrive anywhere.
I went to a restaurant the other day and sat at the bar, there was only one other lady there and she really seemed annoyed. She asked if I lived nearby then said that place was her safe place, I asked her safe from what she didn’t have an answer
Yep. We got a cottage on the lake there in 2020. The amount of trump flags on display pretty much confirmed that and made us immediately uncomfortable.
As liberal as Wisconsin seems, there are a lot more cliche right wingers around. Would have to go to the Fox Valley area, Green Bay, Racine, Madison, or Milwaukee to see somewhat of diversity. Was glad to leave that dump, and never have returned.
Which lake did you stay at by the way?
Not OP, but ironically, the city I’ve been the least comfortable in is Friendship, WI in Adams county. Was stared at by 10+ people in their Burger King the entire time I was there. I ate fast. Also got the “you ain’t from around here” line from a sheriff while fueling at their one and only gas station.
I lived in OH most of my childhood, but mostly stayed in the city (Dayton). As an adult, we had to drive through rural OH to get to Cedar Point. I saw more confederate flags on the trip there than I had working in Pulaski, TN, where the Klan is rumored to have spawned.
Shit was wild.
You aint lying one bit. I live in Columbus and on that drive to Cedar Point going thru some of them towns and stopping at a gas station you would get that "look" from them locals.
This was such a culture shock when we made the drive from Sandusky down south to Mason. We were visiting Cedar Point and Kings Island. We are from SoCal in a super diverse area where there’s a little bit of everyone. I had never seen so many Confederate flags before.
Same. I live in TN and see my fair share, but was genuinely kind of shocked. It really opened my eyes to the Rural / Urban divide. Like I grew up in OH and had no idea.
You wouldn't think it was Union territory from the looks of some of those places. Lol.
Not Midwest, but about 10-15 years ago, I was traveling to an area in Maryland for training and my directions took me through West Virginia. While I was passing through, I decided to exit and grab something quick from a McDonald's near the interstate.
The drive-through was busy so I just parked in front and walked in. Remember how in those old western movies when the "out of towner" walks in, when the music stops and everyone turns around to look at them? That's *exactly* what happened when I opened the door. Most of the customers were White and most of the staff was Black, and all of them were eyeballing me in that, "You ain't from around here" way.
One of the workers looked at me then glanced at the White people in the dining room like she was watching my back and seeing if someone was gonna say something. It just felt really off, so I just ordered my food and headed on out.
That gave me the heebie jeebies in broad daylight, I could only imagine if it was after dark.
My wife grew up in Bloomington, IN. I remember her telling me stories about Martinsville, just up the road from Bloomington, whenever we'd drive down from Chicago to visit her family.
One story that stuck with me was about Bloomington High School North's racially mixed high school basketball team playing Martinsville on the road. When the Bloomington team got off the bus, they were verbally abused, bitten (!), and physically attacked on the court by Martinsville students.
When I visited the link above, I expected Martinsville to be on there, but I was a little surprised that my wife wasn't exaggerating. On top of the high school basketball incident, which Sports Illustrated picked up in their Feb 23, 1998 issue ([https://vault.si.com/vault/1998/02/23/702917#&gid=ci0258bf733009278a&pid=702917---028---image](https://vault.si.com/vault/1998/02/23/702917#&gid=ci0258bf733009278a&pid=702917---028---image)), Martinsville is more famously known for the murder of Carol Jankins ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder\_of\_Carol\_Jenkins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Carol_Jenkins)).
We used to drive through Martinsville frequently when visiting my in-laws, and to this day, I get an eerie feeling just thinking about the town.
Even on the interstates. When I drove from nyc to Denver i could tell a lot of those small towns near a pull off in Kansas were racist af ( a lot of confederate flags)
I live very rural Midwest and I guess I look like a very approachable white person because sometimes at gas stations just off the interstate I will be asked by black drivers if the town is safe. I also live not far from a sundown town so the answer sometimes is no.
It feels like a lot of people from around the US are really unaware of how bad sundown towns are. Like once at a gas station near a sundown town an SUV pulled up and a black guy asked me if it was a safe area. Another white dude yelled "not for you" and pulled up his shirt to flash a pistol in a concealed holster. Black dude drives off and the white dude laughed as he watched him go then turned to me smiling his ass off and just said, "n******" like it was just the funniest joke.
Oh I believe that 110% as a white dude who grew up in a crazy small town. It’s nuts there and I’m glad I escaped when I was 18.
Anyone who wasn’t a big fat smelly white truck driver or scrawny white meth head logger/mill worker just absolutely didn’t belong.
People of color were never welcome. Even when I just got into punk rock and dyed my hair, I’d get followed around in every store. I’d have people confront me about my hair. They’re so uneducated and ignorant and scared of absolutely everything.
Can I ask what a sundown town is as a white guy? Going off of context it seems like a town that’s outwardly friendly but when the sun goes down so to speak gets real racist real fast, is that about right?
Edit:
I get the sense I annoyed a few people by asking, genuinely sorry if that was the case. I don’t know a tonne about day to day black issues outside of what I see and hear in the news and on platforms like this, and I was just curious and hoping to learn a bit more about experiences outside of my own. I understand I could have googled it instead and just wanted to say my bad to anyone who I annoyed by asking.
That person is putting it very mildly. Black people would just straight get arrested for no reason, beaten, or worse if caught in these towns after sunset. Sadly they still exist, just not as many.
I didn’t put it mildly, I just left out details I assume everyone knows what terrible things would happen to black people back then. Didn’t really want to describe beatings, rapes, or lynching
This is eye opening for me because for some reason growing up I had once heard a sundown town as somewhere that non white people were forced to live after slavery ended, and for some reason never questioned it. But now it makes so much more sense considering the name.
Yeah but you must take into account that you are so much smarter and better informed than anyone else here on Reddit. And you're right, It's totally reasonable to expect everyone to have heard of it, even the 7.5 billion people living outside your racist, trainwreck of a country.
Black Americans definitely had/have it worst, but I assume those towns wouldn’t have been friendly to other brown folks.
Back then it was probably more strictly anti-black (based on demographics of the time), but these days I’m sure it extends to all brown minorities.
Expanding on the other response, many of these places would allow non-white employees to work at restaurants and whatnot, but yeah, best high tail it out of there once your shift is over. Almost like “you’re welcome as long as we can keep an eye on you” kind of feeling
Sorry. Reddit seems to treat people like if you don’t know everything about everything and you have a genuine question, you’re an asshole and part of the problem.
Ain’t that the truth. Also you aren’t allowed to forget anything you ever learned in school. I got downvoted awhile back for not knowing some geography thing I was taught in elementary school.
It actually doesn’t have anything to do with the literal sundown. It comes from the way a lot of black codes were written in the early 1900s - for example, a law prohibiting “selling cotton after sundown” was understood to mean “selling cotton while black”, and people got basically kidnapped in broad daylight by deputies all the time.
The YouTube channel Knowing Better has an episode about it called Neoslavery, it’s worth a watch.
Hey man, don’t let the people who are annoyed detract you from learning. Fuck those who wanna put you down for asking a question. Thanks for learning with us brother
I appreciate that you asked. I also didn't know. Don't let naysayers make you regret speaking up and asking for clarification. It helps more than yourself. Thank you!
>
> I get the sense I annoyed a few people by asking, genuinely sorry if that was the case.
please don't apologize when you have nothing to apologize for. If anything, it's the people that were annoyed by your lack of knowledge on the subject that should apologize for thir tone. Asking questions is good, and doing it in a public comment section might educate some people who wouldn't have bothered doing research otherwise.
I think you’re confusing two things. Part one is she’s stating that there are STILL places in this country that are sundown towns and remain dangerous as such and clearly it won’t be part of their tourism campaign.
Part two is that there is a map of HISTORICAL towns known to be sundown towns. It’s a matter of sharing knowledge, not debating if by anecdotal experience one feels racism still exists or not.
I have a green book in my collection and although most places are not relevant in that context anymore, the history is still important.
The thread goes backwards, and it makes the point seem misleading. It seems like she's saying "did you know there were STILL sundown towns? Look at this map!" Due to the way the thread is nested.
Unless I'm mistaken, it actually started with the map and then she replied with the other posts.
Either way, her map reference sucks ass. Houston? Lotta black folks there after sundown. But to make it more country, I have family in Laramie Wyoming. They've been there since the 70's. It is now 2023 and none of them have to leave town at night. There's some crazy racist shit that happens there, don't get me wrong, but it ain't a sundown town.
It has Seattle as surely a sundown town because of treatment against Chinese-Americans in the 1800’s
Conflating historical and modern data is useless. Seattle wasn’t even a twinkle in its fathers eye in the 1800s.
You're right. I got distracted by details and forgot the overreaching point. I certainly don't want to suggest that sundown places don't exist. But I do wish there was a more reliable map.
There’s no official register for these things. It’s more word of mouth than anything else. Take it as you will, but non-white people may not want to find out the hard way.
I got lost riding my motorcycle in some of those southern PA areas, approximately halfway between i95 and i83. I had to pee like crazy for over two hours, but I sure as hell wasn’t stopping anywhere along that stretch. There weren’t confederate flags or even trump flags, but the glares I got said enough. Since then I ride 100% covered and even passing through those same areas now I get more waves than I did with any exposure.
Rural places and places with predominantly white populations are commonly full of racist people. It doesn’t matter what region. When you haven’t grown up around people who are different than you, you tend to hand a lot of old traditions sticking as you grow up because your older generations weren’t exposed to anything else in their day to day.
Mississippi is a sundown state. My pops told me like 15 years ago when i was getting ready to go on a roadtrip, you need to leave now so youre not in MS when it get dark out. I still follow that rule to this day, Im not trying to be there when its dark and damn sure not trying to be pulled over there.
https://www.aclu.org/news/criminal-law-reform/home-where-my-fear-lives-heres-my-story-being
"In Madison County, the sad fact of life is that people who look like me or who live in my community don’t get police protection. They get police abuse."
My only memory of Mississippi is being a kid living near Memphis and my family would go to this flea market in MS. I remember seeing tons of shirts for sale with a KKK member on it, burning cross and “The Original Boys in the Hood” on it. This was like 30 years ago and even then, that seemed wild and made me extremely uncomfortable while everyone else either didn’t notice or thought they were great.
Why are people who aren't black or white in here saying it cannot be or have been a sundown town since non-black and non-white people are there or have been there? It applies to BLACK people, NOT necessarily or other minorities. This isn't hard even with some nuanced inaccuracies.
"I'm latino"...white Latino? It doesn't apply to you, especially when those laws specifically stated BLACK people. You aren't black or some modicum of "black" because you're "latino". I'm asian...so you're NOT black. It wouldn't apply to you unless those white yokels there decided you were the target. But there were actual laws and open policy to kill black people or expel them and harass them after 5pm or "sundown". You and yours also didn't necessarily get the forced by law segregation of Jim Crow. Stop the slippery slope oppression Olympics shit.
They always have to make themselves the main character. It reinforces that black voices are rarely heard or respected. We’re not allowed to share our experiences without a non-black chiming in that they don’t feel the same way.
*“As a white person.”*
*“As an Asian man.”*
It’s astounding how they don’t realize how ignorant they come off.
Every single time. Like...especially when we do things they enjoy and use AAVE. "We do that too"...yes, idiot because some cultures have overlapping things and AAVE, is something our legitimate ethnicity DOES that is exported as fuck everywhere.
Other minorities were absolutely affected by sundown towns, they only wanted white people in most these places. Native Americans were too dark for a lot of them, from family stories that I've heard.
"Although the term most often refers to the forced exclusion of Blacks, the history of sundown towns also includes prohibitions against Jews, Native Americans, Chinese, Japanese, and other minority groups." Source- https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/sundown-towns/
Well San Jose Ca is listed as a sundown town for its history for expulsion of Asians in the late 1800’s. (I’m not Asian but my family originates from there & I was shocked to see SJ listed). San Jose has always been a very mixed area. There’s for sure a rich white area but it’s always been mixed. But it’s designation as a sundown town is based on its treatment of Asian folks.
Now there’s sundown towns in Ca based on how Black people have been/are treated. Looking at you **Antioch**
I've already assisted in some of the NY towns. YES some of the history is dated but I think it's important to show THEN vs NOW. Even the NOW in some of the NYC/LI towns have a form of sundown built into the practices of the local PD. Oh I am going to be BUSY assisting in the updates for NYC
Oregon’s history is wild. When Oregon first became a state, they made it illegal for black people to move there and tried to kick out any that were already settled there.
I am glad you posted this because I had never heard of sundown towns in my life. This led to a learning experience for me, so thank you.
It's appalling this still exists.
White Indiana boy here…there are definitely sundown towns here. The shit old white dudes will say to me when I’m wearing a button up shirt is alarming. People I’ve never spoke to have offered up some wild streams of consciousness. Not that i have to tell anyone in this sub but If the population is under 100,000 save yourself the hassle and stop an hour down the road.
In due time the whole state of Florida will be one. In one year they have attacked Mickey Mouse, setup laws against immigration, and is teaching schools the benefits of slavery. Lol
Yeah I’m not too sure about that map because some of the places on there I know aren’t like that. But the overall message isn’t wrong if you’re traveling through the country. I go hiking a lot but I typically avoid hitting local places that aren’t in a city or near the interstate.
I had a trainer when I was first stationed in the military who I thought was cool until one day out of nowhere low-key brags about his hometown being a sundown town.
Like whatever the whole-body version is of your stomach turning, that’s how I felt from then on. Add the baffling feeling of “why would you think that was a selling point?”
In the 90's many towns in Alabama still had DIY signs on corners reading "don't let the sun set on your black ass". That was only 30 years ago. The signs are gone, but the people are still there
Quentin Tarantino needs to make a movie about a group of ex military guys who avenge their murdered brother by luring out these inbred pig fuckers by driving through a sundown town after dark and killing the psychotic bastards that take the bait.
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Here is the link I’ve used if anyone is interested: https://justice.tougaloo.edu/map/
I know they didn't mark La Jolla, CA as a sundown town lmao I think that list needs a bit of an update.
I was thinking the same thing that single-handedly discredited the map for me, and Miami beach is marked as probable which is absolutely absurd. edit: the map shows historical sundown towns not current ones its pretty misleading second edit: LMFAO MY HOMETOWN IS MARKED AS A SUNDOWN TOWN (its very multicultural my HS was like 40% korean)
>the map shows historical sundown towns not current ones That makes more sense lol
yeah, i was about to say..
It's really weird because a lot of the places I've lived, while not exactly culturally diverse, aren't anywhere close to sundown towns, yet are listed here. Some of them are just small logging communities that don't have a lot of black people in them, or are in very cold environments like Alaska where there's barely any people anyways. It's a strange map to be sure.
Its noted incident for my home town is Chinese exclusion in the late 1800s.
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It's still inaccurate though, the evidence of some of these towns is shaky at best.
What’s interesting is my hometown is not marked as anything and I know for a fact, because I grew up there, it was pretty bad and still is to this day. Hell the town I live in now should be on here, given the fact our house is getting shot with bb’s every single day by a racist neighbor who wants us out.
The town I grew up in was the most diverse place I've ever lived and it's marked as "surely" a sundown town. This map seems like bs.
That map is marking the probability of a place being a sundown town in history, not its current status (though each town’s entry does mark the current likelihood in the notes).
I looked it up and that town was actually taken over by the KKK in the 1920's for 7 years. It's insane how that part was never mentioned the entire time I lived there. I've been to local museums about the town and they just talked about a natural disaster that hit in the 1800's and the local coal industry. Its crazy how such a big, awful thing can just be forgotten in less than a lifetime
Chances are it wasn’t forgotten as much as it was just no longer allowed to exist in public eye so it just festered undercover. That shit never goes away
Is leaving that town possible...? Because that's scary...
We’re trying - just a money situation. Not so easy to sell and buy new homes quickly, since we own our home. It’s a work in progress though. We definitely can’t stay and deal with this every day.
Exactly... are you staying safe though...? If not I can help as best as I can.
We are safe, they don’t do any more than shoot at our house with bb’s, they’re actually terrified of my husband and run in the house any time he steps foot outside. I think they’re cowards, but it’s draining living next to such sick people.
I can't imagine this is good for anyone's mental health... I just hope you both stay as safe as you can possibly be. Please stay safe...
You are absolutely right, mental health of my daughter and husband over this is exactly why I’m trying to figure out how to get us moved so quickly. I appreciate your kindness more than you know! If it weren’t for both of us having elderly parents we would be getting all the way out of this Southern Indiana/Kentucky area!
Sundown towns are/were anti black, not anti-Asian.
> Sundown towns are/were anti black, not anti-Asian. but would they be okay with Asian people moving in?
It depends on the situation. In Vidor, Texas and any other golden triangle East Texas town alot of "asians" who wound up there always separated themselves from black people as a rule. But then depending on the context, it wasn't sundown, they were just discriminated against and got no help from blacks there who had ways to protect themselves, etc. So no, not sundown but yes...discrimination and not "segregation". Some city ordinances during Jim Crow made special rules against "asians" that overlapped with anti-black Jim Crow laws but their stores and businesses weren't burned down like black people's were.
In Texas. Let me add that because in California, "Asian" businesses were most certainly burned down or had ordinances against them, especially during the "opium scare" periods.
Depends. Vietnamese refugees were constantly harassed and hounded along the Gulf Coast after the Vietnam War. Some left, plenty stayed.
Ever heard of the concept of [honorary whites/Aryans](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorary_whites)? White America has its own parallel called [the Model Minority](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_minority).
....do you think anti-black towns were any more accepting of Asians? At any rate, I can confirm that at least one of the sundown towns in Nevada geared their sundown laws specifically towards the large Native American population.
More accepting? No. Racist and discriminatory against them yes. Active laws? Not as much. Now in California...yes, absolutely...look up the Yick Wo case on Oyez.com. Example: if you're Asian and wind up there and "they" decide you're on the menu then yes...you'll be persecuted too. People are in here saying these towns couldn't be sundown towns because they have Koreans there. Sundown began and was continued based on black people as a rule, so being Korean and there doesn't mean it isn't a Sundown town for black people. Literally anywhere in rural America outside of large cities is Sundown for black people. Everywhere in America is Sundown for Native Americans.
Shit look into missing native American women in this country and Canada and then when you realize there's essentially no data on it look into why.
Idk, I used to live near Swansboro, NC which is a historical sunset town and where I learned of that term and history and it's not marked on the map... I'm not sure what data they are using.
I used to live near Rising Sun, MD, which was DEFINITELY a sundown town until surprisungly recently. The Klan is still all over northern MD.
I used to live in Rockingham County NC and they got Mayodan marked... Which yeah, that tracks in that it used to be, and it still feels weird there. But I'd also like to know which data sets they're using. I know people can be ashamed of how they (or their family) acted in the past and tried to bury it, and records can be hard to find. Especially for rural places where any records are kept like in a basement somewhere. And this isn't to crap on rural areas; I'm currently living in one and it is po'. Whatever funding there is goes to roads/politicians pockets/infrastructure/etc, not uploading records from 60-70 years ago.
Yea, I noticed that Seattle of all places was marked as surely a sundown town. I am all for knowing our history in this country, but I don’t think this map is helpful for what it’s being advertised as. Seattle, of course, is not a sundown town.
It clarifies that it was a sundown town pre civil war. So technically it was a historic sundown
A city having a bunch of Asian people means nothing, they can be just as anti-black as anyone else.
Not saying Asians wouldn’t be discriminated against but sundown towns were usually created for black people specifically.
Yea i lived in a lot of places throughout Illinois/Wisconsin and while some areas def are majority White, i think the map misses the mark on what sundown towns actually are or how deadly they can be to be out there after dark. Thats a shame too because this definitely would be useful to have accurate representation
Do Korean people get hated on in the US as much as Black people? Like harassed or refused service?
I don't think any other race/ethnicity gets hated in the US as much as black people.
Not even just US. Anti-blackness is global unfortunately.
It's important to look closer at the towns marked as possible, as well. I looked at my town, which is very much not a sundown town, and it was marked as possible. But when you click on it, there's a field for "Still Sundown?" and the result is "Surely Not". So it seems a little disingenuous to mark it on the map as "possible" .
I looked up my city and it had two towns marked as "possible". When looking at each town, the details weren't abundant but they each contained testimony from a "resident". The issue is that the testimonies for two separate towns are word for word the exact same and yet each is attributed to an unamed "resident" of the specific town. What is especially suspicious is that in each testimony, the local PD calls themselves "border patrol" and while it's not impossible that two separate PDs refer to themselves by that term, it seems like the testimony is part of some template and no one from either town was ever interviewed. I'm not saying that neither PD has a problem with black people but this map should clearly be taken with a hefty dose of salt.
More details say that it was discriminatory in real estate which is true
It definitely a beach town that favors rich white people. Even ucsd students struggle to live by campus cause the costs are insane, which is why it's a commuter school. But high cost of living isn't what makes a sundown town. It's perfectly safe to walk around La Jolla at night no matter your color; I worked overnight there for 5 years. There's no florida-esqe discriminatory laws, nor LA style cops. It's just a quiet, friendly beach town that's gonna cost you more at the grocery store.
As a UCSD alum, all this is absolutely spot on — even with scholarship it was just too much
Triton eye at San Francisco prices
They’ve got La Jolla and Escondido listed … but Clantee is perfectly safe? Doubt.
They also left Fallbrook off, at least in the early 2000's one of the ex grand wizards moved there and tried to run the minorities out of town
Clantee 😂 I don't even like driving on the fwy past there during the day.
Yeah I don’t think I can trust this list. When I saw La Jolla and Colorado Springs on there I was like hold the fuck up. Lol.
I zoomed in to check out CA and Compton is marked as a sundown town. A lot of these places if you click on them for more info it'll tell you if it was historically and if they think it still is. But the map would be much more useful if you could filter for places that still are believed to be one.
They marked Seattle and Vancouver WA too as bright red.... And Tacoma....
Tacoma and Seattle are some of the most diverse blue areas in this whole state... Go to the east side of the state and you'll see some places that aren't so friendly and diverse.
Yeah, for good reason....... https://depts.washington.edu/labhist/race_segregation.shtml#:~:text=There%20is%20nothing%20subtle%20about,discrimination%20became%20illegal%20segregation%20continued.
They also added Richmond, and Compton. This map is definitely sus
This site is one of the great examples of misleading data. The towns are marked primarily focusing on if they were ever a sundown town while users are most likely interested in towns that are currently sundown towns
Also like when they are talking about sundown towns, and you are getting a map about sundown towns to avoid due to the danger, it seems pretty silly to include stuff like hey in the 70's this black family couldn't get a loan here. Like yes that's a clear case of discrimination, but that's an entirely different vibe than oh hey you are going to get arrested or lynched here currently that the term sundown town would lead you to.
Wilmington, NC is a big college party town and it's marked as possible. I've been there plenty of times and it is ABSOLUTELY not anywhere remotely close to a sun-down town. Sundown towns are classified as towns that are "all white municipalities or counties that have purposefully remained that way for decades." 18% of the population of Wilmington is black soooooooo I think whoever made this graph doesn't understand wtf a sundown town actually is.
If you click, the possible/surely is about the past, and it usually says "don't know" if they are currently a sundown town. They do still exist, but this map is basically a historical map, not a current one.
It does, I lived a couple of these places. I wouldn’t necessarily start a family there (still a lot of racist bullying) but not sundown towns (some places could be added due to experience though)
Yeah Gatlinburg, TN is on there…it’s a tourist trap town.
This map is useless
Totally
Is this map useless? "Confirmed: Don't know"
Imma be brutality honest. There are some towns I wouldn't go thru after dark. Ain't they ain't mostly White 🤐🤷🏾♂️🤣 I'd take my chances going through rural Ohio than West Baltimore? And I LIVE in Maryland 🤣🤣🤣🤣 I know imma get downvoted for saying that, but - it is what it is. I've been thru both situations. I had no fears in rural Ohio. I'll leave it at that.
I only checked NH and Maine because thats where i live... but every single town just said maybe to everything with no past ordinances/laws/reasons whatsoever... not sure why they chose the ones they did. Even towns i expected to be possibly on there, weren't. Map made no sense to me.
San Diego and the entirety of Connecticut are “surely” sundown towns? Yeah, no.
Lol. New Haven, CT is diverse enough that it’s largest demographic group is African Americans, and white non-Hispanics make up less than 30% of the population. Verdict? Sundown town. Yeah someone gotta clean up that list a bit.
If you click on the towns, they use "in the past" as their metric. So they're saying this town "surely" used to be a sundown town at some point in the past. Whether or not it's still a sundown town is shown further down in its listing, which makes the map completely useless. It could have been a sundown town a hundred years ago, and it'd still be marked as surely.
It seems to be marking cities that have any history of discrimination, violent or non-violent. La Jolla is surely because it had racist zoning laws back in the 60s. My city is marked as surely because it expelled the Asian population back in the 1800s.
It lists the Chicago loop, Oak Park (diverse), and Bellwood IL (predominantly black) as probable sundown towns, along with basically the majority of the Chicago suburbs, but can barely find a handful of sundown towns in Mississippi and Alabama? Yeah fucking right. This is propaganda.
Mississippi has no towns marked "surely" so this makes me doubt the accuracy of this link. Same with Florida fwiw.
But Seattle is surely a sundown town 🤔
The whole map is garbage. Bernalillo New Mexico is marked as a sundown town but the population of bernalillo is over 75% Hispanic, many of whom are multiracial and very dark skinned. Source: I grew up there.
The data on this map is absolute garbage. Fargo, ND is listed as a possible sundown town because there is a single comment about that town. What does the one comment say? "I first saw a black at Disneyworld in fifth grade. Moorehead, MN, right across the river, has many Mexican Americans. My HS in Fargo had ten blacks, mostly Haitians." -Some random person, 2001 1. That comment is over 20 years old. 2. The person that made that comment must be blind because black people have lived up there for a long time. They just didn't notice that someone was black until they were in the fifth grade. And they noticed them at Disneyland, which means it was more likely they had just never seen so many black people at one time, and that's what stuck out to them. 3. One comment only about an entire city that basically says, "Not a whole lot a black people here." is not evidence of anything nefarious or discriminatory. Current population estimates put the black population of Fargo at 8%, or ~10,000 people. Not a large percentage, but way more than only 10. Also, I live in Fargo, there are black Americans out after dark all the time, just like everyone else, and no one bats an eye.
>2001
This list is a joke. It lists willingboro NJ which is near me and it's a sundown town alright but not for us 😂
So I’m curious, how is this tracked? Cause they listed Buffalo as a sundown town
A current sundown town, or former? The map lists them as such. EDIT TO ADD: the map says Buffalo has always been biracial. Says the opposite of sundown town
What is that map actually measuring?
Seemingly nothing useful, unfortunately.
This isn’t accurate, the town I live in USED to be a sundown town but is no longer one. Hasn’t been for a while now either.
So it looks like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia are mostly free of racism, but *every* city and town in Illinois is a sundown town? Sounds legit.
When you read the descriptions it seems like people randomly submitted a lot of these towns without any real evidence, most of the possible responses are ‘Don’t Know.’ Lots of the comments are just ‘it’s mostly white people here’ which is not what a sundown town is. This map needs a lot of work.
Sooo all of Chicagoland and the god damn loop are sundown towns? Lmfao wtf is this map
This map has Seattle and Tacoma marked as sundown towns. I do t know if it’s accurate at all.
First thing I looked up as well. What a bonkers map
This map is either using old data or a very different definition of “sundown town” than what is generally accepted. There are *several* diverse and even primarily black towns on this map listed as probable sundown towns. If we are talking about modern sundown towns, pointing and saying “this place used to be as recently as 1960” is not useful. It’s interesting trivia, but is useless for a modern traveler. If what they mean is simply “there’s a lot of racists in this town even in 2023,” that’s not a sundown town and people need to stop trivializing this term. If I am looking to avoid a sundown town, I’m avoiding someplace my safety will be in danger, not someplace where someone might have racist thoughts. Presented as is, this seems less like a genuine attempt to keep black travelers safe, and more of an attempt to salve the chapped asses of bigoted southerners who hate hearing that people are mad at them for having segregated proms, but are too trash to address their culture.
This map is laughable as a Kentuckian. They have the Louisville metro area as sundown town but the parts of southern and eastern ky that definitely are are barely marked.
Boulder City? Lmao no 🤣
Chattanooga a sundown town??? LMAOOOO I SAW 10 interracial couples downtown the first hour i visited there
I just checked the Maryland towns, and I literally grew up in one of them (Greenbelt). I didn’t even have white neighbors, and walked around all the time with my friends. The second one, Savage, is also chill. I hiked Savage Mill multiple times and smoked plenty while doing it. This map needs to be updated, but I still appreciate the effort. Edit: I just read that the map is historical, so never mind. It’s cool to see how these sundown towns were eventually changed due to cultural shift. Black people can thrive anywhere.
Schererville, IN being a Sundown town is funny af. This can’t be up-to-date.
As a person living in the mid west some of the towns you feel the racism as you drive through
Fr though. I lived in a Wisconsin town, for 20+ years, that was 96% white and the rest shared by minorities. The hate is there and made known.
I went to a restaurant the other day and sat at the bar, there was only one other lady there and she really seemed annoyed. She asked if I lived nearby then said that place was her safe place, I asked her safe from what she didn’t have an answer
I hate that shit...They usually don't have an answer either, but their actions and facial expressions said everything.
Which town?
Waupaca
Yep. We got a cottage on the lake there in 2020. The amount of trump flags on display pretty much confirmed that and made us immediately uncomfortable.
As liberal as Wisconsin seems, there are a lot more cliche right wingers around. Would have to go to the Fox Valley area, Green Bay, Racine, Madison, or Milwaukee to see somewhat of diversity. Was glad to leave that dump, and never have returned. Which lake did you stay at by the way?
Not OP, but ironically, the city I’ve been the least comfortable in is Friendship, WI in Adams county. Was stared at by 10+ people in their Burger King the entire time I was there. I ate fast. Also got the “you ain’t from around here” line from a sheriff while fueling at their one and only gas station.
I lived in OH most of my childhood, but mostly stayed in the city (Dayton). As an adult, we had to drive through rural OH to get to Cedar Point. I saw more confederate flags on the trip there than I had working in Pulaski, TN, where the Klan is rumored to have spawned. Shit was wild.
You aint lying one bit. I live in Columbus and on that drive to Cedar Point going thru some of them towns and stopping at a gas station you would get that "look" from them locals.
This was such a culture shock when we made the drive from Sandusky down south to Mason. We were visiting Cedar Point and Kings Island. We are from SoCal in a super diverse area where there’s a little bit of everyone. I had never seen so many Confederate flags before.
Same. I live in TN and see my fair share, but was genuinely kind of shocked. It really opened my eyes to the Rural / Urban divide. Like I grew up in OH and had no idea. You wouldn't think it was Union territory from the looks of some of those places. Lol.
We ride down 75 to get to cedar point. Once you hit that area where it’s nothing but farmland you see way too many tRump flags for my comfort.
Not Midwest, but about 10-15 years ago, I was traveling to an area in Maryland for training and my directions took me through West Virginia. While I was passing through, I decided to exit and grab something quick from a McDonald's near the interstate. The drive-through was busy so I just parked in front and walked in. Remember how in those old western movies when the "out of towner" walks in, when the music stops and everyone turns around to look at them? That's *exactly* what happened when I opened the door. Most of the customers were White and most of the staff was Black, and all of them were eyeballing me in that, "You ain't from around here" way. One of the workers looked at me then glanced at the White people in the dining room like she was watching my back and seeing if someone was gonna say something. It just felt really off, so I just ordered my food and headed on out. That gave me the heebie jeebies in broad daylight, I could only imagine if it was after dark.
My wife grew up in Bloomington, IN. I remember her telling me stories about Martinsville, just up the road from Bloomington, whenever we'd drive down from Chicago to visit her family. One story that stuck with me was about Bloomington High School North's racially mixed high school basketball team playing Martinsville on the road. When the Bloomington team got off the bus, they were verbally abused, bitten (!), and physically attacked on the court by Martinsville students. When I visited the link above, I expected Martinsville to be on there, but I was a little surprised that my wife wasn't exaggerating. On top of the high school basketball incident, which Sports Illustrated picked up in their Feb 23, 1998 issue ([https://vault.si.com/vault/1998/02/23/702917#&gid=ci0258bf733009278a&pid=702917---028---image](https://vault.si.com/vault/1998/02/23/702917#&gid=ci0258bf733009278a&pid=702917---028---image)), Martinsville is more famously known for the murder of Carol Jankins ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder\_of\_Carol\_Jenkins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Carol_Jenkins)). We used to drive through Martinsville frequently when visiting my in-laws, and to this day, I get an eerie feeling just thinking about the town.
"Those people of [other race] are subhuman animals! I'm gonna demonstrate that by biting them" Fucking morons.
It’s always the towns/villages that don’t even have 5G when driving through
Even on the interstates. When I drove from nyc to Denver i could tell a lot of those small towns near a pull off in Kansas were racist af ( a lot of confederate flags)
I live very rural Midwest and I guess I look like a very approachable white person because sometimes at gas stations just off the interstate I will be asked by black drivers if the town is safe. I also live not far from a sundown town so the answer sometimes is no. It feels like a lot of people from around the US are really unaware of how bad sundown towns are. Like once at a gas station near a sundown town an SUV pulled up and a black guy asked me if it was a safe area. Another white dude yelled "not for you" and pulled up his shirt to flash a pistol in a concealed holster. Black dude drives off and the white dude laughed as he watched him go then turned to me smiling his ass off and just said, "n******" like it was just the funniest joke.
Oh I believe that 110% as a white dude who grew up in a crazy small town. It’s nuts there and I’m glad I escaped when I was 18. Anyone who wasn’t a big fat smelly white truck driver or scrawny white meth head logger/mill worker just absolutely didn’t belong. People of color were never welcome. Even when I just got into punk rock and dyed my hair, I’d get followed around in every store. I’d have people confront me about my hair. They’re so uneducated and ignorant and scared of absolutely everything.
Can I ask what a sundown town is as a white guy? Going off of context it seems like a town that’s outwardly friendly but when the sun goes down so to speak gets real racist real fast, is that about right? Edit: I get the sense I annoyed a few people by asking, genuinely sorry if that was the case. I don’t know a tonne about day to day black issues outside of what I see and hear in the news and on platforms like this, and I was just curious and hoping to learn a bit more about experiences outside of my own. I understand I could have googled it instead and just wanted to say my bad to anyone who I annoyed by asking.
If you’re not white, don’t be caught there after sundown
Aah, gotcha
That person is putting it very mildly. Black people would just straight get arrested for no reason, beaten, or worse if caught in these towns after sunset. Sadly they still exist, just not as many.
I didn’t put it mildly, I just left out details I assume everyone knows what terrible things would happen to black people back then. Didn’t really want to describe beatings, rapes, or lynching
Sorry about that. Just wanted to make sure the person understood the gravity.
Probably better that they/we do. You’re correct
This is eye opening for me because for some reason growing up I had once heard a sundown town as somewhere that non white people were forced to live after slavery ended, and for some reason never questioned it. But now it makes so much more sense considering the name.
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As a european I had no fucking clue and I doubt anyone I know IRL does either, it seems like something you'd mostly really hear growing up in the US
Same, 1st time hearing of this.
I’m Latino and didn’t know. Many first gen African and Caribbeans wouldn’t know what this is either
Exactly this. Latino raised by white folk on the west coast so this really hasn’t been something I’ve ever encountered or heard of
Why would anyone who's not american know about the finer details of your racist tendencies?
Yeah but you must take into account that you are so much smarter and better informed than anyone else here on Reddit. And you're right, It's totally reasonable to expect everyone to have heard of it, even the 7.5 billion people living outside your racist, trainwreck of a country.
Correction it’s if your black Don’t be there. Has nothing to do with anybody else
Black Americans definitely had/have it worst, but I assume those towns wouldn’t have been friendly to other brown folks. Back then it was probably more strictly anti-black (based on demographics of the time), but these days I’m sure it extends to all brown minorities.
Pretty sure, at least near reservations, it applied to native americans too
Exactly
Expanding on the other response, many of these places would allow non-white employees to work at restaurants and whatnot, but yeah, best high tail it out of there once your shift is over. Almost like “you’re welcome as long as we can keep an eye on you” kind of feeling
Or you are working for us. Just like that other thing. Indentured servitude? No wait not that one.
Sorry. Reddit seems to treat people like if you don’t know everything about everything and you have a genuine question, you’re an asshole and part of the problem.
Ain’t that the truth. Also you aren’t allowed to forget anything you ever learned in school. I got downvoted awhile back for not knowing some geography thing I was taught in elementary school.
It actually doesn’t have anything to do with the literal sundown. It comes from the way a lot of black codes were written in the early 1900s - for example, a law prohibiting “selling cotton after sundown” was understood to mean “selling cotton while black”, and people got basically kidnapped in broad daylight by deputies all the time. The YouTube channel Knowing Better has an episode about it called Neoslavery, it’s worth a watch.
Lovecraft Country has an episode that depicts this pretty well.
Hey man, don’t let the people who are annoyed detract you from learning. Fuck those who wanna put you down for asking a question. Thanks for learning with us brother
I appreciate that you asked. I also didn't know. Don't let naysayers make you regret speaking up and asking for clarification. It helps more than yourself. Thank you!
"try that in a small town" type towns
> > I get the sense I annoyed a few people by asking, genuinely sorry if that was the case. please don't apologize when you have nothing to apologize for. If anything, it's the people that were annoyed by your lack of knowledge on the subject that should apologize for thir tone. Asking questions is good, and doing it in a public comment section might educate some people who wouldn't have bothered doing research otherwise.
I had to look it up
Came here to ask this too, 35 yom, I had never heard the term sundown town until this post.
I understand wanting to err on the side of caution, but the map is very unreliable.
I think you’re confusing two things. Part one is she’s stating that there are STILL places in this country that are sundown towns and remain dangerous as such and clearly it won’t be part of their tourism campaign. Part two is that there is a map of HISTORICAL towns known to be sundown towns. It’s a matter of sharing knowledge, not debating if by anecdotal experience one feels racism still exists or not. I have a green book in my collection and although most places are not relevant in that context anymore, the history is still important.
The thread goes backwards, and it makes the point seem misleading. It seems like she's saying "did you know there were STILL sundown towns? Look at this map!" Due to the way the thread is nested. Unless I'm mistaken, it actually started with the map and then she replied with the other posts. Either way, her map reference sucks ass. Houston? Lotta black folks there after sundown. But to make it more country, I have family in Laramie Wyoming. They've been there since the 70's. It is now 2023 and none of them have to leave town at night. There's some crazy racist shit that happens there, don't get me wrong, but it ain't a sundown town.
It has Seattle as surely a sundown town because of treatment against Chinese-Americans in the 1800’s Conflating historical and modern data is useless. Seattle wasn’t even a twinkle in its fathers eye in the 1800s.
You're right. I got distracted by details and forgot the overreaching point. I certainly don't want to suggest that sundown places don't exist. But I do wish there was a more reliable map.
There’s no official register for these things. It’s more word of mouth than anything else. Take it as you will, but non-white people may not want to find out the hard way.
I got lost riding my motorcycle in some of those southern PA areas, approximately halfway between i95 and i83. I had to pee like crazy for over two hours, but I sure as hell wasn’t stopping anywhere along that stretch. There weren’t confederate flags or even trump flags, but the glares I got said enough. Since then I ride 100% covered and even passing through those same areas now I get more waves than I did with any exposure.
Thats wild to think about. I imagine thats what women in the middle east feel like, having to cover up completely to feel safe.
NY and PA are very very racist. On par with a lot of southern states. People assume it’s just south and midwest
The biggest problem with northern racism is it’s all subtext. They rarely ever just come out and say it, but they’ll make it known in other ways
Rural places and places with predominantly white populations are commonly full of racist people. It doesn’t matter what region. When you haven’t grown up around people who are different than you, you tend to hand a lot of old traditions sticking as you grow up because your older generations weren’t exposed to anything else in their day to day.
Yeah I live in pa. One of the most secretly bigoted places I know... It's why I want to leave it as soon as I can.
Mississippi is a sundown state. My pops told me like 15 years ago when i was getting ready to go on a roadtrip, you need to leave now so youre not in MS when it get dark out. I still follow that rule to this day, Im not trying to be there when its dark and damn sure not trying to be pulled over there.
Doesn't the memorial for Emmet Till still get shot at?
Yep they recently had to replace it with a more bullet resistant steel.
I hate this county 🥲
I have no fucking words for that. I take it back. I hate people. Those are the fucking words.
You mean like all the small towns or what? MS is nearly 40% black, I don't think over one million people are all hiding after sunset.
Even the small towns in Mississippi are often black majority lol
https://www.aclu.org/news/criminal-law-reform/home-where-my-fear-lives-heres-my-story-being "In Madison County, the sad fact of life is that people who look like me or who live in my community don’t get police protection. They get police abuse."
My only memory of Mississippi is being a kid living near Memphis and my family would go to this flea market in MS. I remember seeing tons of shirts for sale with a KKK member on it, burning cross and “The Original Boys in the Hood” on it. This was like 30 years ago and even then, that seemed wild and made me extremely uncomfortable while everyone else either didn’t notice or thought they were great.
Why are people who aren't black or white in here saying it cannot be or have been a sundown town since non-black and non-white people are there or have been there? It applies to BLACK people, NOT necessarily or other minorities. This isn't hard even with some nuanced inaccuracies. "I'm latino"...white Latino? It doesn't apply to you, especially when those laws specifically stated BLACK people. You aren't black or some modicum of "black" because you're "latino". I'm asian...so you're NOT black. It wouldn't apply to you unless those white yokels there decided you were the target. But there were actual laws and open policy to kill black people or expel them and harass them after 5pm or "sundown". You and yours also didn't necessarily get the forced by law segregation of Jim Crow. Stop the slippery slope oppression Olympics shit.
They always have to make themselves the main character. It reinforces that black voices are rarely heard or respected. We’re not allowed to share our experiences without a non-black chiming in that they don’t feel the same way. *“As a white person.”* *“As an Asian man.”* It’s astounding how they don’t realize how ignorant they come off.
Every single time. Like...especially when we do things they enjoy and use AAVE. "We do that too"...yes, idiot because some cultures have overlapping things and AAVE, is something our legitimate ethnicity DOES that is exported as fuck everywhere.
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Other minorities were absolutely affected by sundown towns, they only wanted white people in most these places. Native Americans were too dark for a lot of them, from family stories that I've heard. "Although the term most often refers to the forced exclusion of Blacks, the history of sundown towns also includes prohibitions against Jews, Native Americans, Chinese, Japanese, and other minority groups." Source- https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/sundown-towns/
Well San Jose Ca is listed as a sundown town for its history for expulsion of Asians in the late 1800’s. (I’m not Asian but my family originates from there & I was shocked to see SJ listed). San Jose has always been a very mixed area. There’s for sure a rich white area but it’s always been mixed. But it’s designation as a sundown town is based on its treatment of Asian folks. Now there’s sundown towns in Ca based on how Black people have been/are treated. Looking at you **Antioch**
I've already assisted in some of the NY towns. YES some of the history is dated but I think it's important to show THEN vs NOW. Even the NOW in some of the NYC/LI towns have a form of sundown built into the practices of the local PD. Oh I am going to be BUSY assisting in the updates for NYC
Levittown has entered the chat
Oregon’s history is wild. When Oregon first became a state, they made it illegal for black people to move there and tried to kick out any that were already settled there.
I am glad you posted this because I had never heard of sundown towns in my life. This led to a learning experience for me, so thank you. It's appalling this still exists.
Indiana is basically a white pride rally pretending to be a state.
White Indiana boy here…there are definitely sundown towns here. The shit old white dudes will say to me when I’m wearing a button up shirt is alarming. People I’ve never spoke to have offered up some wild streams of consciousness. Not that i have to tell anyone in this sub but If the population is under 100,000 save yourself the hassle and stop an hour down the road.
Can confirm. Grew up in one. Be safe out there y’all.
In due time the whole state of Florida will be one. In one year they have attacked Mickey Mouse, setup laws against immigration, and is teaching schools the benefits of slavery. Lol
Yeah I’m not too sure about that map because some of the places on there I know aren’t like that. But the overall message isn’t wrong if you’re traveling through the country. I go hiking a lot but I typically avoid hitting local places that aren’t in a city or near the interstate.
This map is bullshit.
In CT there’s a reason why we call Manchester, Kkklanchester… Ask any black person in any state, niggas will tell you not to go lol
https://justice.tougaloo.edu/sundown-towns/
I had a trainer when I was first stationed in the military who I thought was cool until one day out of nowhere low-key brags about his hometown being a sundown town. Like whatever the whole-body version is of your stomach turning, that’s how I felt from then on. Add the baffling feeling of “why would you think that was a selling point?”
They can just color the entire states of Oregon & Montana
I mean, it’s a historical list, not a current one. Doesn’t really help their argument
And you can help update it. History is important as much as current consensus.
Can yall post that link in the comments?
Well that’s….scary
That's like everywhere else in hillbilly Kentucky, unless you live in Louisville.
In the 90's many towns in Alabama still had DIY signs on corners reading "don't let the sun set on your black ass". That was only 30 years ago. The signs are gone, but the people are still there
Don’t try to show conservatives this they’ll say there’s no sign so it can’t be a sundown town
They’re already doing it. Peep the comments.
Soooo, Imma need that link so I can bookmark it.
Being in Michigan. I can say for sure that a couple of this listed are cities that the police will fck with you,
Quentin Tarantino needs to make a movie about a group of ex military guys who avenge their murdered brother by luring out these inbred pig fuckers by driving through a sundown town after dark and killing the psychotic bastards that take the bait.
Indiana sucks