Guest View: “Sundown Towns” Inspires Thoughts…

Guest View: “Sundown Towns” Inspires Thoughts on “Keep Out” Signs People Share
(Kathleen LaTosch, orig at “White Voices on Race,” May 29, 2015)
I’m reading “Sundown Towns” by James Loewen.  It’s a fascinating deep dive into the circumstances that resulted in today’s suburbia being nearly all white and inner cities being nearly all black.  A sundown town was a town which expelled its existing black residents from 1890-1940 (sometimes Jewish and Chinese too, but mostly African American), then posted signs at its borders with the warning: “[racial epithet], don’t let the sun set on you in this town!”  People of color could work there, but couldn’t live there or be there after dark without significant risk to their personal safety.
See, after the Civil War, former slaves, supported by sympathetic whites, set up homes in towns all across America.  That lasted roughly a generation, until about 1890, at which time towns everywhere started ousting their black residents.  Thousands of towns were actually less diverse by 1940 than they were in 1890, half a century earlier, even though their white populations grew.  In historical terms, it’s called the “Nadir” of race relations in the United States and there several theories for its emergence.
Many of the sundown towns created between 1890 and 1940 used a “trigger” event to oust their black families.  Someone would accuse a black person of a crime against a white person.  The accused was immediately convicted by public opinion, then run out of town, or worse –tortured and sometimes murdered, by a mob of angry white people.  Once he was gone, their sights turned to the rest of the black families who were ordered to leave that night or face the same or similar fate by morning.  Most left quickly, grabbing children and running as fast as they could, stopping for nothing.  The movie “Rosewood” is a graphic and violent illustration of something that happened in some towns to the black neighborhoods – in some towns they didn’t let people leave before burning it down.
I share all of this because as I was reading the book, I thought about the experiences of my black friends and their families, their parents and grandparents.  This was happening well into the 1940’s, about the time my parents were born.  I think about what it would have been like if one of my parents had been a baby grabbed at midnight to avoid a mob of angry, violent men.  If my grandparents had run, with nothing, to the woods, to a neighboring town which may or may not have let them in.  Or maybe their town wasn’t targeted, but their sister’s was.  Or a cousin’s.  Maybe they knew they could be next.  Since I come from white, mostly post-second generation immigrant stock, that didn’t happen.  My grandparents lived in Detroit and were allowed to live and buy property wherever they chose without fear.
From 1940-1970 came suburban development, the next era of sundown towns – they didn’t run black people out of town, they just never let them in in the first place.  The Detroit-area suburbs of Warren and Royal Oak, along with thousands of others across the Midwest, were new sundown suburbs.  And if they were positioned next to black towns or cities, walls were sometimes constructed to restrict movement, shield the view and provide a barrier.  A brick wall like this still exists in Northwest Detroit which, at one time, separated a white neighborhood from a black one.
Covenants were commonplace – agreements that property would be sold and financed for white people only, that no blacks (or Jews in many cases in the Detroit area), were allowed.  Several noted historians like Thomas Sugrue have documented this practice.  The Michigan Roundtable for Diversity & Inclusion has a traveling exhibit which uncovers many neighborhoods that participated.  It ended near the time of Brown v. the Board of Education which sought to desegregate public education, however informal agreements continued to exist through the 1990s and most likely to this day.
The City of Livonia, a suburb of Detroit, was established in 1950, two years after General Motors built a plant there, attracting black workers.  In 1972, 4,353 African Americans worked in Livonia, but could not and did not live there.   That’s about the time I was born and the time when many of my black friends were born.  My family could have lived there, but not theirs.  As of the 2010 Census data, just 3,309 African Americans lived there, 3% of the city’s population.
I wrote this blog in the midst of a retreat of sorts.  I was in Up North, Michigan, walking near a lake and came across a quaint old, broken-down farm.  The roof was peeling back, the siding a barn-rust color.  There was a dock out by the lake that had long-since broken down and the whole place looked abandoned.  I was curious.  I could see the road leading to it, so the next day I thought I would try and get a closer look.  After several winding roads that led to dead ends, I finally came around a bend to the old farmhouse and was immediately struck with a sense of dread.  Roadside, the “barn” turned out to be an old marina.  This side, it had a fresh coat of paint –  dark blue – and scrawled on the outside wall in white paint, in stark contrast to the dark blue, in large block letters, were the words, “KEEP OUT!”  The quaintness of the old farmhouse disintegrated, instantly replaced with hostility.  There was not a soul in sight.  I had been curious; now I was dismayed, a little nervous, hackles raised, wondering if someone with a shotgun was lurking around the corner.
I can only imagine how I would feel if generations of my family were ordered to “Keep Out!”  If I were accustomed to seeing the message, accustomed to the fear of violence behind those words.    Or maybe I’m younger and not accustomed to seeing the signs on black-and-white billboards and I feel free to walk into and through mostly white neighborhoods.  Maybe I’m like Trayvon Martin walking down the street, but still end up facing the horrific reality of that legacy.
I wonder if I sometimes convey a “Keep Out!” message to people, especially people who are different from me.
There have been times in my life when I have looked at someone on the street with a suspicious glance, paid extra close attention to what they were doing to ensure it wasn’t criminal.  Drew my bag a little closer.  Crossed the street.
As a Midwest, suburban white person, I have been conditioned to be suspicious of certain people – mostly African Americans, but also some Mexican American people.  Growing up in one of those very white suburbs of Chicago, I often heard the phrase “the Mexicans,” uttered with a judgmental glance, an unspoken sentiment floating just beneath the surface, “watch yourself around them, they’re up to no good.”  Although I have worked hard to de-condition myself, I must be ever-vigilant.  It’s like being exposed to an airborne disease and requires constant prophylactic protection.
In the wake of Ferguson, Cleveland, New York, and Baltimore, thanks to the accessibility of social media, we know this is on-going and widespread.  People are dying because of heightened fears, because as white people, we are programmed to be suspicious of certain “kinds” of people.
White people can and should be the ones to stop it.
For me, change always starts from within.  White people, ask yourself: are you more suspicious of people who look different from you?  Do you do the purse-clutch on the sidewalk?  What does suspicious look like to you?   How do you convey your suspiciousness, in word, in body language?
How do you put up a Keep Out sign?
For more on sundown towns in 2015, view Al Roker & Keith Beauchamp’s new documentary.
Kathleen LaTosch is a consultant specializing in diversity and inclusion for nonprofit organizations and small businesses.  For more information about Kathleen’s work and availability, email her at klatosch at gmail.com or visit www.LaToschConsulting.com

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