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I looked at my state, and some of the cities listed there as "sundown" downs HAVE the highest percentage of minorities living there now, and have historically HAD the same during the Jim Crow era, when I was a child. They've put some small towns on the list just because they still have a largely white population. If you live in the middle of no where, where the entire economy revolves around farming and ranching, you tend to not get a lot of newcomers, and most of the locals have to leave when they're young to find work. Those communities were created by groups of settlers and immigrant families who traveled together, settled together, and their descendants are still all living together. I think whoever did this jumped to lots of conclusions that he shouldn't have based on really limited information.
That was Harrier's analysis as well - which to answer urbanlife's question - makes it controversial.
Quote:
Originally Posted by urbanlife78
I agree, I have never heard the term until you started this thread. So why did you start it to begin with?
Loewen seems to have an axe to grind, and is trying very hard to suggest that something still exists, when that couldn't be further from the truth.
A lot of people on the left think that illegal aliens should be given citizenship, primarily so that they can vote(the thinking is that they will reward the Democrats by punching wherever they see a "D").
Why not give mosquitos citizenship as well, and then their carbon-based profiling will be illegal?
Well, the database uses terms such as "surely not", "probable", and "possibly" to describe the likelihood of a given town to have such a current status.
It isn't that any specific sundown law would necessarily be in place, but the idea that the town may be discouraging certain people through hostility or subtle measures that may not be seen as having the same effect as an overt ban.
Harrier has yet to find any town that "surely is" a SD - and the inclusion of a city being on the list seems rather arbitrary.
While I value anecdotal evidence and "oral histories", I find they can sometimes be afforded too much weight, especially when one person's ancdote is relied upon by one other person.
some comments on NJ:
Saddle River: Saddle River "sought to block construction of a college." (see Michael N. Danielson, The Politics of Exclusion (NY: Columbia University Press, 1976), 42)
Saddle River is a hoity toity Top 1% town, they're just classist, I can see where they wouldn't want a college. That's not racist or anti-Semitic.
Mahwah: According to Michael N. Danielson, The Politics of Exclusion (NY: Columbia UP, 1976), when Ford opened, they refused to let UAW build subsidized housing.
This isn't surprising. Mahwah straddles the New York State line, and when they allowed Ford
to build an assembly plant (that boggles my mind), they kept out the worker traffic by
somehow steering traffic to the plant off the NYS Thruway. The Ford plant is long gone
and I don't know what's there now.
Glen Rock: According to a New Jersey resident, Glen Rock was all- white when he was growing up.
Actually, Glen Rock has had a tiny Black enclave for a long time, but it is so tiny and out of
the way - along the railroad tracks within a stone's throw of Ridgewood - that a lot of people
don't know about it. It might no longer exist today if it faced the same economic/development
pressures as the larger enclave in Mount Laurel. [2000 Census lists approx 1.8 percent
Black, so I imagine the enclave is still there]
Fair Lawn:
cited as historically excluding Blacks and Jews, and specifically Jewish exclusion in Radburn,
which was a pioneering private planned community. Fair Lawn has had a large Jewish
presence since at least the 1960s, including a bustling Jewish business sector, although
Blacks are still very scarce (0.8 percent in the 2000 Census). Radburn has a separate entry
on this website and a very interesting history of its own.
Places like New Hampshire they have no confirmation of it being a sundown town, then they say it possibly still is because it doesn't have that many blacks, well, New Hampshire as a whole is very white, your not going to get a small New Hampshire town with a large Black Population, they are mostly French-Canadian or English immigrants that came over way back in the 1700s.
A sundown town was a municipality that historically were made inhospitable during the daytime to black Americans, and typically would prohibit black people from being inside the city limits after dark.
They are a sad legacy of the Jim Crow era, with most sundown towns phasing out of having that status in the late 1960's.
Professor James Loewen seems to think that many sundown towns still exist today, and the following interactive map will help you find potential sundown municipalities near you.
Loewen managed to find an Illinois town called Anna which was an acronym meaning "Aint no "n-words" allowed.
Quote:
In Oct. 2001, James W. Loewen stopped at a convenience store in the small Illinois town of Anna -- a name that, as a store clerk confirmed, stands for "Ain't No n-words Allowed."
On Nov. 8, 1909, nearly a century before Loewen stepped into the store, a mob of angry white citizens drove out Anna's 40 or so black families following the lynching in a nearby town of a black man accused of raping a white woman. Anna became all-white literally overnight, Loewen reports, and embraced racial exclusiveness for the long haul. According to the 2000 census, just one family with a black member lives among Anna's 7,000 residents.
Places like New Hampshire they have no confirmation of it being a sundown town, then they say it possibly still is because it doesn't have that many blacks, well, New Hampshire as a whole is very white, your not going to get a small New Hampshire town with a large Black Population, they are mostly French-Canadian or English immigrants that came over way back in the 1700s.
For what it's worth, there is a connection between New Hampshire and Jackie Robinson. Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to a contract with the then-Brooklyn Dodgers. Rickey contacted executive Buzzie Bavasi and asked him to find a suitable location for a new minor-league club, with the idea of signing more Black players. Nashua, NH was a chosen location. It was believed that because of Nashua's large French-Canadian population, that the city would be more receptive to having Black baseball players on the team.
A
Interestingly enough, "blue" states like California, New York, Ohio, Illinois, and Connecticut have high numbers of current potential sundown towns.
Ohio is NOT a Blue State, more of a Purple State.
Do you even KNOW why there are no or few Blacks in some areas? Hint, it has NOTHING to do with this "Sundown" nonsense.
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