Why Repairations.....
"Black is when folks say you've got to earn the rights the Constitution guaranteed you already had."
-Black Is by Turner Brown, Jr.
Sundown Towns
"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 violence. The term came from signs posted that "colored people" had to leave town by sundown."
"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 violence. The term came from signs posted that "colored people" had to leave town by sundown."
This practice was not regulated only to the southern states, but was widely practiced in northern states as well, and known to be as unhospitable to Black travelers until the early 1960s, and dates back to the colonial era in the general court and legislative assembly of New Hampshire who passed "An Act to Prevent Disorders in The Night" in 1714:
"Whereas great disorders, insolvencies and burglaries are often raised and committed in the nighttime by Indian, Negro, and Molatto Servants and Slaves to the Disquiet and Hurt of her Majesty's subjects, No Indian, Negro, or Molatto is to be from home after 9 o'clock."
This was published in The New Hampshire Gazette in 1764 and 1771 to confirm this curfew. After the Reconstruction Era, thousands of towns and counties throughout the United States set into practice Sundown Towns.
In 1844, even though Oregon had banned slavery, it also banned Afrikan Americans from the territory altogether. Other states also looked to the law to thwart Afrodescendants from living among whites. New laws were enacted in the 20th century to prevent Black people from owning property in certain areas.
"Road trips for African Americans were fraught with inconveniences and dangers because of racial segregation, racial profiling by police, the phenomenon of travelers just "disappearing," and the existence of numerous sundown towns. According to author Kate Kelly, "there were at least 10,000 'sundown towns' in the United States as late as the 1960s; nonwhites had to leave the city limits by dusk."
During this time, the legendary Negro Motorist Green Book (also known as The Negro Traveler's Green Book or The Negro Motorist Green-Book, also simply known as the "Green Book") was the annual segregation guidebook for Afrikan American travelers. This book was published by a New York travel agent and a man by the name of Victor H. Green, a letter carrier in Hackensack, New Jersey.
The Green Book was published from 1936 until 1966 and was the official guide for Black travelers. The Green Book told Afrikan Americans how to behave on the road, where to eat and where to find safe lodgings, and where to find eateries. The Green Book became invaluable, a life and death invaluable guide to always have with you while traveling throughout the United States. And it didn't seem to matter what part of the United States; but wherever you seem to be traveling in the United States, if you were an Afrikan American, you needed the Green Book.
Afrodescendants were not the only minority group kept out of white towns. Antioch, California, had a Sundown Ordinance that barred Chinese residents from 1851 to about 1876. Towns like Minden, Nevada, and Gardnerville, Nevada had an ordinance from 1917 to 1974 requiring Native Americans to leave town by 6:30 p.m. daily. Also, in Nevada, the ban included Japanese Americans. In Colorado, "No Mexicans After Night," and in Connecticut, "Whites Only Within City Limits After Dark."
Heather O'Connell, sociologist, wrote in 2019 that sundown towns are, "(primarily) a thing of the past". However, writer Morgan Jenkins disagreed, saying: "Sundown towns have never gone away." Historian James W. Loewen notes, "persisting effects of sundown towns' violently enforced segregation even after they may have been integrated in a small degree, a phenomenon he calls 'second generation sundown towns".
In the real world, which is the one we are residing in, even today people need to be cautious with their whereabouts and leave word with someone, family member, co-worker, friend, letting them know of your whereabouts. And don't fool yourself, this practice is not something that use to be, it still is.
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Reference: Wikipedia