Thread by @loganjaffe

1/ Anna, Illinois, was known as a sundown town — a mostly white community that, for decades, was known to not allow black people in town after dark. I spent some time reporting in Anna over the last 18 months. Here’s what I found ... (THREAD) features.propublica.org/illinois-sundo…

2/ The *very first* person I met there and asked about the town told me Anna stands for “Ain’t No N—-ers Allowed.” This was in February 2018.

Important to note: Anna remains overwhelmingly white today.

3/ To be clear, I had known about the A-N-N-A legend before I first went to Anna because I’d read @JamesWLoewen’s book, “Sundown Towns.” Still, I didn’t expect to hear A-N-N-A repeated aloud my first time in town, by the first person I met.

@JamesWLoewen 4/ I returned four more times over about a year, and nearly every single person I talked to had heard about A-N-N-A, many from parents, grandparents or as a “joke.” It’s not something people seemed proud of or that they talk about much. But still, people knew.

@JamesWLoewen 5/ I met a white 11-year-old who said he heard about A-N-N-A from his dad. A black 61-year-old shopping at Walmart told me he’d known about it for years. The Anna mayor knew, the police chief knew, etc. …

@JamesWLoewen 6/ But nobody seemed to know what, exactly, happened in Anna’s history to give the town that reputation. One white woman told me there’s never been “major race issues” in Anna because not many black people live there. So I knew I had to dig deeper into the past.

@JamesWLoewen 7/ First: Anna is not *technically* named Anna because of A-N-N-A. It was named after the town founder’s wife, Anna Davie: archive.org/details/100yea….

@JamesWLoewen 8/ A local historian and teacher, Darrel Dexter, showed me this 1916 obituary he found while doing his own research. “...the only colored man who has ever lived in this city, died at his home Sunday night.” (Note to journalists: Talk to historians!)

@JamesWLoewen 9/ When I visited Anna again in July 2018, Dexter took me and @whitcurtisphoto to where that man, John Sales, and his wife are buried in the Anna Cemetery. Dexter believes the Sales’ were the only black family allowed to live in Anna for a time b/c they weren’t seen as a threat.

@JamesWLoewen @whitcurtisphoto 10/ Here’s a link to the 1910 Census via @internetarchive where you can see the Sales listed: archive.org/stream/13thcen…. (Sorry not sorry about the rabbit hole I just threw you down. Finish this thread first, tho.)

@JamesWLoewen @whitcurtisphoto @internetarchive 11/ About 100 steps from the Sales’ grave is one that tells another important story about Anna. This is the grave of a young white woman from Anna who was murdered in 1909 in the nearby city of Cairo.

@JamesWLoewen @whitcurtisphoto @internetarchive 12/ The story became quite a spectacle. Newspapers around the country sensationally reported about her death. A black man, William James, was soon blamed for her murder. There was no trial. He was lynched in downtown Cairo among a crowd of thousands of white people.

@JamesWLoewen @whitcurtisphoto @internetarchive 13/ What happened in southern Illinois the week of Nov. 9, 1909, is a mind-blowing story of how justice and the law failed: Train hijackings. Lynch mobs. State militias. Read through these @librarycongress newspapers: chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn9305577…. Also, someone made postcards:

@JamesWLoewen @whitcurtisphoto @internetarchive @librarycongress 14/ In a collection of oral history interviews recorded in the 1970s and archived at @SIUC @Morris_Library, one Anna resident remembers what happened in Anna after the Cairo lynching.

@JamesWLoewen @whitcurtisphoto @internetarchive @librarycongress @SIUC @Morris_Library 15/ A mob of white Anna men reportedly ran about 10 black workers at a nearby quarry out of town. Here’s a small article about it published in The Cairo Bulletin: chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn9305577…

@JamesWLoewen @whitcurtisphoto @internetarchive @librarycongress @SIUC @Morris_Library 16/ I know this thread is getting long, but stick with me. There are so many more examples in newspaper archives that chronicle the history of Anna’s reputation as A-N-N-A. Here are some:

@JamesWLoewen @whitcurtisphoto @internetarchive @librarycongress @SIUC @Morris_Library 17/ Very few people I met in Anna knew any of this history. I don’t mean that in a shameful way. I don’t know squat about my hometown. Most of us probably don’t. But here’s my Q: Should we? How do we know we are “over the past” if we don’t learn what really happened?

@JamesWLoewen @whitcurtisphoto @internetarchive @librarycongress @SIUC @Morris_Library 18/ Why does your community look the way it does? It may not be incidental. If you live in a place that’s mostly white, it may have been a sundown town. It may still be. Wouldn’t you want to know?

@JamesWLoewen @whitcurtisphoto @internetarchive @librarycongress @SIUC @Morris_Library 19/ @JamesWLoewen estimates there are thousands of sundown towns in the U.S. and hundreds in Illinois. Here are some resources for how to start researching whether your town has a sundown past:
-tolerance.org/magazine/sprin…
-sundown.tougaloo.edu/content.php?fi…

@JamesWLoewen @whitcurtisphoto @internetarchive @librarycongress @SIUC @Morris_Library 20/ Here are some news stories about towns that have begun to address their sundown histories:
-goshennews.com/news/goshen-ci…
-lacrossetribune.com/news/local/soc…
-heraldbulletin.com/news/madison-c…

@JamesWLoewen @whitcurtisphoto @internetarchive @librarycongress @SIUC @Morris_Library 20a/ And here is where I’m cutting myself off. I could go on. There’s a black family that lives in Anna now. They like it. It’s complicated. It’s in the story. Read it: features.propublica.org/illinois-sundo…

@JamesWLoewen @whitcurtisphoto @internetarchive @librarycongress @SIUC @Morris_Library 20b/ **BONUS TWEET**
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