Thread by @WillMcAvoyACN

Alright, strap in. I'm going to spend much of the rest of the evening talking about Sundown Cities. I've found this is a stunning part of our shared American history that many white people either don't know about or learned about from Green Book. This will be a THREAD:

I'm sure very little of this thread will come as news to the Black people who follow me. And to them I apologize for lecturing about something they already know all-too-well. However, I think it is important to show the lasting impact that racism can have on a location.

And if there is one lesson I want you to keep in mind, it is that these policies have legacies that far outlast the policy itself. We will look at a few examples from a couple different states that were hotbeds of sundown cities.

There is one thing I want to make clear: There were sundown towns in every state of the union. From Malaga Island, Maine to Culver City, California, sundown towns littered the nation.

While they were prevalent in the south, they were most common in the Midwest.

Before we get to the Midwest and the South, I want to talk about Malaga Island, because that's a very good example of one way sundown towns were created: through the forced expulsion of black people. The Malaga Island story is extremely dark, so please be warned before proceeding

The history of Malaga Island begins with Benjamin Darling in 1794. Darling, an African American, purchased a small island off the coast of Maine near Malaga Island in 1794. His mixed -ace decedents began to settle on nearby islands building a community along the Maine shore.

Darling's decedents were eventually nicknamed Malagites the Casco Bay's own racial slur that continues to this day. While Malaga Island was not a desired property in 1794, by the early 1900s interest grew in the island and its people. Namely, how to get them off the island.

There were some efforts in the early 1900s to bring "society" to Malaga. A school was built on a mission trip. But a thriving mixed-race community that kept to itself was something to be feared and despised. It eventually hurt the tourism industry in nearby Phippsburg.

And the tourism industry had made the once relatively useless land of Malaga valuable. So a plan was hatched to make the island property of a Phippsburg resident, the Perry family, and the entire community was evicted from the island and institutionalized.

It should be noted that the Perry family sold the property back to Maine before the evictions took place, and ultimately it was their own government that evicted them, forced them from homes they had lived in for generations, and forced them into mental institutions.

By July 1912 any evidence of the community on Malaga was gone, other than the graveyard.

So the state of Maine dug up the graves, dumped the contents of 17 graves into five caskets, and buried those caskets at the same asylum they had placed the former Malaga residents.

All of this was done in the name of preserving tourism for a nearby white community of Phippsburg.

As of the 2010 census, Phippsburg has a population of 2,216 and 11 Black residents.

Before we get into the heart of our discussion on Sundown Towns, I need to give special credit to @JamesWLoewen who is the leading researcher on the subject. Indeed, his website (sundown.tougaloo.edu/sundowntowns.p…) and book are wonderful starting points for anyone interested in the subject.

Now, what is a Sundown Town? A sundown town was a town where nonwhites would need to leave the municipality by dusk or face arrest by police. Or, often, worse.

And while this phenomenon was most predominant during the 1930s through the 1960s, they were not limited to that era.

White people often talk of nostalgia for the open road before the interstate highway system, where you would drive from community to community along roads that moved with the terrain.

For nonwhite Americans, their freedom and lives were at risk every stop along the path.

So let's make our first stop on our mini-tour of sundown towns.

Welcome to Levittown, New York.

Levittown was founded in the late 1940s as a planned suburban community on Long Island for people who wanted to live near the beaches but keep their jobs in Manhattan.

Levittown created the modern suburb as we know it today.

Including the requirement for whiteness.

Levittown was billed as the American dream. Embracing tactics learned in construction during World War II, the suburb was built quickly and the constructed homes came at a more affordable price than other nearby communities.

It was the American Dream.

As long as you were white.

Keep in mind that this was not uncommon at the time. In fact the Federal Housing Administration discouraged mixed racial communities.

What made Levittown unique is that they targeted World War II veterans who benefited from the GI Bill to buy their first home.

And while many Black veterans would have been able to buy homes with the GI Bill, the best valued homes for the price were out of their reach, and any application from a Black person would be denied.

This continued for well over a decade.

In New York State.

In the 2010 census, Levittown had a population of 51,881 people, 467 of whom are Black.

Our next stop in our mini-tour of sundown towns is Elwood, Indiana.

Now, to be frank, I could have picked just about any small town in Indiana, Illinois or really anywhere in the Great Lakes region. One of the worst kept secrets in the world is that behind that famous Midwest smile (or Hoosier Hospitality) lies an extra row of teeth.

To make a complete list of the sundown towns just in the state of Indiana would take several tweets.

However, the town 'Hoosiers' was based on, Milan, wasn't an official sundown town, but the high school only got their first black student in 1984.

But back to Elwood, Indiana. I chose Elwood for two reasons.

One, because it is the birthplace of Wendell Willkie, the 1940 Republican candidate for President of the United States.

And two, because it may be the most racist town north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Elwood traces its history back to 1853, when it was founded as Duck Creek. The post office was founded in 1855, and the town was incorporated in 1891.

Around the time of its incorporation as a town, it became one of the most notorious sundown towns in the United States.

At first the town of Elwood simply ignored Black residents and refused to give them jobs. But in the 1890s they elected to get more direct. The few remaining Black residents were forced from town, driven out by force.

Which bring us to Wendell Willkie. Willkie was born in Elwood in 1892, and was likely a young man in town at the time when all the Black people in town were driven out of their homes by force. Willkie, the son of lawyers, was introduced at a young age to WIlliam Jennings Bryan.

Willkie eventually got into politics and, in 1940, somewhat unexpectedly became the Republican nominee for President, despite having switched parties only a year before. Willkie stated he believed that FDR had become anti-business, and may be the source for "party left me" adage.

Now, it's important to remember how the political alignment looked in 1940. While many people point to the 'southern strategy' as when the two political parties flopped, by 1940 the shift of Black Americans from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party was already beginning.

For at least one Black Republican, Wendell Willkie's decision to hold an event in his home town of Elwood, Indiana in 1940 hastened this shift.

George Sawyer, a Black Republican, drove to Elwood, Indiana in 1940 to see Wendell Willkie speak. When he arrived just outside of town he saw a pair of signs at the edge of Elwood's city limits. One sign read:
"Nigger, don't let the sun set on you in Elwood."

Sawyer never did see Willkie speak. He turned around and left the town of Elwood. From that day forward, he was a Democrat, along with his son he had brought with him.

Elwood was also a notorious home for the Ku Klux Klan. This photo, taken in the early 1920s, shows a number of Klan members in Elwood. Klan activities continued in Elwood until relatively recently, and the Indiana Klan maintains a robust membership today, likely including Elwood.

Unfortunately Elwood, like many other former sundown towns, realized that their open history of racism would cause problems for the future, and they burnt much of their town history. No photographs of the aforementioned sign have been found to exist, though it is clear they did.

Indeed, the Elwood Library, which once kept a robust file of the town's history, had seen that collection reduced to a single photocopied news clipping. From 1982. heraldbulletin.com/news/madison-c…

In the 2010 census, Elwood had a population of 8,614 people, 17 of whom were black.

These are just two cities out of literal hundreds of sundown towns.

Some, such as Elanor, West Virginia where out of a population of 1,518 have two Black residents.

There are still places in the United States of America where Black people are not welcome or wanted, and they are acutely aware of this fact. Others have become so notorious for their behavior that Black people avoid them on reputation alone.

I hope, if nothing else, this thread will shed some light onto why the most notable police killings of unarmed Black people have happened in places like Minneapolis/St. Paul, St. Louis, Cleveland, Staten Island, and Louisville.

And that is because the suburban north, where these police officers largely live, remain largely white institutions where the law and the police has a legacy of targeting and excluding black people from basic civil rights, and has worked as a tool of their oppression for decades.

And now, a few glimmers of hope:

Anna, Illinois, which once boasted that the town's official slogan was "Ain't No N-----s Allowed" held a BLM demonstration in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. thesouthern.com/news/local/ain…

And Shelby, Ohio: mansfieldnewsjournal.com/story/news/202…

And Effington, Illinois: thexradio.com/news/78-local-…

And Corbin, Kentucky thexradio.com/news/78-local-…

and Vidor, Texas. texasmonthly.com/news/black-liv…

And now your homework:

Go here and find the nearest possible Sundown Town. Then do some research at your local library or historian, and see if we can get more information on this shameful chapter in our history.

And our present.

sundown.tougaloo.edu/content.php?fi…

Any questions?

I leave you tonight with the music of Gary Clark Jr.

This is "This Land"

It does have inappropriate language, including racial slurs.