Dusk
settles over Anna, Ill., on
Saturday, Aug. 1, 2020. "Sundown
towns" like Anna were places where
Black people were allowed in during
the day to work or shop but had to
be gone by nightfall. Today, some
still exist in various forms,
enforced now by tradition and fear
rather than by rules. (AP Photo/Wong
Maye-E)
AP Road
Trip:
Racial
tensions
in
America's
'sundown
towns'
TIM
SULLIVAN
and
NOREEN
NASIR
apnews.com
VIENNA,
Ill. -
Ask
around
this
time-battered
Midwestern
town,
with its
empty
storefronts,
dusty
antique
shops
and
businesses
that
have
migrated
toward
the
interstate,
and
nearly
everyone
will
tell you
that
Black
and
white
residents
get
along
really
well.
“Race
isn’t a
big
problem
around
here,”
said
Bill
Stevens,
a white
retired
prison
guard
with a
gentle
smile,
drinking
beer
with
friends
on a
summer
afternoon.
“Never
has
been,
really.”
“We
don’t
have any
trouble
with
racism,”
said a
twice-widowed
woman,
also
white,
with a
meticulously-kept
yard and
a white
picket
fence.
But
in
Vienna,
as in
hundreds
of
mostly
white
towns
with
similar
histories
across
America,
much is
left
unspoken.
Around
here,
almost
no one
talks
openly
about
the
violence
that
drove
out
Black
residents
nearly
70 years
ago, or
even
whispers
the name
these
places
were
given:
“sundown
towns.”
Unless
they’re
among
the
handful
of Black
residents.
“It’s
real
strange
and
weird
out here
sometimes,”
said
Nicholas
Lewis, a
stay-at-home
father.
“Every
time I
walk
around,
eyes are
on me.”
Victoria
Vaughn,
second
from
right,
17, a
student
at
nearby
Marion
high
school,
poses
with her
grandmothers,
Nancy
Maxwell,
second
from
left,
and
Vickie
Higgins,
right,
and her
aunt,
Janae
Maxwell,
left,
during a
rally
for
racial
justice
held in
support
of the
biracial
students
at
Vienna
high
school
in
Vienna,
Ill., on
Sunday,
Sept.
27,
2020.
Vaughn,
who is
biracial,
grew up
visiting
Higgins
in
Vienna,
Ill., on
the
weekends
and over
the
summers
and
noticed
when
people
would
stare at
her in
the
grocery
store or
walking
around
town.
(AP
Photo/Noreen
Nasir)
The
rules of
a
sundown
town
were
simple:
Black
people
were
allowed
to pass
through
during
the day
or go in
to shop
or work,
but they
had to
be gone
by
nightfall.
Anyone
breaking
the
rules
could
risk
arrest,
a
beating
or
worse.
These
towns
were an
open
secret
of
racial
segregation
that
spilled
over
much of
the
nation
for at
least a
century,
and
still
exist in
various
forms,
enforced
today
more by
tradition
and fear
than by
rules.
Across
America,
some of
these
towns
are now
openly
wrestling
with
their
histories,
publicly
acknowledging
now-abandoned
racist
laws or
holding
racial
justice
protests.
Some old
sundown
towns
are now
integrated.
But many
also
still
have
tiny
Black
communities
living
alongside
residents
who
don’t
bother
hiding
their
cold
stares
of
disapproval.
Bill
Stevens,
76,
stands
in The
Gunsmoke
Club
Tuesday,
Aug. 4,
2020, in
West
Vienna,
Ill.
This is
a deeply
conservative
part of
the
nation _
77
percent
of the
county
voted
for
President
Donald
Trump in
the 2016
elections;
just 19
percent
went for
Hillary
Clinton.
(AP
Photo/Wong
Maye-E)
Milton
L.
McDaniel,
Sr.,
attends
a
service
at
Boskydell
Baptist
Church
in
Carbondale,
Ill. (AP
Photo/Wong
Maye-E) A
girl is
immersed
in a
smartphone
game
while
others
play in
an
arcade
at a
skating
rink in
Anna,
Ill. (AP
Photo/Wong
Maye-E)
This
part of
southern
Illinois
had at
least a
half-dozen
sundown
towns.
We came
here on
the
second
stop of
The
Associated
Press’
road
trip
across
America,
a
reporting
journey
that
three of
us are
taking
to look
at how
the U.S.
has been
shaken
and
shaped
by
months
of
protests,
the
COVID-19
pandemic,
an
economic
crisis
and the
looming
November
elections.
We
wanted
to take
a close
look at
systemic
racism,
trying
to
understand
how
something
that is
so
crushingly
obvious
to some
people
can be
utterly
invisible
to
others.
So
we went
to a
longtime
sundown
town.
They
were
called
“grey
towns,”
in some
parts of
America,
“sunset
towns”
in
others.
The
terms
were
used by
both
Black
and
white
people.
Mailboxes
line a
street
in
Jonesboro,
Ill., on
Sunday,
Aug. 2,
2020.
(AP
Photo/Wong
Maye-E)
Very
often,
especially
in
well-to-do
suburbs
that
didn’t
want to
be known
as
racist,
they had
no name
at all.
But they
still
kept out
Black
residents.
There
were
hundreds
of such
towns,
scholars
say,
reaching
from New
York to
Oregon.
Perhaps
thousands.
James
Loewen,
a
historian
who
spent
years
studying
sundown
towns,
found
them in
the
suburbs
of
Detroit,
New York
City and
Chicago.
He found
them
outside
Los
Angeles,
in
midwestern
farming
villages
and in
New
England
summer
towns.
Dusk
settles
over
Anna,
Ill. (AP
Photo/Wong
Maye-E)
Sometimes,
the
rules
were
official
policies,
with
signs at
the edge
of towns
warning
Black
people
to be
gone by
nightfall.
More
often,
everyone
- both
Black
and
white -
simply
knew the
unwritten
rules.
In
this
area,
near the
borders
of both
Missouri
and
Kentucky,
young
Black
people
were
raised
to be
aware of
which
towns
they
should
avoid.
“It
was
something
that was
known,”
said
James
Davis,
27, a
Black
truck
driver
from the
nearby
town of
Cairo,
which is
largely
Black.
“But
also
something
that our
parents
taught
us
growing
up.”
In
places
still
seen as
sundown
towns,
many
Black
people
now
follow
their
own
rules:
Avoid
them if
possible,
and lock
your car
doors if
you have
to drive
through.
If you
stop for
gas,
look for
a
well-lit
gas
station
with
security
cameras.
So
it is in
Vienna.
“Every
time you
come
into
town, or
you go
into a
gas
station,
or in a
store,
people
look at
you,”
said
Victoria
Vaughn,
a
biracial
17-year-old
who has
been
coming
to
Vienna
for
years to
visit
her
white
grandparents.
For
more in
the
series:
Looking
for
America
“You
can feel
them
looking
at you,
feel
them
staring,”
she
said.
“I’ve
never
had
anybody
say
anything
(racist)
to me in
Vienna,
but I’ve
definitely
felt the
way they
felt
about
me.”
She
was in
Vienna
on a
recent
Saturday
to join
a rally
organized
after a
group of
Vienna
High
School
students
created
a social
media
account
that
included
the
phrase
“hate
Black
people”
in its
title.
Vaughn
and her
grandmother
were
among
the 50
or so
people
who
turned
out for
the
rally,
along
with
about 25
counter-protesters.
At
first
things
went
well.
Protesters
and
counter-protesters
prayed
together.
They
talked
calmly
about
race.
But not
for
long.
“Bullshit!”
an older
white
man
shouted
at
Vaughn,
after
she said
Black
people
aren’t
treated
equally.
“They
get the
same as
the
white
people
get!”
Vaughn,
whose
grandmother
gently
pulled
her back
from the
confrontation
with the
angry
older
man,
isn’t
surprised
that
Vienna’s
white
residents
don’t
see
racial
issues
around
them.
The
situation
is far
more
subtle
today
than
when
Black
residents
were
forced
out.
“Until
you live
in a
Black or
brown
person’s
body
you’re
not
going to
understand,”
she
said.
“You
have to
know
somebody
who
lived
it, or
live it
yourself,
to truly
understand.”
___
Today
it’s
just an
overgrown
field,
vibrant
green
from
recent
rains.
But
60 years
ago,
there
was a
small
collection
of
houses
along
that
stretch
of 7th
Street,
where
the
outer
edges of
Vienna
bump up
against
Little
Cache
Creek.
Everyone
who
lived
there
was
Black.
A
"Dead
End"
sign is
posted
on the
far end
of 7th
Street
in
Vienna,
Ill.
There
was a
small
collection
of
houses
along
7th
Street,
near
where
the
outer
edges of
Vienna
bumps up
against
Little
Cache
Creek.
(AP
Photo/Wong
Maye-E)
The
violence
erupted
in
August,
1954,
after
the
arrest
of a
31-year-old
resident,
Thomas
Lee
Latham,
who was
accused
of
brutally
beating
an
elderly
white
woman
with a
soft
drink
bottle
and
trying
to rape
her
granddaughter.
“Vienna
Negro
Held on
Charge
of
Assault
With
Attempt
to
Murder,”
the
Vienna
Times
declared
on its
front
page
after
Latham
was
arrested,
hours
after
the
attack.
The
older
woman
died
days
later.
A
few
weeks
after
his
arrest,
Latham
escaped
from
jail.
Dozens
of armed
men took
to the
streets
of
Vienna
and the
surrounding
fields,
backed
up by
bloodhounds
and
spotters
in
low-flying
planes.
Within
hours,
the
cluster
of Black
homes
along
7th
Street
were
ablaze,
with
smoke
and
flames
rising
above
the
town.
A
week or
so later
Latham
gave
himself
up and
pleaded
guilty.
One day
after he
surrendered,
he was
sentenced
to 180
years in
prison.
By
then,
the
town’s
Black
residents
were
gone.
“The
Black
community,
from
that
point
on,
disappeared
from
Vienna,”
said
Darrel
Dexter,
a
historian
and high
school
teacher
who has
studied
the
violence
of 1954.
Black
people
had
lived in
and
around
Vienna
since
the late
1820s or
early
1830s,
said
Dexter.
But he
estimates
that
after
the
fires,
perhaps
50
people
fled the
town.
The town
later
repaid
Black
residents
for
their
lost
homes,
the
Times
reported,
though
there is
no
indication
anyone
was ever
prosecuted.
The
1950
census
showed
54 Black
people
living
in
Vienna.
In
2000, it
showed
one.
___
A
couple
of
blocks
from the
field
where
Vienna’s
Black
community
once
lived,
down a
narrow
dead-end
street,
a
grandmother
with
pink
fingernails
and an
easy
laugh
watches
over an
extended
family
that
spans
much of
America’s
Black-white
divide.
They
are not
what
you’d
expect
to find
here.
“It’s
our
sanctuary,”
Maribeth
Harris
said of
the
street.
One of
her
daughters
lives
next
door.
Another
lives
across
the
street
with her
boyfriend,
Nicholas
Lewis.
Harris
has
custody
of three
grandkids
while
Lewis
cares
for the
fourth,
an
18-month-old
in
Spiderman
pajamas
on a
recent
afternoon.
Harris,
her
husband
and
their
daughters
are
white.
Lewis is
Black.
The
grandchildren
are
biracial.
“This is
our own
little
world
down
here,”
Harris
said,
sighing
before
she
begins
listing
some of
the
troubles
the
family
has
faced.
“They
just
brush
everything
under
the
rug.”
Nicholas
Lewis
holds
son,
Nick
Jr.,
near
their
home in
Vienna,
Ill. (AP
Photo/Noreen
Nasir)
There
was the
time one
of the
kids was
called
“burned
toast”
by a
classmate.
Or when
an
elderly
woman
walked
past the
family
at a
church
dinner
and
loudly
called
the
children
“damn
half-breeds.”
There
was the
day the
10-year-old
came
home
with a
painful
question:
“Grandma,
why do I
have to
be
Black?”
She
and her
husband
moved to
Vienna
about 10
years
ago from
northern
Illinois,
chasing
work and
a
cheaper
cost of
living.
But with
her
oldest
grandson
edging
up on
adolescence,
she
knows
they
should
leave
soon,
before
they
have to
worry
about
such
things
as
confrontations
with
police.
“We
want to
get out
of
here,”
she
said.
“We have
to
figure
out
what’s
good for
them.
And
Vienna
won’t be
good for
them.”
Lewis
joined
the
little
enclave
two
years
ago,
expecting
a short
visit
but
staying
after
his
girlfriend,
one of
Harris’
daughters,
got
pregnant.
He’s
an
unassuming
man
deeply
in love
with his
young
son,
Nick. If
he
hasn’t
felt the
sting of
outright
racism
in
Vienna,
he’s
exhausted
by how
residents
constantly
watch
him.
It’s
complicated,
he
added,
because
most
people
are
friendly
once
they
know
him. But
he also
believes
his
family
should
leave.
“I
don’t
want my
son
raised
down
here,”
he said.
“I don’t
want him
out here
where
(white
people)
are all
he
sees.”
___
Trump
supporters
Jim
Rainbolt,
57,
left,
Rick
Warren,
65, Bill
Stevens,
76, and
Roger
Plott,
65,
stand
outside
their
clubhouse
in West
Vienna,
Ill. (AP
Photo/Wong
Maye-E)
Rick
Warren
65,
poses
for a
portrait.
(AP
Photo/Wong
Maye-E)
Bill
Stevens,
76,
stands
inside
the
clubhouse
in West
Vienna,
Ill. (AP
Photo/Wong
Maye-E)
They
call
themselves
The
Gunsmoke
Club.
Their
clubhouse,
a few
miles
outside
Vienna,
is an
old gas
station,
later
turned
into a
convenience
store
and now
a
gathering
place
for a
dozen or
so
friends.
It’s
part
workshop,
part
bar,
part
informal
store.
But
mostly
it’s a
place
for a
bunch of
gray-haired
men to
pass the
time,
drink
light
beer and
relive a
sliver
of their
childhoods
every
day at
noon
with
reruns
of
“Gunsmoke,”
the TV
show
about a
marshal
whose
steely
nerve
and Colt
revolver
kept the
peace in
the
American
West.
“That’s
what
formed
this
nation!,”
said
Rick
Warren,
a
65-year-old
in blue
jeans
and a
T-shirt,
only
partially
joking.
“’Gunsmoke’
and John
Wayne!”
This
is a
deeply
conservative
part of
the
nation —
77
percent
of the
county
voted
for
President
Donald
Trump in
the 2016
elections;
just 19
percent
went for
Hillary
Clinton.
The
Gunsmoke
Club
reflects
that.
They are
pro-Trump,
anti-abortion,
virulently
against
gun
control
and
distrust
the
coronavirus
rules
and the
media
(though
after
warming
up they
were
very
welcoming
to us).
Doris
Miller,
86,
tends to
her
makeshift
store
selling
Trump
souvenirs
in front
of her
home in
Vienna,
Ill. (AP
Photo/Wong
Maye-E)
For
them,
race has
become
an issue
twisted
far
beyond
proportion,
a cudgel
for
hypocritical
liberals.
“Really,
we got a
good
country,
and I
think
there is
probably
some
racism
going
on. But
I try
not to
be
racist,”
Stevens,
the
retired
prison
guard,
said in
his
gentle
drawl
about
this
year’s
protests
over
racial
injustice.
“I think
they’re
overreacting
a little
bit.”
Warren
is more
blunt,
pounding
his fist
on a
particle-board
table
when he
gets
really
angry.
“I’ve
had
Black
friends.
I’ve had
Black
babysitters.
I had
Black
people
who took
care of
me
through
my
childhood,”
he said.
But the
easygoing
race
relations
of his
youth
were
lost, he
said,
when
President
Lyndon
Johnson,
who
pushed
through
some of
the most
important
civil
rights
legislation
of the
20th
century,
“came
along
and
turned
it into
a bunch
of
racial
bullshit!”
Then
there’s
former
President
Barack
Obama,
who
speaks
regularly
about
his
white
mother
from
Kansas
and his
Black
father
from
Kenya,
but who
personally
identifies
as
Black.
“He
claims
to be
Black!”
Warren
said,
pounding
the
table.
“What
the hell
happened
to his
white
mama?”
Another
of the
men
later
pulls
back his
shirt to
show
that he
now
carries
a
.357-magnum
revolver
tucked
into his
jeans,
worried
about
the
unrest
that
occasionally
flared
during
this
year’s
racial
protests.
Vienna’s
own
violent
history
doesn’t
come up
until
the men
are
asked
about
it.
Stevens
was
about 10
when it
happened.
“When
they
burned
them out
that
time, a
lot of
them
just
packed
their
bags and
went up
north,”
said
Stevens,
who said
he hated
to see
Black
classmates
driven
from
town.
“For
a long
time
there
were
very
very few
Blacks
in this
county,
and then
they
started
easing
back
in,” he
said.
“We got
a few
more
families
in here
now, but
we get
along
good.”
___
The
sun sets
over a
field
outside
of Anna,
Ill. (AP
Photo/Wong
Maye-E)
How
many
sundown
towns
remain?
It’s
rarely
clear
anymore.
Openly
racist
laws are
now
largely
illegal,
and few
towns
want the
infamy
of being
known
for
keeping
out
Black
people.
Scholars
often
rely now
on
demographic
data,
looking
carefully
at towns
that
have
tiny
Black
populations.
Loewen,
the
historian,
says the
number
is
clearly
dropping,
categorizing
many as
“recovering”
sundown
towns,
where
organized
resistance
to Black
residents
has
ended
but the
racial
divide
can
remain
wide.
Vienna
would
almost
certainly
fall
into
that
category.
Dexter
sees
hope in
the
dozens
of
former
sundown
towns
that
have
held
racial
justice
protests,
from the
infamous
Illinois
sundown
town of
Anna to
Hopewell,
Michigan,
once
home to
a
powerful
Ku Klux
Klan
leader,
which
Black
Detroit
residents
have
long
avoided.
“I
do think
that
there
are lots
of
changes,
and
progress,
being
made
today.
Mostly I
think
that
comes
from
people
talking
about
the
issue,”
he said.
“People
didn’t
want to
talk
about it
before.”
But
while
legal
protections
and
changing
mores
have
lessened
the
power of
sundown
towns,
there
are
still
plenty
of them
with
well-known
racist
histories.
Sometimes,
towns
know
their
violent
past
keeps
racial
minorities
away.
Sometimes,
that
history
makes
those
minorities
avoid
them.
“It’s
not by
law”
that
Black
people
remain a
tiny
population
in many
towns,
Dexter
said.
“It’s by
tradition.”
Even
in
Vienna
things
are
changing.
But
ever so
slowly.
In
2010,
the U.S.
census
said
there
were
1,434
people
in
Vienna.
Sixteen
of them
were
Black.