Hidden racism in America and the misrepresentation of history were the subjects of Wednesday night’s Bonner and Bonner Diversity Lecture Series presentation at Emporia State University.
Webb Lecture Hall was packed with people who came to hear James Loewen give a presentation titled “Sundown Towns: Hidden Racism in America.” The talk focused on the author and sociologist’s research into “sundown towns” — towns and cities across the country that tried to keep African Americans out by outlawing their presence after dark.
Loewen talked about his prior experience as an instructor at historically black Tougaloo University in Mississippi, and how the vast majority of students came into his class with a flawed sense of American history, particularly on the topic of race relations in the decades following reconstruction.
“That got me interested in how we represent and misrepresent the past,” he said, “because history can be a weapon and it can be used against you. And it had been used against my students.
“How did this happen?” he asked. “How could we be so wrong?”
After teaching at Tougaloo, Loewen went to teach in Vermont. “And again, my first year students taught me that this was not a Mississippi problem. This was a national problem. So I’ve been interested ever since in how we misremember the past, why we misremember the past, what we remember from the past and what we distort.”
Loewen said he first learned of sundown towns as a college student in Minnesota. “The richest and most prestigious suburb of the Twin Cities was and still is Edina,” Loewen said. “And the slogan in Edina in the sixties was ‘Not one negro and not one Jew.’ And they didn’t have one, either. They have one of each now, though,” he said, eliciting laughs from the audience. “More, actually.”
The presentation was based on Loewen’s book, “Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism.”
Loewen opened his lecture with an explanation of how the history of race relations has been twisted since the Civil War. He discussed the “nadir of race relations” that took place from 1890 to 1940, stating that this was the time when even northern states — states that won the Civil War — lived with and accepted the presence of an extreme undercurrent of racism.
“1890 was the year the Confederacy won the civil war,” he said, going on to point out that in the next five decades racism was rampant all across the country, lynchings reached all-time highs, the Ku Klux Klan was at its most powerful and Confederate monuments were being raised all throughout the south.
But racism was not just a southern phenomena. In fact, he said, sundown towns were largely a product of northern states.
Loewen listed a number of sundown towns as examples, such as Anna, Ill., “which was named for a woman named Anna in 1854, and which in 1909 drove out its black population, and from then till now has been known as, quote, ‘Ain’t No Niggers Allowed.’ In his research, Loewen said he expected to find around 10 sundown towns in Illinois, and maybe 50 around the country. He ended up finding more than 440 in Illinois and “thousands across the United States.”
Loewen said his hope is to find these towns — some of which still exist today — and “out” them.
“The idea that towns still think they can do this, and still do do this” is outrageous, he said. “I can tell you at least one, and possibly several entire counties in Illinois where even in 2008 it is still not prudent for a black family to attempt to live. I think that is both astounding and bad.
“I think there are many sundown towns that are aching to get over it,” Loewen said. “And people in these sundown towns who are, and who would like to welcome the next black family that moves in.”
“I think every sundown town in America should do three things,” he said. “They should first admit it. ... The second thing, apologize for it. ‘We’re sorry. We were wrong to do this.’ And third, ‘And we don’t do it anymore.’ And that third statement has to have teeth in it. ... And once those towns have done those three things, then it’s not a sundown town anymore.”
Loewen is also the author of “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong,” and “Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong.”