August 14, 2026 • 11 mins
Sundown towns are places in the United States where, after the Civil War and Reconstruction, white communities kept Black Americans and other groups out for decades, on purpose. Learn how they came to be -- and how some sundown towns are in recovery -- in today's episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/sundown-towns.htm. Check out Dr. James Loewen's database of sundown towns here: https://justice.tougaloo.edu/sundown-towns/using-the-sundown-towns-database/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren vogelbam here. Before the nineteen seventies in America, before
the Civil Rights movement made national legal footholds and abolishing
racial segregation and discrimination, if you happened to be not white,
(00:23):
many places around the country implicitly or explicitly stated that
it was best for you to not hang around after nightfall,
that it would be dangerous for you or sometimes deadly.
These places also strongly discouraged black people from living there,
and sometimes other people of color or of otherwise differing
(00:43):
backgrounds too, such as Jewish Americans or Chinese Americans. These
places got the name sundown towns because they made it
clear that not all were welcome after sunset, often with
a sign posted at the city limit saying something to
the extent of don't let the sun go down on
you here, perhaps accompanied by a slur of choice. And now,
(01:06):
the nineteen seventies are not ancient history by any means,
and some places like this are still operating as such today.
They may not be as blatant about their bigotry as
they once were with literal signs, but they're still there.
From small towns to swank neighborhoods to huge suburbs. For
(01:27):
the article, this episode is based on How Stuff Works.
Spoke with sociologist James Loewen back in twenty twenty. He
literally wrote the book on the subject. It's called Sundown Towns,
a Hidden dimension of American Racism. He said, our history
textbooks give us a picture of the United States where
we started out great, and we've been getting better, but
(01:47):
kind of automatically ever since. It isn't true. Sometimes we've
gotten worse, and race relations is one of the areas
where we got worse. After the Civil War and reconstruction,
African Americans and other Black Americans who had been forced
or born into slavery were freed and given some rights
(02:09):
under the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution.
But then progress stalled, and around eighteen ninety things started
getting worse for at least the next fifty years. Llewen
explained that the slide began with three seemingly disparate events
in December of eighteen ninety, all of which deserved their
(02:29):
own episodes, but in brief, there was the massacre at
Wounded Knee in South Dakota, in which US Army forces,
who were there to quash an upswell of Lakota culture
killed as many as three hundred Lakota men, women, and children,
a signal that Native Americans were not to be full
participants in America's future. Then, in Mississippi, in response to
(02:53):
those new amendments to the US Constitution, the state legislature
drafted a new state constitution that essentially stripped voting rights
from black citizens. And back at the national level, the
US Senate failed to pass the Lodge Bill, which would
have restored voting rights by explicitly protecting Black Americans from
being disenfranchised of their votes. It had previously passed in
(03:17):
the House, but was filibustered by conservatives in the Senate
and was dead in the water by eighteen ninety one.
Llewen said, even in the North, it became impossible to
claim that we were trying to be an unracist society,
and so we went in the opposite direction. In the South,
(03:37):
Jim Crow laws were being passed, and you can see
our whole episode about that. But they codified segregation and
made life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness harder for
black Americans. Partially in response to that, what's called the
Great Migration kicked off in the nineteen teens, in which
millions of black people left the rural South for basically
(03:58):
anywhere else but mostly the Northeast, the Midwest, and the
West coast. Not everyone there was welcoming. More states took
voting rights away from black residents. Both history and contemporary
politics encouraged or emboldened white communities across the country to
view black people as non citizens, as undesirables. They pushed
(04:23):
black migrants and residents out of small towns and into
big cities, and often into specific neighborhoods in big cities.
In response, some white city residents with the means to
do so, fled to developing suburbs. Llewen in his book
defines sundown towns as any unorganized jurisdiction that for decades
(04:45):
kept African Americans or other groups from living in it,
and was thus all white on purpose. All white didn't
necessarily mean one hundred percent, but these places reduced people
of other backgrounds and skins in tones to a tiny
fraction of their population. Exceptions might have included a singular
(05:05):
family or live in domestic workers, in white households, people
living in hospitals, prisons, or colleges, or children of color
living with white families. Some communities literally physically forced black
people from their homes and neighborhoods. Some erected signs warning
them away. Some passed ordinances prohibiting black people from living there,
(05:28):
owning homes there, or going to school there. Some used
threats of violence or actual violence to keep them out.
These were the places that Victor Hugo Green warned black
motorists and families away from in The Green Book. You
can see our episode about that, But basically, the Green
Book was a pamphlet updated annually from nineteen thirty six
(05:50):
through nineteen sixty four that listed safe businesses and places
to stay if you were traveling while black. At the
height of Sundown Towns nineteen seventy, that's six years after
the Civil Rights Act passed, researchers think that there were
around ten thousand such places across the United States. Loewen's
(06:12):
original research, based on census numbers and oral and written histories,
shows that, for example, of the six hundred and seventy
one towns in Illinois with more than a thousand residents,
seventy one percent were all white, and almost all of
those were all white on purpose. Loewen wrote, there's reason
(06:33):
to believe that more than half of all towns in Oregon, Indiana, Ohio,
the Cumberland, the Ozarks, and diverse other areas were also
all white on purpose. Sundown suburbs are found from Darien, Connecticut,
to La Jolla, California, and are even more prevalent. Indeed,
most suburbs began life as sundown towns. Loewen kept a
(06:57):
database of confirmed and possible sundown town He passed away
in twenty twenty one, but it's still being maintained. It's
a long list, covering every state in the lower forty eight.
It shows that the vast majority of sundown towns were
clustered in the northeast, the Midwest, the central plains, and
the west coast. In other words, outside of the Deep South.
(07:21):
Some places may simply have had black communities that were
too large to drive off. Just for example, a Mississippi
had only six possible sundown towns that we know of,
compared with Illinois four hundred and fifty six. Places that
are white on purpose proliferate less now from overt means
and more through the inertia of the past and methods
(07:43):
that are quieter and perhaps more sinister, by community leaders
suggesting that black people may be more comfortable elsewhere, by
whispers and cold shoulders by majority white police forces and
public school educators, and by politicians who stoke fear with
claims that people with a different skin color or whose
(08:04):
family immigrated here recently, bring crime and other problems. Allewen
first published his book on sundowntowns in two thousand and five,
and a lot has happened since then, including some of
these places having faced up to their racist past, albeit
often with resistance. Loewen said, what people will say is
(08:27):
that was the old days. Why bring it up now?
I tell them two things. First, the reputation of the
town lives on and makes it stay overtly white, if
not all white, until you do something, until you make
it unstay. And two, you are still legitimizing those people
in the town who think it was okay the way
(08:48):
it was. It's encouraging that during the height of the
Black Lives Matter movement in twenty twenty, dozens of recovering
sundowntowns held blmllys, one of them for example was Glendale, California.
At one time in the early nineteen hundreds, the city
had a black population of less than zero point two percent.
(09:12):
The city now has about two hundred and fifty thousand people,
and the black population is still only two percent. In
September of twenty twenty, the city passed resolution acknowledging its
racist past, apologizing for it, and condemning it, becoming the
first city in the state to do so at the time.
The founder of the organization Black in Glendale, one Tanita
(09:34):
Harris Ligans, told the city council. I'm grateful that there
are community members who understand this is not just a
piece of paper, but that it comes with the energy
of atonement. And now do the work required behind it,
honor the contributions of the Diverse Community Coalition, and act
on meaningful policies and programs that improve Black representation in
(09:57):
Glendale on all fronts. The work is continuing in many ways.
Other cities have come forward to recognize and renounce their
past practices, but even the identification of former sundown towns
is still a work in progress. It is an unpleasant
reckoning to make, but this means that we don't know
(10:20):
the true extent of the problem, which means we're not
fully equipped to discuss it and move forward in more
equitable ways. Researchers are on it, though, and Loewen's database
is still collecting information. To see if your town or
county has a history as a sundown town, or to
add local information. You can check out the database for yourself.
(10:44):
It's hosted by Tougaloo College, a historically black college in Jackson, Mississippi,
at Justice dot Tugalu dot edu. That's Justice dot tu
g a l Oo dot edu. Today's episode is based
(11:04):
on the article Sundown Towns Hiding Racism right in the
Open on how Stuffworks dot com, written by John Donovan.
Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how
Stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren vogelbam here. Before the nineteen seventies in America, before
the Civil Rights movement made national legal footholds and abolishing
racial segregation and discrimination, if you happened to be not white,
(00:23):
many places around the country implicitly or explicitly stated that
it was best for you to not hang around after nightfall,
that it would be dangerous for you or sometimes deadly.
These places also strongly discouraged black people from living there,
and sometimes other people of color or of otherwise differing
(00:43):
backgrounds too, such as Jewish Americans or Chinese Americans. These
places got the name sundown towns because they made it
clear that not all were welcome after sunset, often with
a sign posted at the city limit saying something to
the extent of don't let the sun go down on
you here, perhaps accompanied by a slur of choice. And now,
(01:06):
the nineteen seventies are not ancient history by any means,
and some places like this are still operating as such today.
They may not be as blatant about their bigotry as
they once were with literal signs, but they're still there.
From small towns to swank neighborhoods to huge suburbs. For
(01:27):
the article, this episode is based on How Stuff Works.
Spoke with sociologist James Loewen back in twenty twenty. He
literally wrote the book on the subject. It's called Sundown Towns,
a Hidden dimension of American Racism. He said, our history
textbooks give us a picture of the United States where
we started out great, and we've been getting better, but
(01:47):
kind of automatically ever since. It isn't true. Sometimes we've
gotten worse, and race relations is one of the areas
where we got worse. After the Civil War and reconstruction,
African Americans and other Black Americans who had been forced
or born into slavery were freed and given some rights
(02:09):
under the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution.
But then progress stalled, and around eighteen ninety things started
getting worse for at least the next fifty years. Llewen
explained that the slide began with three seemingly disparate events
in December of eighteen ninety, all of which deserved their
(02:29):
own episodes, but in brief, there was the massacre at
Wounded Knee in South Dakota, in which US Army forces,
who were there to quash an upswell of Lakota culture
killed as many as three hundred Lakota men, women, and children,
a signal that Native Americans were not to be full
participants in America's future. Then, in Mississippi, in response to
(02:53):
those new amendments to the US Constitution, the state legislature
drafted a new state constitution that essentially stripped voting rights
from black citizens. And back at the national level, the
US Senate failed to pass the Lodge Bill, which would
have restored voting rights by explicitly protecting Black Americans from
being disenfranchised of their votes. It had previously passed in
(03:17):
the House, but was filibustered by conservatives in the Senate
and was dead in the water by eighteen ninety one.
Llewen said, even in the North, it became impossible to
claim that we were trying to be an unracist society,
and so we went in the opposite direction. In the South,
(03:37):
Jim Crow laws were being passed, and you can see
our whole episode about that. But they codified segregation and
made life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness harder for
black Americans. Partially in response to that, what's called the
Great Migration kicked off in the nineteen teens, in which
millions of black people left the rural South for basically
(03:58):
anywhere else but mostly the Northeast, the Midwest, and the
West coast. Not everyone there was welcoming. More states took
voting rights away from black residents. Both history and contemporary
politics encouraged or emboldened white communities across the country to
view black people as non citizens, as undesirables. They pushed
(04:23):
black migrants and residents out of small towns and into
big cities, and often into specific neighborhoods in big cities.
In response, some white city residents with the means to
do so, fled to developing suburbs. Llewen in his book
defines sundown towns as any unorganized jurisdiction that for decades
(04:45):
kept African Americans or other groups from living in it,
and was thus all white on purpose. All white didn't
necessarily mean one hundred percent, but these places reduced people
of other backgrounds and skins in tones to a tiny
fraction of their population. Exceptions might have included a singular
(05:05):
family or live in domestic workers, in white households, people
living in hospitals, prisons, or colleges, or children of color
living with white families. Some communities literally physically forced black
people from their homes and neighborhoods. Some erected signs warning
them away. Some passed ordinances prohibiting black people from living there,
(05:28):
owning homes there, or going to school there. Some used
threats of violence or actual violence to keep them out.
These were the places that Victor Hugo Green warned black
motorists and families away from in The Green Book. You
can see our episode about that, But basically, the Green
Book was a pamphlet updated annually from nineteen thirty six
(05:50):
through nineteen sixty four that listed safe businesses and places
to stay if you were traveling while black. At the
height of Sundown Towns nineteen seventy, that's six years after
the Civil Rights Act passed, researchers think that there were
around ten thousand such places across the United States. Loewen's
(06:12):
original research, based on census numbers and oral and written histories,
shows that, for example, of the six hundred and seventy
one towns in Illinois with more than a thousand residents,
seventy one percent were all white, and almost all of
those were all white on purpose. Loewen wrote, there's reason
(06:33):
to believe that more than half of all towns in Oregon, Indiana, Ohio,
the Cumberland, the Ozarks, and diverse other areas were also
all white on purpose. Sundown suburbs are found from Darien, Connecticut,
to La Jolla, California, and are even more prevalent. Indeed,
most suburbs began life as sundown towns. Loewen kept a
(06:57):
database of confirmed and possible sundown town He passed away
in twenty twenty one, but it's still being maintained. It's
a long list, covering every state in the lower forty eight.
It shows that the vast majority of sundown towns were
clustered in the northeast, the Midwest, the central plains, and
the west coast. In other words, outside of the Deep South.
(07:21):
Some places may simply have had black communities that were
too large to drive off. Just for example, a Mississippi
had only six possible sundown towns that we know of,
compared with Illinois four hundred and fifty six. Places that
are white on purpose proliferate less now from overt means
and more through the inertia of the past and methods
(07:43):
that are quieter and perhaps more sinister, by community leaders
suggesting that black people may be more comfortable elsewhere, by
whispers and cold shoulders by majority white police forces and
public school educators, and by politicians who stoke fear with
claims that people with a different skin color or whose
(08:04):
family immigrated here recently, bring crime and other problems. Allewen
first published his book on sundowntowns in two thousand and five,
and a lot has happened since then, including some of
these places having faced up to their racist past, albeit
often with resistance. Loewen said, what people will say is
(08:27):
that was the old days. Why bring it up now?
I tell them two things. First, the reputation of the
town lives on and makes it stay overtly white, if
not all white, until you do something, until you make
it unstay. And two, you are still legitimizing those people
in the town who think it was okay the way
(08:48):
it was. It's encouraging that during the height of the
Black Lives Matter movement in twenty twenty, dozens of recovering
sundowntowns held blmllys, one of them for example was Glendale, California.
At one time in the early nineteen hundreds, the city
had a black population of less than zero point two percent.
(09:12):
The city now has about two hundred and fifty thousand people,
and the black population is still only two percent. In
September of twenty twenty, the city passed resolution acknowledging its
racist past, apologizing for it, and condemning it, becoming the
first city in the state to do so at the time.
The founder of the organization Black in Glendale, one Tanita
(09:34):
Harris Ligans, told the city council. I'm grateful that there
are community members who understand this is not just a
piece of paper, but that it comes with the energy
of atonement. And now do the work required behind it,
honor the contributions of the Diverse Community Coalition, and act
on meaningful policies and programs that improve Black representation in
(09:57):
Glendale on all fronts. The work is continuing in many ways.
Other cities have come forward to recognize and renounce their
past practices, but even the identification of former sundown towns
is still a work in progress. It is an unpleasant
reckoning to make, but this means that we don't know
(10:20):
the true extent of the problem, which means we're not
fully equipped to discuss it and move forward in more
equitable ways. Researchers are on it, though, and Loewen's database
is still collecting information. To see if your town or
county has a history as a sundown town, or to
add local information. You can check out the database for yourself.
(10:44):
It's hosted by Tougaloo College, a historically black college in Jackson, Mississippi,
at Justice dot Tugalu dot edu. That's Justice dot tu
g a l Oo dot edu. Today's episode is based
(11:04):
on the article Sundown Towns Hiding Racism right in the
Open on how Stuffworks dot com, written by John Donovan.
Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how
Stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
BrainStuff News
Host
Lauren Vogelbaum
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com