Ep 51: What Ended Sundown Towns?

Do you live in a former Sundown Town? On this episode of #IDKMYDE, B Dhat talks about what the term "Sundown Town" means and what it meant if you are black. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
On today's episode. If I didn't know, maybe you didn't either.
Do you live in a town that was once a sundowntown?
I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know you
I didn't know. I didn't All right, First, you need
to know what a sundowntown or a sunset town was,

(00:22):
and that was a town, city or a neighborhood in
the United States that excluded all black folk after dark.
And the term sundown came from the signs that will
be posted all around telling people of color they had
to leave the town by sundown, they said. Many times
the signs were placed at the town's borders and they
would say something like Negro, don't let the sunset on

(00:43):
you here. And the exclusion was official town policy, and
it was in place through restrictive covenants today agreed on
with the real estate agents in the community. Of course,
many times the policy was enforced through intimidation. Intimidation could
be a different number of ways, though, I mean a
typical harassment by law enforcement or neighbors. A lot of

(01:03):
times black folks just got lynched. Victor Green here's from Harlem,
and he wrote the Negro Motorist Green Book. You should
look that up. It was a book that details safe
places for black travelers to rest and eat without the
fear of being harassed or threatened or even killed by
white folk. I also check out the nineteen sixty eight

(01:23):
Fair Housing Act. See that's pretty much what made sundowntown's
illegal on paper. That is, do some own work. Find
out if where you live now was once a sundowntown
and contrary to popular belief, sundowntowns were prevalent in the North,
not the Sauce. And I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either,