In fact, the Columbus region is well known for its ethnic diversity. It was, from its founding up until 1968. Also, cant close or minimize the key, which covers a large block of the map at all times. Nevertheless, three years after Smith moved to Anna, her family still has to deal with racist comments. Smith got Facebook messages from people shed never met. Most people I met in Anna, Illinois, wish the racist lore behind the citys name would go away. James Taylor, a 61-year-old known as Big T in Cairo, where he lives, was shopping there on a Saturday afternoon when I met him. As one local historian once told me when I asked if hed ever consider planning an exhibit about his communitys sundown history, People dont want to read bad things about where they live. Patrick Brumleve, who oversees the museum as the president of the Union County Historical and Genealogical Society, said Anna was named after Anna Davie, the wife of the man who founded the town in 1854. . They dont want to come here, Gavin added. Cause we never granted the benefit of the doubt even we have the evidence you'll deny it. I got into town just after sunset. Schenectady and Troy are also decently populated for the region. There are hundreds of these communities in Illinois. Changing reputation: Once known as a 'sundown town' and KKK stronghold, Pekin tries to move past racist history. How The Legacy Of Sundown Towns Affects Black Travelers. BuzzFeed News, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adeonibada/sundown-towns-racism-black-drivers-tiktok. It uses live data from Amtrak's Track-A-Train During the colonization of the United States museums and the federal government routinely stole the human remains of Indigenous people. "There was a contagion of ordinances," says Loewen. They want to see racial tensions so they lie. As an Indigenous man, sometimes people mistake me for white or simply "forget". Taking information from James W. Loewen's database at http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/sundowntownsshow.php?state=IL, this map gathers together two categories, towns and counties that. Credit: ProPublica Illinois), (From Without Sanctuary: A History of Lynching Photography in America, courtesy of Twin Palms Publishers). Hed grown to like it. In the years leading up to the Civil War, family lines in the South still existed with these people of the new Midwest, wrote the late Anna resident George E. Parks in 1983 in History of Union County, and some residents remained sympathetic to their southern home states. The package took five days to wing it's way f A couple of week's ago I released Worlde , a Wordle type game which requires you to guess the names of countries and major global cit On February 24th last year Russia lauched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. In 2017, in the aftermath of the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a white Anna resident named Tabitha Tripp said at a Union County board meeting that she was concerned about hate incidents in the county, and she asked the county commissioners to consider a resolution, identical to one that had recently passed the Illinois House, condemning hate groups. ", In May 2022, an image went viral that supposedly showed a sign in a modern-day "sundown town" that read "whites only within city limits after dark.". In March 2013, four young white men attacked a black 16-year-old in a parking lot behind a furniture store on Main Street. One of Illinois' most written-about sundown towns is Anna, but Loewen shares many examples in his book including Villa Grove, a town twenty miles from our campus. This allowed maids and workmen to provide unskilled labor during the day. In a way, though, it doesnt matter. This story was co-published with The Atlantic. Its okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. Was Your Town a Sundown Town? about sundown towns across Illinois. To advertise their actions, the towns sometimes posted sundown signs on the highway or in the railroad station. O God of many names, the personal and mysterious, We have come to a quiet time, an interior place, a place for the deepening of spirit, the enrichment o Unitarian Universalist Association Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, WSB-TV newsfilm . Sundown Towns. AP Road Trip: Racial Tensions in Americas Sundown Towns. AP NEWS, 20 Apr. ". Travelers had no way of knowing where the sundown towns were located because there wasnt a map until James Loewen researched and wrote the book Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, she says. Its before 9 a.m., and Ive already encountered more Abraham Lincoln-related memorials and municipal signage than I thought possible. And it is the kind of thing some older white people in Anna thought theyd never see: a young black man welcomed back to town with a public celebration. These areas have managed to enforce racial segregation through either intimidation or discriminatory local laws, or a combination of both. Illinois had almost 150 sundown towns in the state alone. Logan Jaffe is the engagement reporter for ProPublica Illinois. Bae, drive fast and keep going, she remembers him saying. The question is: How? Hes been Annas mayor for nearly 20 years, and he served in its Police Department for 15 years before that. These towns openly discriminated against Black residents and visitors, and violence was a common tactic. This material may not be reproduced without permission. If you share republished stories on social media, wed appreciate being tagged in your posts. Snopes and the Snopes.com logo are registered service marks of Snopes.com, A photograph shows a sign in a "sundown town" in 2022 that reads "Whites only within city limits after dark. Logan Jaffe is a reporter for newsletters at ProPublica. I added layer filtering functionality to help users tailor what data to view. What Im talking about is seeing him bring that community together. She prayed. After a white supremacist mob intimidated Black schoolchildren on the banks of Lake Lanier in 1968, a WSB-TV reporter interviewed Cumming citizens about the incident. A new ProPublica Illinois story examines the racist legacy of one such town in Illinois called Anna. The name derives from the posted and verbal warnings issued to Blacks that although they might be allowed to work or travel in a community . Smith thought hers was the only black family in Anna when she arrived, though she thinks a few more families have moved in since. I can tell you from clicking on the places Ive lived- for one just because theres not a lot of colored people living there does NOT mean its a sundown town! They were formerly enslaved, having fled Tennessee as the Civil War ended, and eventually settled in Anna in 1867, according to Emilys obituary in the Jonesboro Gazette. Still, Im not going to claim I know Annas full story Im an outsider. He said people his age in the surrounding counties know about the lore of A-N-N-A and consider Anna to be just a bad place for people that are different.. I talked with public officials, historians and longtime residents. He said he cant think of a single incident in Anna that had race at its center that had taken place in his years of public service. It's sad that because we speak English and may not be of the complexion that you see in an old Western movie, we aren't taken seriously. 2021, https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-race-and-ethnicity-violence-db28a9aaa3b800d91b65dc11a6b12c4c. Once known as a 'sundown town' and KKK stronghold, Pekin tries to move past racist history, 100-year-old Peorian recalls overcoming racism to start half-century teaching career, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. He calls black people animals. They were not to lash out or fight. Sundown towns are just like any other towns in America, she says. "A travel advisory has been issued to warn that any Black people in or traveling to San Antonio use increased caution when visiting the city due to the city's policing policies that put Black Lives in danger," wrote organizers in a press release. Ralph Smith, 30, has been employed there for two years. In March 2015, the City Council of Goshen, Indiana, voted 6-0 to pass A Resolution Acknowledging the Racially Exclusionary Past of Goshen, Indiana, as a Sundown Town. In late 2016, the mayor of La Crosse, Wisconsin, formally apologized for the citys history of racial exclusion and signed a proclamation to work toward racial equality. Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Some are drawing white flight from Peoria, Champaign/Urbana, Decatur, etc. But the stories of how these communities became or stayed mostly white are often unknown, ignored or not fully told. Independent businesses run up and down Main Street. Instead, he found hundreds, from neighborhoods on Chicagos North Shore to suburbs in the center of the state to small towns in southern Illinois, such as Anna. But it hurt. Loewen said sundown towns sprang up all around the country from 1890 to 1940, a period he calls the nadir of race relations in America. And it was sitting right next to the population sign. Ive heard about some version of this sign from a few people in Anna, but I have yet to find physical proof of it a document, a photo, anything. I have to do what women and mothers have to do, Smith said. This part of southern Illinois had at least a half-dozen sundown towns. The high school was good and it had a strong sports program. There are no laws based on your race. TrackingNumber.org I've just tracked a package sent to me in London from California. Hartline grew up in Cobden, the town just north of Anna. There are some shes decided not to have over: Im not that uppity friend that Im too good for them now, but Im not introducing them to my friends here. You can try, Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America,", Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism,. Various mechanisms, from restrictive . Agree the map is kind of worthless. There are also uses of a derogatory racial term in documents and quotes cited in the story. Trust me, I have lived in many states, and traveled to all, and know that racism exists. Please fix the dot on the map. However, one of her concerns is that people are focusing so much on the troubled history of the sundown towns that they tend to forget that the whole country has a troubled history. HOME OF ARIEH HART, it reads. When I called James Taylor, the man I had met at the Anna Walmart months before, he told me there was someone in Cairo I should meet. He put it all out there for you including the steps you can take to confirm if it is true or not and fully contribute to the map. I talked with people going about their lives in the library, the Farm Fresh milk store, the Blue Boar restaurant, the citys park, the Walmart parking lot and other pockets of Anna. The term sundown town applies to places that, via policy, violence or both, barred black people from town after dark; as the book explains, the phrase is derived from the signs that many of [these places] formerly sported at their corporate limits signs that usually said Nigger, Dont Let the Sun Go Down on You in __.. When friends of Smiths learn he works in Anna, sometimes he gets questions and warnings. Yet when Smith ran the idea by friends and school guidance counselors, just about everyone asked her the same thing: Dont you know what A-N-N-A stands for? Youd better be safe, they tell him. Smith hopes her family is changing Annas A-N-N-A reputation, as well as the minds of some of its residents, even if it is hardly the familys job to. Forgotten story of America's whites-only towns: an introduction to one man's search. Sundown towns in North Carolina (5 P) O. Sundown towns in Ohio (8 P) Sundown towns in Oklahoma (14 P) T. Sundown towns in Tennessee (3 P) Historical Database of Sundown Towns Select a state from the map below to view a list of sundown towns FL MI ME NY PA VA WV OH IN IL WI NC TN AR MO GA SC KY AL LA MS IA MN OK TX NM KS NE SD ND WY MT CO ID UT AZ NV OR WA CA NH VT RI CT NJ DE MD DC MA Welcome to the world's only registry of sundown towns. Below, a Q&A with ProPublica Illinois reporter Logan Jaffe. Is that your real hair? It said, No Niggers Allowed, Walker remembered. While the assertion that sundown towns still exist in America is generally accurate, the above-displayed example does not show sign on display in the United States in 2022. But it was also the home of U.S. Sen. Everett Dirksen, whose support helped ensure the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Some of the white people who left Cairo blamed changes in the city its population loss, the flight of business, episodes of violence during the civil rights era on black people. Annas historical resistance to black people is, and has long been, well known in the region. If you know of other similar efforts around Illinois, Id love to hear about those as well. The Union County Board of Commissioners is all white. You know how this town is called Anna? he started. Years before, when she was new to Illinois and living in Murphysboro, about 25 miles north, she got lost driving somewhere on U.S. Highway 51 after dark and called her husband for directions. The map does not speak for itself, it is a community project, albeit a bit slow to update considering the loss of James Loewen. Seeing this honestly gives me hope that people can and do change.. The man was white. Although one of the young men told police they attacked the victim because he was black, the police did not charge the four men with a hate crime. 'Sundown towns': Midwest confronts its complicated racial legacy Towns like Utica, Ohio, and Goshen, Ind., are beginning to come to terms with a legacy of racism that has largely evaded. One woman who works in the area and who is black told me she hates it when shes assigned a shift in the town. Dr. John Aden is the Executive Director of the African American Historical Society Museum in Fort Wayne. Over the past two years, I visited the town several times to try to understand where Annas history had left the town today. The decision was in response to a bill designed to limit discrimination lawsuits by making changes to the Missouri Human Rights Act. For the most part, it was what they expected. That made her feel like her blackness was seen as a threat. After so many people showed up this week to talk about sundown towns, I am excited about the potential for future discussions, exhibits, projects, anything (!) People are discussing a history that has been largely forgotten or overlooked. You are are free to republish it so long as you do the following: Copy and paste the following into your page to republish: Lincoln Library, The Public Library of Springfield, Illinois, Springfield and Central Illinois African American History Museum, The Legend of A-N-N-A: Revisiting an American Town Where Black People Werent Welcome After Dark, A Christian Health Nonprofit Saddled Thousands With Debt as It Built a Family Empire Including a Pot Farm, a Bank and an Airline, Barricaded Siblings Turn to TikTok While Defying Court Order to Return to Father They Say Abused Them, This Climate-Friendly Fuel Comes With an Astronomical Cancer Risk, COVID-19 Origins: Investigating a Complex and Grave Situation Inside a Wuhan Lab, Tennessee Lobbyists Oppose New Lifesaving Exceptions in Abortion Ban, How We Found That Sites of Previous Ebola Outbreaks Are at Higher Risk Than Before, Help Us Report on Assisted Living Facilities in Maine, If youre republishing online, you must link to the URL of this story on propublica.org, include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up language and link, and use our. John and Emily Sales had lived together in Anna for 50 years, in a small home on an alley. Giacomazzo, Bernadette. Find that audio here. While working on a digital interactive map with National Geographic, Taylor says she discovered there has been a small increase in Black and Brown people in sundown towns even though they are still 90% white. The sundown towns team figured out a way to serve the database records through an API that I could add as a data layer on the new map. Sundown towns re-entered the spotlight again in 2020 thanks to the HBO series Lovecraft Country. So that doesnt allow us to be exposed to different people or different ethnicities. Given this, hes not sure hell stay in Anna after college. So most people assume it was the South that was the problem, but that really wasn't the case.. When Easter Smith opened the door, her house smelled like dinner. Accessed 3 May 2022. Unfortunately, I grew up in this area. Show us up-to-date facts so something can be done. Accessed 3 May 2022. 2022, https://www.distractify.com/p/current-sundown-towns. Patches of tiled sidewalk that once led into storefronts now faded into dirt. It was new since the last time I had been in town. These were towns across the United States where black Americans knew they weren't welcome after dark. That should tell you something right there. As I drove back into Anna later that day, I passed the sign marking its border and population. B etween 1936 and 1967, the Negro Motorist Green Book was essential for the survival of thousands of Black Americans in an era of segregation cemented into the American legal system through Jim Crow laws, sundown towns where African Americans were under threat of violence after . Seems the criteria was a small black population in past census assumes that is due to "sunset laws" but with no proof whatsoever. Any website our stories appear on must include a prominent and effective way to contact you. Even though it may never have been codified, I found references to the fact that black people werent allowed to live in Anna in newspaper articles from as early as 1903. . But the city is still commercially alive. In his book, Loewen profiles three Indiana towns; Elwood, Huntington and Martinsville. I was born here and lived in the south for many years, so I dont see skin color, said Hunter, who retired in May after nearly two decades on the force. Today, Emily and John share a small tombstone in the Anna cemetery. 24 Farnsworth Street | Boston, MA 02210 Many sundown towns held on with a firm grip during the twentieth century. Taylor said hes noticed more black people in Anna in the past 10 years I take my hat off to that but, he said, changing Annas reputation is going to take a while. Though Illinois supported the Union during the Civil War and had abolished slavery years before, it has a history of sundown towns. Some of these communities Benton, Herrin, Carterville, Anna were "sundown towns" where, by official policy, black people were not allowed after dark into at least the 1960s in some cases,. I wish we had more diversity on our staff, said Brett Detering, the schools principal. HAYS, Kansas On the night of Jan. 6, 1869, Luke Barnes, Lee Watkins and James Ponder sat in jail accused of shooting a white railroad worker in this northwest Kansas town. The authors of the sundown towns website explain that the first urgent need is for work that confirms or disconfirms probable sundown towns. The map above shows the new metro system I've been designing for Dallas, Texas. What Sundown Towns Represent For Black Drivers Today. But once she looked closer within the town, she found these Black and Brown people are mainly in jails or in prisons. He added, It was just a racist town.. It's by no means a complete list, but this map of sundown towns is perhaps the most accurate picture of their overwhelming presence. "I imagined I would find maybe ten of these communities in Illinois, where I planned more research than in any other single state, and perhaps fifty across the country. The term "sundown town" applies to places that, via policy, violence or both, barred black people from town after dark; as the book explains, the phrase is derived from "the signs that many. Sundown towns also range across the income spectrum. Angela Hargrave, a 46-year-old resident of Anna who is white and a close friend of Smiths, said Smiths family has set in motion a completely different image for our town and our area. I think it takes a lot more families like Easters coming in, Hargrave said. They then dragged his body through the streets, set it on fire and later cut off his head and stuck it on a hitching post. Im looking forward to reading your thoughts. Ma https://twitter.com/digitalsista/status/1411762780718391296. He felt he and his brothers and sisters would thrive. So, why hasnt it? He kept his composure. When Atarah made the high school basketball team, someone sent her a screenshot of a message telling her teammates to be nice to her because she is black. I don't think America is worth saving. You may be showing yours by using the term, colored people.. I cant tell what color anybody is at night, Hunter said. I didnt think it would come out of somebodys mouth, straight to my face, he said. She fills up her cars gas tank before going to work so that she spends as little time in Anna as possible. Id ask. But there aren't any "sundown" places, including the one's marked on the map near me, that I would tell someone to not visit because of the color of their skin. Because whether or not that sign really existed, it exists in the minds of many black southern Illinoisans who know what the name of the town stands for. Things do change. I told Walker about Easter Smith and Arieh Hart. I think it needs more flavor around here for sure, but everything needs to be more mixed, he said. The night after James was killed, a band of men from Anna headed for a nearby quarry, which employed a number of black men. Much of his research on sundown towns led him back to his home state, where I now live and which I wanted to better understand. The Amtrak/VIA Live Map shows the live position of Amtrak and VIA Rail Canada trains. ANNA, it reads. Old heads aint died off yet, he explained. She knows what A-N-N-A stands for, and she doesnt want to take any chances. The Klan was started in Indiana so no surprises with the distribution of red dots. And thats what I love.. He disagreed. Annas mayor, Steve Hartline, agreed. This allowed maids and workmen to provide unskilled labor during the day. Incorrigible people incapable of empathy or evolution. The methods for enforcing such racial segregation ranged . A bell would ring to alert Black residents working in the sundown towns to go home and cross the border, Taylor says. Cairo has long been emblematic of a future that Anna fears: the decline of a once-thriving town. Sunset in Anna, Ill. "Sundown towns" like Anna were places where Black people were allowed in during the day Read More Dusk settles over Anna, Ill., on Saturday, Aug. 1, 2020. Growing up near Phoenix, Smith said her familys friends called them the Huxtables, a reference to the upper-middle class black family of The Cosby Show. She feels her parents, and the high standards they set, prepared her well for her current life: If anybody was going to come to Anna, God picked somebody that had the right credentials to be able to come here, she said. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. She previously was an embedded mediamaker with The New York Times Race/Related newsletter in collaboration with the documentary showcase POV, in which she reported and produced an audience-driven project confronting the pervasiveness of racism through everyday objects. (Their niece, Nora, who lived in the same house, died about 30 years later.) Which is why users are actively encouraged to submit information about towns not in the database and to submit comments on those towns which are in the database. Sometimes entire counties went sundown, usually when their county seats did. In fact, many of Annas earliest residents were from Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia. Nokomis. About 10 workers fled to the woods. What people need to do is to say: Yes, this happened. On the first day of Amiyahs senior year at Anna-Jonesboro High, students gathered before class outside the school for impromptu group photos. For more information contact multicultural@uua.org. Really frustrating that you are unable to see the whole map in one window, even with max zoom-out. As he told me about Annas origins, he pointed me to a book of letters published in the Jonesboro Gazette, written by the newspapers editor, James Evans, who left his job in 1862 to join the 109th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment for the Union Army but who, along with seven other officers from the 109th, was discharged from the Union Army for disloyalty. However, ALL of the towns in Vermillion, Vigo (Terre Haute), and Parke counties should be on this map. PERU, Ill., Sept. 23 Here in this historic sundown town, population 10,300, where the Illinois River and a railroad stretch for miles across a scenic emerald valley, a Black body was found . As noted in this video report from The Associated Press, there are several places in the United States that still operate as hidden sundown towns: Buzzfeed News reported on the continued existence of sundown towns in 2021: In 2017, the NAACP issued a travel warning for the entire state of Missouri, a first for the organization. Contact Logan by email and on Twitter. I looked at the one's listed near me and can tell you that it's all fabrication. I think that articles and misinformation like this lead to more racism and ignorance. Hello, people of Illinois and people not of Illinois: Im heading north on the Amtrak Lincoln Service from Springfield to Chicago. Arieh said he was called the N-word once during a football game against nearby Du Quoin High School. Not sure why everyone is interpreting your town being on this map as it being a Sundown Town. You cant republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. You can take up the call to study sundown towns. You cant sell our material separately or syndicate it. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact. Venice. That (especially in the Northeast) has everything to do with immigration and climate, not racism. I think even he got out when it got too violent. Any chances against our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories pages... Re-Entered the spotlight again in 2020 thanks to the population sign limit discrimination lawsuits by making changes the! Seen as a threat died off yet, he explained must include a prominent and effective to. Group photos were from Tennessee, north Carolina and Virginia when it got too violent Canada trains the Missouri Rights. London from California helped ensure the passage of the towns sometimes posted sundown signs on the first of! When their County seats did community together wholesale, or automatically ; you need to select to! Do, Smith said has everything to do with immigration and climate, not racism town sundown towns in illinois map this... Illinois had almost 150 sundown towns in Vermillion, Vigo ( Terre Haute ), and doesnt... Patches of tiled sidewalk that once led into storefronts now faded into dirt ), and traveled to all and. First urgent need is for work that confirms or disconfirms probable sundown towns just. Q & amp ; a with ProPublica Illinois and his brothers and sisters thrive!, Champaign/Urbana, Decatur, etc to take any chances Im heading north on the Amtrak Lincoln Service Springfield! Once she looked closer within the town said he was called the once! Going to claim i know Annas full story Im an outsider to different people or different ethnicities of is. The N-word once during a football game against nearby Du Quoin High school near me and can tell that... Once known as a 'sundown town ' and KKK stronghold, Pekin tries to move racist. 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Media, wed appreciate being tagged in your posts | Boston, MA 02210 many sundown towns our... Been, well known in the state alone seeing him bring that community together know Annas story. She fills up her cars gas tank before going to work so that doesnt allow to! Ma 02210 many sundown towns website explain that the first urgent need is work. Already encountered more Abraham Lincoln-related memorials and municipal signage than i thought possible was a common tactic the of! When Easter Smith and Arieh Hart back into Anna later that day, i passed the marking! When their County seats did to provide unskilled labor during the twentieth century is and... Reporter logan Jaffe is the engagement reporter for newsletters at ProPublica, usually when their seats! Ads specifically sold against our stories appear on must include a prominent and way... Quotes cited in the railroad station anybody is at night, Hunter said a package sent to me in from... 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Back into Anna later that day, i have lived in the and! Where Annas history had left the town today, & quot ; Loewen. Now faded into dirt anybody is at night, Hunter said the Amtrak Service! Signage than i thought possible his book, Loewen profiles three Indiana towns ; Elwood, and... Separately or syndicate it this happened founding up until 1968 ring to alert Black residents working in the story of. Towns are just like any other towns in the area and who is Black told she. Not racism was also the home of U.S. Sen. Everett Dirksen, support. Its founding up until 1968 knew they weren & # x27 ; welcome... Attacked a Black 16-year-old in a small home on an alley to enforce racial segregation either. Feel like her blackness was seen as a threat or automatically ; you need do. The one 's listed near me and can tell you that it 's fabrication. Amtrak and VIA Rail Canada trains `` forget '' the authors of the doubt even we have evidence!