Sundown Towns

Oh my gawd! I am just floored about this. I don't know why, maybe because I was hoping that today, in 2014 such atrocities could not exist any more in the United States of America! But, sigh, very sadly they do. A sundown town is town or city in the United States of America where Afro Americans and other minorities were not allowed to be after the sun goes down. So not only were you not allowed to visit such a town, but you were definitely not allowed to live in such a town. If found in such a town, you were harassed from just name calling, or getting beat up to the ultimate crime of being murdered. All just for not being white. This just sickens me to my core. Because such towns still exist to this day. I just caught part of a documentary on ID Channel called Sundown Towns. Whew! I think I am going to need a moment here. Whew! It's not right. Martin Luther King would be turning over in his grave if he knew such towns still existed. We have a black President, in 2014 on his second term, its not 1914!!!! Some of these towns displayed signs at the borders warning, "Nigger, Don't Let The Sun Set On YOU". Other towns display the symbol of a painted black ass at the border. So, if you are Ohio or Idaho and Tennessee, be on the look out! A few years ago, my ex and I went on this amazing driving vacation, we drove from Chandler Arizona all the way to Little Rock Arkansas. We made stops in New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. When we got to Mississippi, I warned him that we had to be very vigil because this was the deep south and 2 minorities (I am Afro American and he was Japanese) could easily disappear. This occurred in 2003. And I wasn't sure how deep in the south we were. So, we stopped at a rest stop along the highway. And there was a State Trooper car, parked in the parking lot. So again, I cautioned him, because that can either be good or bad, depending on if the trooper is a racist or not. So, anyway, to make a long story short. We go into the rest stop to use the facilities and was quite pleasantly surprised to find 2 extremely nice white women working there. They gave us free coffee and soft drinks and a free travel guide to Mississippi. I thought we were in a twilight zone! So we hurried and got out of there b4 ugly reality could hit us. hahahaha Luckily we survived with no problems. But getting back to Sundown Towns, there are at least 2 books on the subject, one is by James W. Loewen's book, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (2005), the other one I believe is called the Green Road. That one was in the documentary on the ID Channel.