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Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism Paperback – October 3, 2006

4.8 out of 5 stars 1,125

There is a newer edition of this item:

Bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen, exposes the secret communities and hotbeds of racial injustice that sprung up throughout the twentieth century unnoticed, forcing us to reexamine race relations in the United States.

In this groundbreaking work, bestselling sociologist James W. Loewen, author of the national bestseller
Lies My Teacher Told Me, brings to light decades of hidden racial exclusion in America. In a provocative, sweeping analysis of American residential patterns, Loewen uncovers the thousands of “sundown towns”—almost exclusively white towns where it was an unspoken rule that blacks could not live there—that cropped up throughout the twentieth century, most of them located outside of the South. These towns used everything from legal formalities to violence to create homogenous Caucasian communities—and their existence has gone unexamined until now. For the first time, Loewen takes a long, hard look at the history, sociology, and continued existence of these towns, contributing an essential new chapter to the study of American race relations.

Sundown Towns combines personal narrative, history, and analysis to create a readable picture of this previously unknown American institution all written with Loewen’s trademark honesty and thoroughness.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"As the first comprehensive history of sundown towns ever written, this book is sure to become a landmark in several fields."

--
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Just when you thought you'd learned everything there was to know about the sordid history of racism in the United States and its lingering impact on the nation, along comes this amazing volume, which reminds us all of just how deep the well of racial exclusion and white supremacy runs."

-- Tim Wise, author of
White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son

"Powerful and important...deserves to become an instant classic."

--
The Washington Post Book World

About the Author

James W. Loewen is the bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me and Lies Across America. He is a regular contributor to the History Channel's History magazine and is a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Vermont. He resides in Washington, D.C.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Touchstone; unknown edition (October 3, 2006)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 576 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0743294483
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0743294485
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.5 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.13 x 1.4 x 9.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.8 out of 5 stars 1,125

About the author

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James W. Loewen
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James W. Loewen is the bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me and Lies Across America. He is a regular contributor to the History Channel's History magazine and is a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Vermont. He resides in Washington, D.C.

Customer reviews

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Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2023
Every time I see a book by the most esteemed, I get ready to be educated and enthused. His books have a pulse to them, and they just flow. Researched to within an inch of their lives, each tome has validity and accuracy. I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in Racial Relations or History in the United States.
2 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2023
Incredible description of the on-going repression and discrimination against Blacks for centuries in our America. Told in remarkable detail with a strong focus on Illinois and its Sundown Towns. At one time 471 or 600 were Sundown Towns . These realities must but changed and all will benefit from the inter racial towns across this entire country. Brilliantly presented. Now we all must become upstanders and act to save the entire country and its soul.
Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2017
I saw this and had to have it. When I was little, we lived in Louisiana, where black people were a part of life. My best friends were a little black girl from school and the youngest girl from the black family across the street. I spent much of my play time at their place. However, when we moved a few hours to the north for Dad's new job, we landed in a Sundown Town. I did not know that until I was in my 30s and was telling my dad of things I remembered, such as wondering where all the black kids were, when I had attended school. I had gone from mixed schools to all white schools when we moved north. I went from people who respected all colors to people who only wanted white skin, and I noticed the difference. Dad told me there used to be signs outside of town that warned black people to be gone by dark. They were mean, nasty signs that did not say respectful things. Looking back, my southern family taught me to respect all my friends. My northern family saw color. This book verifies that there were lots of ugly racial opinions in the northern states, like I recall. I bought this book to verify my memories of times past. I have not had time to read a lot, but I'm very pleased with the information I've read. I'm sure I'll find something I disagree with, but for now, it's what I remember, and I appreciate honest history. I will not normally read such a thick book, but this one holds my history. I will read it, even if it takes me a year.
17 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2006
Sundown Towns goes a long way towards explaining the US' pervasive racial problems by examining a phenomenon many white people had thought dead and gone: sundown towns (cities or neighborhoods where racial minorities were not allowed to live or even be present after dark).

It would be tempting to dismiss Loewen's research as merely anecdotal, but obviously more concrete evidence can rarely be found: even the most racist townships took care to mask their anti-black and minority rules through sleight of hand and legal double speak, and city limit signs that used to warn minorities not to linger after dark have now mostly vanished, but there is simply too much material here to ignore. And the honest reader will have to admit that much of what Loewen writes about sounds familiar. We've all heard excuses for why blacks and whites tend to live separately: the blacks like it that way, they don't care about good schools and nice houses, etc, etc. We've also heard plenty of "blame the victim" stories indicating that it is black laziness and racial inferiority that prevents them from moving to the suburbs. And we've all heard other whites making disparaging comments about minorities and not protested, thus becoming tacitly complicit.

Reading some of Loewen's stories about the race riots and lynchings that helped create the sundown towns, reminded me of some of the histories of the Nazi rise to power in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. So many of the methods for dealing with despised groups, whether whites against blacks or Nazis against Jews, are terrifyingly similar: economic boycotts, terror bombings, sabotage, etc. And the language used by so called "white patriots" warning of the threat posed by black migration to an area reminded me of nothing so much as the screams of Osama bin Laden and his followers for the annihilation of the West to defend Islam. (Yet another reminder that we humans are all indeed "brothers under the skin!")

I already knew I lived near one of the more infamous sundown counties, but as I read this book I began to suspect that some other communities and neighborhoods I'm familiar with may be sundown as well, and that's something I intend to investigate for myself.

As a Southerner with long ancestral roots in the former slave owning regions, I have always been aware of the dark history of race relations there. It was with some surprise (and I hope a forgiveable amount of satisfaction at seeing such hypocrisy revealed at long last) that I read that sundown towns were and are far more pervasive in the North and West, and that the Southern states, far from being exceptions to a rule of general tolerance, were merely the most prominent examples of nationwide intolerance.

Loewen provides some excellent reasons for why sundown towns are bad for their residents as well as the people they keep out: the cultural aridity, the fostering of racial stereotyping, the unwillingness to try new ideas or customs. And he ably restates what the Supreme Court said in the Brown decision back in 1954: segregation has a degrading, scarring emotional and physical toll that makes it completely unacceptable.

Lowewen suggests some interesting methods for confronting and hopefully putting an end to the sundown phenomenon, including a call for a Residents' Rights Act that I fear will take a seismic shift in national politics to ever have a chance of becoming law. (To start with we'd need a President and Vice-President who don't live in sundown towns themselves!) More realistic suggestions emphasize action by concerned volunteers willing to research and ask the difficult questions needed to shock the many out of their complacency.

This isn't a comfortable book to read, but it may come to be considered as important as Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma in helping Americans deal with the quandaries of creating a truly equal multi-racial society
40 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2018
This book chronicles the rise and existence of American “sundown towns” – towns and suburbs where African-Americans (and often other non-white, non-Christian minorities) were not allowed to live, or even stay after dark. The book covers a lot of ground, providing a capsule history of the Nadir of racism that enabled sundown towns, how they came to be, and their effects on both whites and blacks. The two biggest surprises for me were: (1) sundown towns are not really a Southern thing – in fact, you’re more likely to find them outside of the South, and (2) some of them are still sundown towns today (though not obviously so), while others that no longer are only dropped such practices as recently as the 1990s.

Which brings up one problem with the book (albeit one that Louwen frequently admits) – the US Census makes it easy to identify all-white towns and suburbs, but not all of them are that way intentionally, and determining which ones are requires a lot of on-the-scene legwork and interviews. While Loewen estimates there are thousands of such towns, only a fraction had been verified when the book was published in 2005. So it’s best to approach it as a starting point rather than a complete history. (For the record, Loewen’s research is ongoing, and he has a website that invites people to help with more research identifying and confirming sundown towns.)

Anyway, I highly recommend this to anyone who wants/needs valuable perspective on the scope of the racism problem in America, especially in light of current events
33 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Navtej Purewal
5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read to understand the history of violence and white supremacy.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 29, 2020
This is one of the most inspiring books I have read. It represents what social sciences in the US should be doing more of- analysing and unpacking the horrors of racism, capitalism and the past in the present. Having grown up and been raised in a sundown town, this book does much more than to outline a conceptual and historical approach but also invites readers to join and participate in this movement of social justice historiography.
Khaleeka
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on July 11, 2017
I can't say that much of this surprises me...
One person found this helpful
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Kindle Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars ...a woeful look in the mirror
Reviewed in Canada on December 9, 2009
As far as content and subject matter, this book deserves a '5'. It is well researched and covers the phenomenons of sundown towns, northern rascism, the creation of the black inner cities as a reaction to white prejudice, the nadir of black racism, and a guideline to inch ourselves out of this morass. It was a frightening look in the mirror for someone who grew up in an all white town, attended an all white high school and college and wondered why so many black people choose to live in the inner city. While these life areas are somewhat better in my world than they were in the past, there is still a great deal of distance to go before we fully act on the concept that ...."all men are created equal." This is a 'must read' for anyone wants this statement to apply to everyone. We all must soon realize that white supremacy is a concept that has long outlived its religious roots and its poorly formed and primal definition.

As far as organizational writing style and redundancy, this book deserves a '3'. Far greater effort should have been put into the editing portion of this publication before it was released. While still a good book, it would have been more powerful by eliminating all of the repetitions, was written in a chronological sequence and the size of the text was cut to about 300 pages.