Sundown Towns

I've never heard of these before, but they're a real tragic element of American history. Apparently there was a collection of towns during the post-reconstruction era that prohibited people of color (any non-white, sometimes including Jews) from being in a town after dark. These were called Sundown Towns. These towns also used active or passive means to dissuade people from living in certain communities, also. Many, many towns attempted a maintain a solely white populace. It's pretty surprising.

Dr. James Leowen, a sociologist from the University of Vermont, published a book about this in which he estimates that the number of towns discriminating in their choice of residents through various social pressures may have been 10,000 or more - he thinks perhaps the majority of cities in the US. Also, these towns were mostly in the North or West - not in former slave states.

He has a website set up with a list of all the towns that are possible Sundown towns listed by state.

So, I thought, I'll check and see if Santa Ana had this kind of problem in the past. Turns out Santa Ana is listed as a definite sundown town (though it's also listed as "surely not" at the moment: unsurprising). In 1906, the city council had Chinatown burnt to the ground because they found one leper living there. Hundreds of people came to watch the show. That's very sad.

La Mirada isn't on here because it's a very young city. Buena Park is listed as possible - this is determined by the lack of Black people known to be living in the city prior to the 70s (after the Federal Government mandated fair housing). Only one Black person was listed as living in the city during the 1960s. La Habra is listed as probable because they consistently had only four or six black people living in their town from the 30s through 60s.

Very sad.