Sundown town

Sundown towns, also known as sunset towns, gray towns, or sundowner towns, are all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States that practice a form of racial segregation by excluding non-whites via some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation or violence. They were most prevalent before the 1950s. The term came into use because of signs that directed "colored people" to leave town by sundown.^[1]

Sundown counties^[2] and sundown suburbs were created as well. While sundown laws became illegal following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, some commentators hold that certain 21st-century practices perpetuate a modified version of the sundown town.^[3][4] Some of these modern practices include racial profiling by local police and sheriff's departments, vandalism of public art, harassment by private citizens, and gentrification.^[5]

Specific examples of segregation among Native Americans, Asians, Latinos, Jewish, and Catholics alongside many other communities include towns such as Minden and Gardnerville, Nevada, in which sirens were used from 1917 until 1974 to signal Native Americans to leave town by 6:30 p.m. each evening, a practice that symbolically persisted into the 21st century.^[6] In Antioch, California, Chinese residents faced curfews as early as 1851, and in 1876, a mob destroyed the Chinatown district, prompting a mass exodus that left only a small number of Chinese residents by the mid-20th century.^[6] Mexican Americans were excluded from Midwestern sundown towns through racially restrictive housing covenants, signs (often posted within the same infamous "No Blacks, No Dogs" signs), and police harassment.^[7] Additionally, Jewish people and Catholics were unwelcome in certain communities, with some towns explicitly prohibiting them from owning property or joining local clubs.^[8]

Black Americans were also impacted through widespread and often well-documented exclusionary policies. These discriminatory policies and actions distinguish sundown towns from towns that have no Black residents for demographic reasons. Historically, towns have been confirmed as sundown towns by newspaper articles, county histories, and Works Progress Administration files; this information has been corroborated by tax or U.S. census records showing an absence of Black people or a sharp drop in the Black population between two censuses.^[9][2][10]