Sundown Towns Quotes

“How did sundown towns become such a widespread phenomenon in the North? A major part of the explanation is the rise of virulently racist groups. The 1920s was a major period of rebirth and growth for the Ku Klux Klan, not just in the South, but also in the North. Some 15,000 Klan members attended the state convention in Maine in 1923; an estimated 10,000 people attended a Klan rally near Montpelier, Vermont, in 1925. That same year, The Washington Post estimated Klan membership in New England at more than half a million. Others estimated membership in New Jersey at more than 60,000. The Klan, primarily groups of white Protestant Christians who donned white robes and conical hoods, threatened and terrorized Blacks in particular. James Loewen points out in his book "Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism" that the Klan members didn't reserve their hatred for Black alone: they reviled and threatened Jews and Catholics as well as any ethnic group they viewed as only marginally white—Italians, Greeks, and Eastern Europeans. But they reserved their intense hatred and most egregious acts of violence for Blacks. Such domestic hate groups often operated with impunity because of indifference or support, tacit or explicit, from local governments, police departments, elected officials, and citizens.”
― Alvin Hall, Driving the Green Book: A Road Trip Through the Living History of Black Resistance