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Letters to the Editor
To the Editor:
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I appreciate Luther James Adams's characterization of Sundown Towns as "massive" and "well-documented" in his review of my book in the September 2006 issue of the JAH (p. 602). But it's unreasonable to criticize it as a "sundown book" because I exclude black voices. As Mr. Adams must have noticed, sundown towns were (some still are) all white on purpose. They are not like slavery plantations, where a majority of the residents were black, even if they left few written documents. Sundown towns contain no black voices to exclude! |
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I did my best. I quote Oprah Winfrey doing a television show from Forsyth County, Georgia, when it was a sundown county in 1987. I interviewed and quoted Henry Louis Gates (and his father) about Garrett County, Maryland, a sundown county throughout Gates's childhood in neighboring Piedmont, West Virginia. I quote black residents of Colp and Du Quoin, two of the few interracial towns in southern Illinois, about nearby sundown towns. And so forth, across the country. Also, I include searing comments from pioneers like Daisy Myers, who, with her family, braved a white mob to settle Levittown, Pennsylvania. |
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But no. I did not talk with black residents of sundown towns—in most towns there aren't any. This exemplifies what we call "white agency"! A "sundown book" indeed! Sundown Towns opens up a new field for students and scholars to investigate. But let's not ask the impossible. |
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| James W. Loewen, Emeritus
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University of Vermont
Burlington, Vermont |
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To the Editor:
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James Loewen's response to my review of Sundown Towns highlights the very concerns raised in the original review. The inclusion of black voices is not only possible but necessary. Obviously there were not many black residents in towns that were "all white on purpose," that goes without saying. However, "black voices" does not equate to black residents. Surely, Loewen does not mean to suggest that in the more than one hundred years sundown towns have existed throughout the nation, that no African American organization, newspaper, film, novel, or social, political, religious leader has ever commented on the presence of sundown towns. |
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The question is not what black residents thought of sundown towns, but rather how blacks as a people viewed sundown towns. What did it mean to be forcibly denied access to housing in this way? Did blacks ever try to challenge the creation and maintenance of such towns? If so, with what results, if not, why not? What have these towns meant to African Americans, and what do they mean today? While Loewen devotes more than 500 pages to examining such questions vis-à-vis whites, he simply excludes blacks from the narrative. Quoting Oprah Winfrey should not take the place of sustained historical analysis. |
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Moreover, it is unclear what Loewen means by "white agency." If he means to suggest that white supremacy was so powerful that no records of black thought or resistance survive then that simply is not the case. Only by calling this a "new field" and erasing black voices can one come to the conclusion that sundown towns were "hidden." In fact, they were not. I stand by my review. |
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| Luther James Adams
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University of Washington
Tacoma, Washington |
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