Max Pearl reviewed Sundown towns by James W. Loewen
Review of 'Sundown towns' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
In 1968, my family moved from Queens to Great Neck, a suburb of NY - one of the only NY suburbs at the time that allowed black people to own houses (as a largely Jewish suburb, it accepted us, because they also had been rejected from most suburbs in NY.) So I knew very personally what happened in the suburban US around redlining, and various other tactics, some quite violent, to keep non-whites from living in them.
In 2008, I decided to leave Oakland, and move to Sonoma County, a nice, bucolic rural area, which is not at all diverse. I've lived in other rural areas, also not diverse. I asked myself, why is it that there are so few black or interracial rural or semi-rural communities? I thought perhaps it was because that's not where the jobs are. Or that's just how the demographics played out.
What I learned …
In 1968, my family moved from Queens to Great Neck, a suburb of NY - one of the only NY suburbs at the time that allowed black people to own houses (as a largely Jewish suburb, it accepted us, because they also had been rejected from most suburbs in NY.) So I knew very personally what happened in the suburban US around redlining, and various other tactics, some quite violent, to keep non-whites from living in them.
In 2008, I decided to leave Oakland, and move to Sonoma County, a nice, bucolic rural area, which is not at all diverse. I've lived in other rural areas, also not diverse. I asked myself, why is it that there are so few black or interracial rural or semi-rural communities? I thought perhaps it was because that's not where the jobs are. Or that's just how the demographics played out.
What I learned from reading this book made me realize I should have taken the lesson from my youth - there was an active, purposeful purge of non-whites from rural communities all over the country, and policies to keep them away. Did you know there were blacks in every county in Montana at one point? There were significant populations of african-americans in small rural communities all over the US prior to 1900.
This book is a great historic overview of what happened to those communities, and how the suburban US was formed to specifically exclude blacks, and often also Jews and others as well. It's extremely well researched, evenhanded, and is a worthy companion to helping to understand the issues that plague us today. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in history and social justice.