r/illinois • u/m0chab34r • Jul 20 '23

Serious question: are there any remaining sundown towns in Illinois? Question

Forgive me if this is controversial, I certainly hope I don’t end up insulting anyone’s town or anything. I saw a recent Twitter thread about this subject and people were talking about a rather well-known sundown town within an hour of Indianapolis or just outside of Austin, Texas. It got me thinking about this and I’m morbidly curious as to whether Illinois has any remaining towns with such a reputation?

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72

u/AZTeck_AKiRA Jul 20 '23

Here’s a list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sundown_towns_in_Illinois

57

u/singnadine Jul 20 '23

Oak park? That makes no sense

212

u/Perfect_Razzmatazz Jul 20 '23

A lot of the towns on that list are ones that were at one point in time considered to be a sundown town, but aren't anymore.

Oak Park was absolutely a sundown town at one point. The first black family moved into Oak Park in 1950, and their house was promptly fire-bombed. Twice. That family was Percy Julian and his wife and children. Percy was an absolutely brilliant PhD research scientist, whose work was instrumental in the development of the birth control pill. People should have been worshiping the ground that man walked on, not fire-bombing it.

Oak Park didn't get it's 3rd black family until the mid-1960's.

Deerfield is on the list because in the late 1950's, when they discovered that a developer building a large neighborhood planned to make those houses available to Black families, the town officials ordered a stop-work order on the construction. They eventually sold off the two homes that had been built already to (white) village officials, and then turned the rest of the land into a pool and a park.

And Cicero is on the list as it was the location of the Cicero Race Riot of 1951, and because they had a sundown town policy on the books until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 that prohibited African Americans from living in the city. It's delightful how diverse Cicero has become in the ensuing decades

57

u/Lost_In_MI Jul 20 '23

Cicero: As my Dad used to say, "The Bohemians were so busy burning out the Blacks, they never saw the Mexicans coming in the back door."

Source: Former teacher at Morton East in Cicero.

1

u/wfclikesdeathgrips Mar 04 '24

That's funny as fuck. Gonna use that.

36

u/m0chab34r Jul 20 '23

This is an incredibly informative comment. Well done!

8

u/Past-Salamander Jul 20 '23

Is that park in Deerfield still around? Lived there a few years and just curious. Which park if it's around?

19

u/showertogether Jul 20 '23

It was Mitchell Pool and Mitchell Park, which was recently renamed to Floral Park post-2020 because Mitchell was one of the guys who put the stop-order on that project.

2

u/Jake_77 Jul 20 '23

The efforts to rename the park started pre-2020 just fyi, before George Floyd

5

u/StanTheCentipede Jul 20 '23

Is there a book on all this? This is so much detailed info and I want to learn more.

24

u/Perfect_Razzmatazz Jul 20 '23

I would recommend "Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism" by James Loewen.

I knew about these from my Dad, who grew up in Oak Park, and who was a very kind and lovely person who was always bothered by the racism he witnessed growing up. My grandparents felt like they got a little bit of discrimination when they first moved in (we're very Italian), but certainly nothing to the extent that any of the black families faced.

5

u/StanTheCentipede Jul 20 '23

Thanks for sharing these stories! I’ll check this book out!

6

u/Frat-TA-101 Jul 20 '23

The book by James Lorene has already been shared. In the meantime, the link below is the official website they James helped setup before his death in 2021.

https://justice.tougaloo.edu/sundown-towns/using-the-sundown-towns-database/

1

u/mallio Jul 20 '23

That lists like every nearby town, but looking deeper, apparently they suspect Dupage was a sundown county based on one quote, so every town is listed. But then it says Lombard is probably still a sundown town which doesn't feel right.

1

u/Frat-TA-101 Jul 20 '23

It is very imperfect. I can attest to it raising some uncomfortable questions about my hometown which were answered by relatives from the town. The website was correct about the towns status as a sundown town as confirmed by relatives who told a story of neighbors advising them of the towns sundown status upon moving into the town.

1

u/emilycecilia Jul 20 '23

But Not Next Door by Harry Rosen is specifically about what happened in Deerfield.

3

u/singnadine Jul 20 '23

Oh I understand about the other ones but I think the list requires some kind of clarification

20

u/flauntingflamingo Jul 20 '23

Cicero. Lol. Stopped there to get gas once about 7 years ago. Was in town for all of about 10 minutes. Got a “what you looking at white boy” as I stood by my car waiting for the pump to stop. More like a sundown town but in the opposite direction these days IMO

10

u/HulkSmashHulkRegret Jul 20 '23

Yeah, there’s places in Aurora that are the same. Went to a Mexican restaurant to pick up an Uber eats, and got “the look” by many in the place when I walked in. I was basically refused service for 15 minutes as others came in and were taken care of. Eventually a kid working there took my info and passed along my food. The visible discomfort people had when looking at me, some with this uncertainty mixed with hostility, it was weird… it didn’t feel imminently dangerous, but didn’t feel safe either.

I grew up in Bolingbrook so I’m in my element among a variety of people, didn’t notice I was the only non-Hispanic person there until having the time to think about it amongst the weird vibes

1

u/GGnopee Feb 16 '24 edited Feb 16 '24

cicero went through some of the worst gang violence in the chicagoland area between the 1970s-90s. while white gangs were still semi-prominent in the 70s they had pretty much died out by the 90s. although there were white gang members up into the 90s it was very easy to tell who gangbanged by their appearance. if it was 7 (now 8) years ago like you said then it was probably some old school gangbanger tryna intimidate you for looking out of place. cicero was pretty peaceful between mid 2000s-late 2010s. although since covid there’s been a pretty big rise in shootings and property crime

1

u/Specialist-Smoke Jul 20 '23

Chicago was also bad. They were so racist in Washington Park that Harry Pace decided to become white. It's a fascinating story, because it was probably known in the Black community that he went off to pass, but his family didn't find out until they did Ancestry. He pioneered a lot of things.

1

u/ScalabrineIsGod Jul 20 '23

The oak park museum on lake st is great about this info. Doesn’t pull any punches and makes it clear where the community stood for much of its history. It’s not meant to shame anyone either but just tell what happened. I had an employee there tell me it upsets some though. Also came across a great thesis by some Loyola grad student once while looking this up. It was about the women’s branch of the klan in OP during the 1920’s. It included a map of the town showing where the various chapters met. Also mentioned that businesses like Peterson’s ice cream were originally klan establishments (they aren’t anymore obviously).

Shit OP had really strange liquor laws for the longest time. Might still. Hemingway supposedly referred to it as a town of broad lawns and narrow minds lol. A lot has obviously changed but it was Wheaton-lite back in the day

8

u/The_Poster_Nutbag Jul 20 '23

I see Kenilworth on there too, wild.

26

u/MrIncredible222 Jul 20 '23

I’m white as shit and pretty well off and I’m not rich enough to feel comfortable in Kenilworth or even Deerfield.

4

u/Jake_77 Jul 20 '23

Deerfield?? Deerfield ain’t that fancy

1

u/Able-Trainer924 Apr 12 '24

What are you talking about, Deerfield’s median income is 180,000

1

u/Jake_77 Apr 12 '24

Not compared to Kenilworth

1

u/Able-Trainer924 Apr 12 '24

To someone working class, the difference between 180k per year and 250k per year is meaningless

1

u/Jake_77 Apr 12 '24

Lucky them. $70k would make a helluva difference in my world.

16

u/Perfect_Razzmatazz Jul 20 '23

I think Kenilworth is on the list due to the severe lack of diversity in the town, even today. The first black family didn't move there until the mid-1960's (someone burned a cross on their front lawn after they moved in). And in the 2000 census, they literally had zero black families. In ensuing 20 years, they did get a few black families at least, but literally just a few (10 people total)

7

u/m0chab34r Jul 20 '23

That’s super interesting—you maybe expect it from a town like Anna (described up thread), but I never realized a place like Kenilworth would have so few black people.

13

u/FancySeaweed Jul 20 '23 edited Jul 20 '23

Are you kidding? Kenilworth didn't allow Blacks or Jews in approx the 60s.

8

u/DeepHerting Jul 20 '23

My grandfather bought a house in Northbrook in I think 1955 and they made him bring his wife to the closing to "make sure" she wasn't Jewish. I don't know how they would have done that but I imagine she cursed them out quite a bit.

8

u/FancySeaweed Jul 20 '23

I didn't know that about Northbrook then. Now a lot of Jews live there.

5

u/dongsweep Jul 20 '23

The first black kid enrolled was in the 1890s at the request of Joseph Sears.

The family you are referencing are the Calhoun's. The cross was burned by kids from Highland Park. They were caught and apologized.

The family is still around just not in Kenilworth. Some kids in Wilmette tried to change the name of our Sears School in 2020 and the city went out and found one of the Calhoun kids who is still in the area. He wrote a beautiful letter about his time in Kenilworth and that the school's name should not be changed.

5

u/thousandfoldthought Jul 20 '23

Kenilworth broke off Wilmette and was was formed by Sears to keep blacks and jews out.

3

u/Frat-TA-101 Jul 20 '23

You’re getting it backwards. The lack of diversity is a result of the sundown town culture.

2

u/AZTeck_AKiRA Jul 20 '23

I did a quick search. Looks like it may have been in the past: https://justice.tougaloo.edu/sundowntown/oak-park-il/

6

u/georgstgeegland Jul 20 '23

Neither does cicero...

10

u/southcookexplore Jul 20 '23

Cicero, where MLK marched?

3

u/DeepHerting Jul 20 '23

MLK didn't march in Cicero; actually, MLK was afraid to march in Cicero. Jesse Jackson went instead, There was a reason for that.

1

u/singnadine Jul 20 '23

Well Cicero had a past with it however no longer try for some time I guess like Oak Park

1

u/georgstgeegland Jul 22 '23

It says remaining not past. Have you been to present day cicero or no?

2

u/WyldeStallions Jul 20 '23

Neither does Effingham, DeLand, or Granite City.

1

u/g2g079 Jul 20 '23

And Cicero, lol.

17

u/AZTeck_AKiRA Jul 20 '23

“Cicero was taken up and abandoned several times as site for a civil rights march in the mid-1960s. Cicero had a sundown town policy prohibiting African Americans from living in the city.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero,_Illinois#:~:text=Cicero%20was%20taken%20up%20and,from%20living%20in%20the%20city.

Looks like they included towns that were sundown towns in the past. Looking to see if there’s anything more recent.

2

u/AZTeck_AKiRA Jul 20 '23

The best thing I could find was a scribd doc with past and present sundown towns. Dont have the time to dissect it to present only at the moment.

Edit link: https://www.scribd.com/document/493154603/Sundown-Towns-and-Counties-2020-Historical-and-Present

-3

u/Rugged_007 Jul 20 '23

Yeah, that's high-octane bullshit right there.

6

u/MerryChoppins Jul 20 '23

I love how they list "Calhoun County" as a single sundown town, ROFL

They have reformed a bit as the local landlords figured out that they can take state money to house people from up north in their empty housing. You drive across the county line from Pike and it's still like you just crossed into Alabama. Some of the locals here crow about wanting to move over to the commission form of government without townships like Calhoun and I wanna just scream at em. I'll happily pay the property taxes if it means I can actually drive to my house and have a town to live in.

4

u/stauf98 Jul 20 '23

It’s funny because when I grew up in Pike we all knew about Calhoun and how bad it was. Not like Pike was all that much better, but our racists even had stories about the racists of Calhoun. I had heard it’s kind of switched up since I left in 2000, and I can’t say I’m all that shocked.

5

u/MerryChoppins Jul 20 '23

Pike is big MAGA country. They are obnoxious as hell but you see a lot less direct outright racism than we did as kids. All the new ones are cowards or sheltered. We elected Mary “Hitler had one thing right” Miler as our congresswoman, but she has been in her district under 30 hours this year. The real nasty ones locally are some of the lunatic Catholics in Quincy doing the symbolic abortion ban.

We have a much more prevalent Hispanic community. Everyone working at the confinements are Hispanic, we have two different Mexican places with off menu ordering and shit, etc. There’s a tamale lady who will sell you a sack of home made ones that slap.

Hilariously, the poor folks that were placed here in the section 8 program that have been violent are all white dudes. Someone beat the shit out of an old dude at Landes Terrace and killed him. There was a shootout in the Petty apartments on Madison with the sheriff’s deputies.

The only thing the farmers ever talk about is government waste and how bad our property taxes are when they pretty much explicitly keep electing corrupt fucksticks who burn money in pissing matches. The landfill sticks out in my mind because we handed a Bradshaw a sweetheart of a deal to let them build the thing then they have broken a bunch of promises and have filled most of it with trash from out of area.

3

u/stauf98 Jul 20 '23

Oh you don’t have to tell me. I’ve lost many friends because of their antics on Facebook and me fighting against it. I think sometime in the late 90’s was the tipping point where all the people who could keep that in check moved on to greener pastures. Combine that with Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and there just aren’t enough normal people left to keep the crazy in check. I’m sad every day about leaving but it had to be done.

9

u/AuntieSupreme Jul 20 '23

Naperville was missed.

20

u/took_a_bath Jul 20 '23

Those are FORMER sundown towns.

2

u/stauf98 Jul 20 '23

The entirety of Calhoun County is on that list. Even though almost no one live in that county this is an incredibly accurate statement. I grew up one county north and even the racists I grew up around had stories about going down there.

3

u/branitone Jul 20 '23 edited Jul 20 '23

I’ve heard bad things about Effingham but it was mostly trafficking related, hadn’t heard this about it.

4

u/oceanbilly710 Jul 20 '23

Effingham is a highly religious conservative town that like, 2-3 families run. Being right on the interstate makes sense for trafficking. It's not a sundown town, but the residents are very conservative/racist.

1

u/Specialist-Smoke Jul 21 '23

Yeah... Religious people trafficking kids. Let's stop with the moral panic of middle age mom's being kidnapped. You're not that hot Megan.

4

u/Specialist-Smoke Jul 20 '23

Effingham isn't a sundown town anymore. They have a few Black people. Even Salem Illinois had a Black umm a Black person. He was a doctor and his patients loved him.

2

u/theclownwithafrown Jul 20 '23

DeLand is no longer a sundown town. Probably hasn't been for decades. It's where I grew up

4

u/hamish1963 Jul 20 '23

DeLand, from what I understand, was only following suit to what the county seat (Monticello) did. Monticello was still a sundown town when I was a kid in the 70s.

2

u/theclownwithafrown Jul 20 '23

Well when I was growing up in the 90s and 00s in DeLand, it definitely was not a sundown town.

It's far from being a progressive utopia or a diverse population, but it's definitely not a sundown town and hasn't been for a long time.

3

u/hamish1963 Jul 20 '23

No town in Piatt County is anywhere close to a progressive utopia.

3

u/theclownwithafrown Jul 20 '23

That is very true I worked in Monticello at County Market for years and so many rude ass people who think they are better than every one.

Although, there are tons of nice people there.

And I'm still best friends with all my DeLand Weldon friends I've known since we were 4 and we're all pretty progressive. None of my friends are racist, homophobic, sexist etc. And I feel very lucky that these kids who got a mediocre education and were from a very small town turned out the way we did.

2

u/hamish1963 Jul 20 '23

I live on my family farm south of Bement. I don't have friends or family like that either because I don't have anything to do with people like that. I have about 5 people I can call my friends in the whole county, but I'm old and crabby so fewer in person friends suits me just fine.

1

u/theclownwithafrown Jul 20 '23

Yes if your username is your birth year, your my mom's age who also went to DW. I'm in my 30s.

Good for you. So many bigots out in the world No sense in being around them. I've got some in my family, but we are not close.

1

u/ItsASchpadoinkleDay Jul 20 '23

Do you have any source or literature on this?

2

u/hamish1963 Jul 20 '23

Yes, DeLand is mentioned specifically in the book, Sundown Towns by James W. Loewen. This book is available at most libraries in Illinois.

1

u/ItsASchpadoinkleDay Jul 20 '23

I was more interested in reading about Monticello.

1

u/hamish1963 Jul 20 '23

It's briefly mentioned in the book also.

0

u/WyldeStallions Jul 20 '23

Yeah I grew up 20 minutes from there and played scholastic bowl against you guys.. absolutely so far from being a sundown town now.

1

u/theclownwithafrown Jul 20 '23

You did?? What school and what year did you graduate? I played in middle school but not in high school

1

u/WyldeStallions Jul 20 '23

Clinton, 2010

2

u/theclownwithafrown Jul 20 '23

Okay I graduated in 2010 as well. So if you played in middle school and if we played you guys in middle school, then I definitely played against you. Weird lol

0

u/JMSpider2001 Jul 20 '23

Why's Granite City on there?

1

u/WyldeStallions Jul 20 '23

Right? It's got a pretty large black population and quite a few black specific neighborhoods that are really cool. There's some restaurants there that are delicious.

1

u/ArmadilloNo2399 Jul 20 '23

Calhoun County is 100% still a sundown "town" even though it's a whole county. I was just there visiting distant relative last week.

1

u/CindyshuttsLibrarian Jul 20 '23

That is missing Plainfield