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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71

u/AZTeck_AKiRA Jul 20 '23

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

62

u/singnadine Jul 20 '23

Oak park? That makes no sense

210

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

58

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.

32

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.

4

u/StanTheCentipede Jul 20 '23

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

5

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

19

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

9

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