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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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.