Sundown towns. Let’s talk about it. …Howard county Indiana is 99th on the list. whew. Chile!
In 1923…in Kokomo Indiana,
over 200,000 members of the Klan had an event.
Men.
Women.
Children. And in 2016….watch this
In 2022, there was a court case in Kokomo for housing segregation (cough cough) infrastructure still fighting.
That’s only part of the message. So, Let’s learn history.
But our Howard County in Howard county didn’t begin or end with the klan.
So, according to reports, the underground railroad ran through Howard county. But one of the first recorded ancestors in Howard county was a formerly enslaved woman named Aliff Henley. She bought 80 acres of land in 1844. From there…our communities grew.
Communities like The Rush Settlement and The Bassett Settlement. They had:
churches, and schools, a general store, a blacksmith, and a post office.
Our people were rooted in Kokomo.
If you want to know more about our beautiful history, I highly suggest you go and join black Kokomo on Facebook.
But something changed.
The sun was already starting to set here…
before most people even realized it.
In 1881…
a man named Richard Long was arrested in Kokomo. He was accused of a crime that a white man would receive MAYBE some jail time. But he was black. Before he could go to any type of trial…
a mob took him from the jail.
Thousands were in attendance to watch Mr. Long get lynched from a bridge. His last words was to make sure his grave stayed green and to hang him decent.
And lynched him.
That was a clear message that our ancestors understood, because after that…the sundown infrastructure was in Howard County.
We had segregated neighborhoods thanks to racial covenants. And We learn how to move around after that. We pushed back, but nonetheless, Jim Crow and the sundown infrastructure was in charge And in 1919 Douglas school was built in our community. every Black child here was sent to one place to learn. That’s infrastructure.
We made it work and amazing people came from that school!
But, just in case we didn’t understand the clear message of violence and segregation, terror was always around. It was made clear that there was no safety after dark by the 1920s for our ancestors if they didn’t know their place in Howard County, because Early 1923 5000 klan gathered burned crosses and marched downtown in Kokomo. That was the prelude because in July of 1923, a crowd of 200,000 showed up on the streets in Kokomo.
Then the next year 1924 100,000 of them showed up.
The mayor was a klan member!
The klan was organized power in Kokomo.
This place was the literal headquarters for the Indiana klan. Newspaper said they would leave warnings on our doors. Pure intimidation and terror. That alone was enough to secure Howard County as a place that operated under the sundown infrastructure.
They didn’t hid it. Reports say that half of the town of Kokomo identified as a klan member.
Half the town.
American flags and Burning crosses.
When you see something like that…
no one has to explain what it means.
There are people online with memories of a race riot with burning cars in Kokomo sometime in the 1960, however, I couldn’t find any official newspaper history or much else about it except people with direct memories, but….I’m weary about accounts of history that I can’t actually verify by atleast 3 seperate sources, so…the rumor is out there, though….. Kokomo was known to our ancestors and made it into the green book. Kokomo is in
The 1940s and 1960 edition.
This also tells us, that it was not a safe place to travel, and these places were safe to stop.
But Chile, the klan was relentless in Kokomo. In the 1980s the klan marched downtown again.
And again, the Kkk showed up in 2016…video linked
Welp. The infrastructure is very long lasting. In 2022, a case involving racial housing-discrimination claims against in Kokomo was allowed to proceed by a federal court, highlighting ongoing issues of housing equality.
So in Howard county, in Kokomo, Segregation created the sundown boundary. Violence enforced it.
Terror made it visible over and over again.
And over time…it became normal.
Kokomo taught people where they could—and couldn’t be especially when seeking safety after dark.
If you’ve ever heard of a place…
where people said “don’t stay there after dark”…
drop the name below.
Because this isn’t just history for me.
This is my life’s work.
So, until next time. I’ll see you in the comments.
https://www.digitalresearch.bsu.edu/digitalcivilrightsmuseum/items/show/110
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