Sundown towns.
Let’s talk about it.
Greensburg, Indiana… the county seat of Decatur
In Greensburg Indiana, Segregation created the boundary. Violence enforced the boundary and Terror made sure nobody crossed it again.
So, before the sundown here, In the 1800s,the County was actually connected to Underground Railroad.
In the 1850s, a man named Luther Donnell was charged for helping an enslaved woman and her babies escape to freedom.
Mr. Luther was convicted in a lower court.
So, It went all the way to the Indiana Supreme Court..where the conviction was thrown out.
By the early 1900s, Greensburg was ready to explode. In May 1907…it did.
Newspapers reported that white people ordered our ancestors out of town. And it escalated. Quickly.
A mob of at least 500 white people attacked our resort area. They called it a riot. Our people were attacked. It wasn’t a riot. The word play to cover up the injustice happened often in history.
Our ancestors were forced out of this place!
According to historian James Loewen author of the only book exclusively about sundown towns…
Said that In 1890, that it was over 160 of us in the county.
By 1960…only three of us left. And they were All women.
By 2000…there was a handful of us, but family.
That’s infrastructure,
Segregation.
Terror and
Violence.
Working together.
Y’all the story spread through the newspapers From Nebraska to Louisiana…from Colorado to North Carolina…
Just like sundown itself…it spread.
In my book, I talk about how sundown spread from Town to town. County to county. Suburb to suburb. And it didn’t stop with the riot.
In 1923, newspapers reported that the Women of the Klan showed up in Greensburg.
They held ceremonies and .Burned crosses.
To Honored their fallen members.
The klan was strong here. We know their message.
Terror.
A reminder of who holds power.
Even decades later…
the reputation continued.
When Honda chose Greensburg for a plant…
James Loewen publicly questioned their decision.
He asked why a company would choose a town with a long history of exclusion…
and how it planned to build a diverse workforce there.
Greensburg became a sundown town when
Segregation created the boundary that violence
enforced with enough terror to make sure we didn’t cross those boundaries again.
That’s the sundown infrastructure.
Greensburg is just one place.
Indiana had dozens.
And we’re going county by county…
mapping the system that made sundown towns possible.
If you’ve ever heard of a town people warned you about growing up…
comment the name below.
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And I’ll see you in the comments.
In April 1907, John Green, a Black resident of Greensburg, Indiana, was accused of robbing and raping white widow Caroline Sefton. Unable to lynch Green, who had been removed from the town, white residents rioted, attacking and injuring several Black men and threatening at least one Black family. Some accounts claim that in response to the riot African Americans fled Greensburg, and it became a sundown town. Author Robert White examines the history of racism in Greensburg and Decatur County and demonstrates that the riot was a symptom of a broader racial intolerance. Racism, which existed prior to the riot and persisted after the riot, drove African Americans from Greensburg, Decatur County, and surrounding counties. Racism created an almost entirely white area of southeast
Race Riot and a sundown town
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/article/883489/pdf
https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/hondas-all-american-sundown-town
https://scholarworks.indianapolis.iu.edu/items/9a92cd5e-3a74-448d-b629-a7c2e89b7fc9
Northern attitude: sure free em, but keep em down there. I don’t really want them moving into my neighborhood
https://www.in.gov/history/state-historical-markers/find-a-marker/donnell-v-state-1852
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