Sundown town. Let’s talk about it.
Madison County Indiana
For decades…We tried to make a home around this county.
And for decades…we were pushed out or segregated in.
Consistently.
It wasn’t just one place with a problem. It was a system, infrastructure, if you will. ❤
If you’re new here, welcome to my life’s work, I’m Rina and Im uncovering what I call the sundown infrastructure.
Segregation.
Terror.
Violence.
Not always in that order. But always working together to control where our ancestors could live and move freely at night.
And in Madison County…
we can literally watch it happen over time.
let’s start in Anderson, the county seat
Our ancestors were here. We were segregated in, but we were here since the underground railroad.
In Madison county Indiana,
We had businesses and community.
Now, when people hear Sundown towns, they’re like but Rina black people were there. How could it be sundown?
Pause let’s think about our lived experience. That’s not always how the system worked. Many places, they couldn’t force us out, we were allowed to exist. Just not everywhere and especially not in their neighborhoods and suburbs at night. I go deeper into black existence under the infrastructure in my upcoming book. But, to stay on topic lol. In this place, y’all we had businesses and everything.
In Anderson… We even had our own schools. You could live over there. But not there.
You could go to school here. But you don’t belong everywhere, right. That’s Segregation, right
So, if you traveled through Anderson back then…
We didn’t have a lot of options to make sure we stayed safe and didn’t end up in the wrong neighborhood,
The Green Book showed us our safe places:
Because, if we go just a few miles over…
to Elwood. Y’all. They were loud and proud to be fully sundown well, for elwood, we’ll learn it didn’t matter if it was day or night, Chile. But In 1897…
a newspaper reported that our ancestors tried to make a home there…
for years. If we do the math. We’d been trying since emancipation lol.
And every time…they said nope y’all go on back to Anderson or anywhere but not here 
Every time we tried.
By 1903…during the Elwood fair…
We tried to ENTER town. They told us lol you betta not come up in here.
We were told plainly, we couldn’t even enter the town limits during the day, this type of place is the most loud and obvious Sundown examples that we see on the spectrum.
Now let’s zoom out.
By the 1920s…Indiana had one of the largest Klan memberships in the entire country.
Led by D. C. Stephenson…hundreds of thousands joined.
When the Klan is visible like that…
The message was understood by our ancestors.
By 1940…reports still said we couldn’t live there.
Not even visit. This went on for decades.
By the 70s and 80s rev Jesse Jackson was taking to the streets in Anderson to march for equality.
And as of 2024, Elwood is over 90% white.
That’s infrastructure
Segregation created the boundary and Terror kept enforced the boundaries knowing that the violent klan was a hop skip and a jump away.
Madison County is just one example of how sundown was not just a town, it was an infrastructure.
Indiana had dozens.
And I’m going county by county…
mapping the system that made sundown towns possible.
If you’ve ever heard of a place where people were warned about when you were growing up…
drop the name below.
Those comments are making it to my list to uncover and connect current injustice.
Subscribe if you want to follow this series.
Because the deeper we go…
the more the same pattern shows up.
Segregation.
Terror.
Violence.
Black owned business audio only clip
https://media.dlib.indiana.edu/media_objects/qf85nf85d
James W. Geater: A civic leader in the 1920s who led the effort to create community spaces for Black youth.
Pic of klan in Anderson 1922
She said the Westside Community Center was open when the Great Depression of the 1930s hit and provided a place for young people
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