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CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA ‘SUNDOWN TOWNS’ AND THE LEGACY OF RACISM:
’IT’S STILL HERE”  
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Ivey DeJesus
February 22, 2024
PennLive
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_ "Don't get caught there," The legacy of sundown towns is not
confined to the pages of history books - but is alive and well in
2024. Deep racial disparities are evidence that the intent of sundown
towns still lingers today. _

The National Socialist Movement, one of the largest and most
prominent neo-Nazi groups in the United States, was one of 36 hate
groups active in Pennsylvania in 2020. Members of the group gathered
summer 2020 at a downtown Williamsport, PA park., (Photo credit:
PennLive)

 

Growing up in the 1960s, the Rev. Roger Dixon heard the warnings every
time the William Penn High School football team was set to play Cedar
Cliff.

“The older men used to say ‘don’t get caught up there after the
game. You might get into trouble. They might try to arrest you,’”
recalls Dixon, who is Black and graduated from William Penn in 1966.

Rafiyqa Muhammad tells of a similar experience growing up in
Harrisburg.

“Our parents always told us about certain areas,” she said. “Our
father would tell us don’t go here, don’t go there. Do not go over
to the West Shore. I remember we would drive in and drive out. There
was no going over and hanging out.”

Like Dixon, Muhammad, who is Black and came of age in the 1960s and
1970s, lived through some of the most tumultuous times in this country
as the vestiges of segregation and the push for civil rights framed
the lives of millions of Americans.

As the nation observes Black History Month in February, celebrating
the accomplishments and contributions of Black Americans, the
experiences of ordinary Americans like Dixon and Muhammad attest to
the painful reality that racism was not confined to the south.

Across communities in central Pennsylvania, Black residents were made
to feel unwelcome in many communities, especially after dark, and in
many cases the communities were their own.

So-called “sundown towns” 
[[link removed]]became
a fixture across the country in the early 1900s. These were all-white
communities that excluded non-whites via discriminatory laws,
intimidation and violence.

 
As a child growing up in Harrisburg in the late 1960s, Rafiyqa
Muhammad's parents always warned her and her siblings to stay out of
certain areas. They were explicitly warned to stay away from the West
Shore, which was unwelcoming to Black people.  (Photo credit: Sean
Simmers | [email protected] Simmers)
These practices were at times explicit - written into statutes and
charters - and other times the understanding that if you were Black,
you better be out of town by sunset, hence the name. Some towns posted
warning signs to Blacks not to “let the sun go down on you here.”
Other towns rang a bell at the end of the workday warning Black
workers to leave.

Harrisburg may have been well north of the Mason-Dixon Line, but in
many ways was emblematic of the practice of sundown towns. While Dixon
and Muhammad attended predominantly Black schools and spent time in
mostly Black communities, sometimes they needed to cross the
Susquehanna River to the mostly white west shore.

“They didn’t call it sundown town, but we know what they meant,”
Dixon said. “The old men would say you never know, you never know.
Don’t get caught up over there. They were very serious about it.”

Cultural documentarian Candacy Taylor
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collected crowd-sources data showing that Pennsylvania was home to
about 40 sundown towns,
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that these towns were not confined to the south or Midwest.

In her book, “Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of
Black Travel in America,” Taylor mapped the prevalence of such towns
in the region. They included Middletown and Camp Hill, and while
Harrisburg was not named among the towns, oral histories of residents
suggest that those racist attitudes in some neighborhoods prevailed.

“When I hear people say sundown town, I know what that means but
I’m looking at my own backyard,” Muhammad said. “We couldn’t
get more sundown than here and it’s still that way.”

Muhammad grew up with the unwritten rule that she and her friends - as
they walked to and from school and across their Harrisburg community
— needed to avoid areas.

“There were places we could not go to,” she recalls. “When we
went to school you better not walk through Bellevue Park. You better
not be caught there. Italian Lake? The same. You better not be caught
in Italian Lakes or the authorities would be called on you and who
knows what else.”

Colonial Park, Susquehanna Township and even Steelton were off limits
to Blacks in those days. Venturing into northern Dauphin County and
Cumberland County was strongly discouraged for Black residents.

“For some of us that are from here those communities are
triggering,” Muhammad said. “I remember The Hill Cafe at the
corner of 13th and Market. Blacks weren’t allowed to go in. If you
did go, you went out back and you didn’t stay long. This is during
my childhood.”

The conversation around sundown towns typically raises a debate over
whether the distinction was explicit — based on written regulation
or policy — or not.

Some towns and even housing complexes like Lenker Manor in Swatara
Township had charters that had exclusionary clauses barring Blacks
from buying houses or living within the community. Other communities
fostered the reputation of being off limits to non-whites.

“All you have to do is look at Penbrook,” said Karl Singleton,
president and CEO of the PA Diversity Coalition. “I would be driving
by with my grandmother and wonder why there were no Black people in
the swimming pool. Come to find out they had a residency requirement.
At the time, it was redlined. Black people didn’t live in that area
of Penbrook.”

Blacks could not join the pool and they couldn’t buy a home in the
community. Singleton remembers that when redlining — a
discriminatory practice in which financial services, like loans, are
withheld, largely from minorities — was lifted, Blacks slowly began
to buy homes there.

“What was one of the main things they did once redlining was lifted?
They shut the pool down,” Singleton said. “It is not a figment of
our imagination. It’s real.”

Between 1936 and 1967, many Black Americans relied on “The Green
Book” anytime they were venturing from home. The book served as a
travel guide for Black Americans to help find safe places to stay,
shop and eat on the road.

The late sociologist and civil rights champion James W. Loewen,
examined such exclusion in “Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of
American Racism” (2005), which explored the communities
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systematically, and often forcibly, excluded Black people, Jews and
others.

The central Pennsylvania jurisdictions on that list included
[[link removed]]: Camp Hill,
Hanover, Elizabethtown, Hershey, Manheim, Mechanicsburg, Selinsgrove
and the whole of York County.

“Sundown towns were not just restricted to the south or the midwest.
They were virtually in every state,” said Mary Zaborskis, an
assistant professor of American Studies and Gender Studies at Penn
State Harrisburg.

“When we think about the north we think of it as a place where those
things didn’t happen. We had many newly emancipated Black people
moving to the north thinking it’s the promised land but the
imaginings of the political, social and cultural opportunities of the
north were illusions. We have generations that had to navigate Jim
Crow laws, segregation and other messages of non-belonging right
here.”

The history of sundown towns has been documented in photographs and
newspaper accounts, but it’s perhaps the oral histories that capture
the fear behind the warnings.

“There was this knowledge that was circulated,” Zaborskis said.
“People knew realtors weren’t going to show you homes in this area
or you were going to be told you would be more comfortable looking in
other places. It wasn’t things in books but lived experience and the
knowledge that had to be kept in a community but still circulated.”

Archives are filled with accounts of blatant acts of racism and
exclusion.

One of the more notable cases
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place in 1937 when two Black educators, who had traveled to Harrisburg
with nearly 100 other teachers — all of them white — were denied
accommodations at the Penn Harris Hotel. The teachers, citing the
recently ratified state equal rights law, won in court, but the case
did little to move the racial justice needle forward.

Over the decades, Pennsylvania emerged as a hotbed for white
supremacist hate groups
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at times ranking among the top five states with the highest
concentration of hate groups. Parts of York County became enclaves for
the Ku Klux Klan.

A student at Gettysburg College in the early 1970s, Kaaba Brunson
learned quickly that certain areas of the borough were off limits to
Blacks and he was unable to find rental housing.

“There were realtors that simply did not rent to people of color,”
said Brunson, chairperson for the Greater Harrisburg NAACP Afro
Academic, Cultural, Technological, & Scientific Olympics (ACT-SO),
which focuses on improving academic performance of marginalized
students.

“When we think about segregation we typically think of the 1920s,
1930s, 1940s..and think it disappeared. It was still going on in late
1960s and 1970s.”

In fact, Brunson argues that the legacy of sundown towns is not
confined to the pages of history books - but is alive and well in
2024.

Brunson, who had his first encounter with a klansman in full regalia
in York County in 1977, points to deep racial disparities in the
workforce, unemployment and lack of education opportunities as
evidence that the intent of sundown towns still lingers today.

 
Kaaba Brunson argues that the legacy of sundown towns is not confined
to the pages of history books - but is alive and well in 2024. He is
chairperson for the Greater Harrisburg NAACP Afro Academic, Cultural,
Technological and Scientific Olympics.  (Photo credit: Dan Gleiter |
[email protected] Gleiter)
“When I look at our society I see the vestiges of Jim Crow staring
at me in all segments and it’s even more effective now because
it’s not being recognized,” Brunson said. He reels off a list of
recent incidents across central Pennsylvania schools in which Black
and brown students were the targets of racial hostility and even
violence. Black students being called “monkeys” by white peers,
often with no consequences.

“It’s still here and it’s more powerful than it has ever
been,” Brunson said.

Muhammad argues that despite diversity in communities, many Black
homeowners don’t feel welcome in places like Camp Hill and Lemoyne.

“Just because you have Blacks living there don’t mean nothing,”
she said. “They are catching hell. Anywhere in Cumberland County.
People want to talk about Perry County being bad, I tell them go look
at Dauphin County. You could still find confederate flags flying in
Dauphin County. Travel down [Route] 230 see if you don’t see some.
We don’t have to go far. It’s right under our nose.”

Muhammad has no shortage of encounters where she faced racism on the
West Shore, but also parts of Harrisburg and Dauphin County. She
recently had difficult encounters while passing out literature on
environmental justice in uptown Harrisburg and she felt profiled at a
consignment store on the West Shore.

“I‘m not going to go to certain places up the river, " Muhamad
said. “I‘ve been in areas around here that if you took the wrong
turn, you’ve got folks coming out with guns in their hands.”

A Black family last year 
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driven out of the Lower Dauphin School District — and the area —
after their two high school students endured ongoing racial
harassment.

The siblings were taunted by racial epithets in person and on social
media to the point where the family felt it had to move. Delali Mensah
Jamison and her husband, along with children, Kamau and Shekinah,
relocated back to Maryland.

Singleton cites insidious examples of racism persisting today,
especially in schools and policing.

Singleton noted choices in school curriculum that exclude Black
history and disparities in policing along racial lines; as well as the
predominantly white police departments serving minority communities
like Harrisburg. Another example: the disproportionately high rate 
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Blacks arrested compared to whites, despite the fact they represent a
far smaller percentage of the population..

“The difference is accountability,” Singleton said. “That’s
where the uproar comes. The marches. It’s the injustice in the very
system. That’s a long way around talking about sundown towns, but it
is poignant and necessary. You have to showcase the inequity.”

* Sundown Town
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* racial discrimination in the North
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* Racism
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* African Americans
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* Black Americans
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* Pennsylvania
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* Ku Klux Klan
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* KKK
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* neo-Nazis
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* white nationalists
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* Donald Trump
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* MAGA
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* Make America Great Again
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* 2024 Elections
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* swing states
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* purple states
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* red-lining
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* exclusionary clauses
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