Donald Trump Faces Backlash Over Rally Locations: 'Sundown Towns'

[Swede]

The term "sundown towns" dates back to the segregation era, referring to communities with a wholly white population where Black people were considered unsafe after nightfall. Black people were prevented from living in those communities through discriminatory policies or intimidation and violence. Today, many of these communities with racist histories remain predominantly white.
"This isn't a dogwhistle, it's a KKK hood over every single person who supports Donald Trump or the GOP. ENOUGH."

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-backlash-rally-locations-sundown-towns-1947418

[Deuxcents]

1. Good..expose them because they're counting on us to be complacent or not aware

[brush]

26. I say let these racist morons keep preaching to the choir as they're sure not...

gaining any new votes in sundown towns.

Racists are never known to be the sharpest knives in the drawer.

[ananda]

2. Wow!

"Howell, Michigan; La Crosse, Wisconsin; Johnstown, Pennsylvania," the man said in the video. "What do these places have in common? They're all sundown towns."

[LizBeth]

3. This needs to get loud;.

[Baitball Blogger]

4. Oh! I see what you did there, Donald.

Someone must have given him a copy of the Green Book and assumed they were pro-Democratic areas.

[tanyev]

5. He heard there was talk that he was sundowning and thought, "Oh, I'll show them sundowning."

[Maraya1969]

10. Remember that he is a weirdo. Tell him that "sundowning" is a symptom of dementia.

[enigmania]

6. I recall seeing

these horrible signs at city lines. And "colored only" water fountains.

[Maraya1969]

9. Oh My God! Try to find a lawyer who might want to sue these jackasses.

[Zoomie1986]

32. The signs aren't there anymore

The key word in the prior post is 'remember.' as in past action, not present.

So sue them for what?

[speak easy]

17. ...

[0rganism]

7. Somehow seems appropriate for the Sundowning Candidate

What an incredibly putrid dick

[SWBTATTReg]

8. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I didn't know originally what a 'sundown' town was, and now I do.

It does explain some of the stuff I grew up w/ (and no longer live there), such as the black population all lived across the big bridge separating the town into two parts, among other things. I'd like to think that these things are going away, but I'm thinking sadly that probably no.

At least where I'm living now, we have a very large, mixed ethic, white, black, and diverse immigrant communities all around/among us and I love it (STLMO). The array of people we meet on our day-to-day business is neat, and we have a very strong community all around. And, the town is full of kids, young families and such too. And to boot, we have a large retiree population too, as retirees are finding out that they would rather live in the urban city vs. somewhere way out in the boonie, where there are very few services. Large areas of the city have been rehabbed and the city offers a whole array of services and places to eat, of all kinds of tasty foods.

[ancianita]

15. Here's a piece on the origins, history, and story of the Green book used by Black People for safer travel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town


Here's a list of sundown towns -- in almost all states -- still have sundown ordinances on their books.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sundown_towns_in_the_United_States

Indiana, capital of the KKK in the 30's, still has more than any other state.

[SWBTATTReg]

19. Thank you! / The hate is still there, these ordinances should have been all wiped out decades and decades

ago. Jesus.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention/ or at least, mine.

[ancianita]

20. Most welcome! I believe I posted these back in 2020 when we were focused on rethug racism at the time.

[ecstatic]

28. Yikes! Zephyrhills is on the list?

I remember the company named after them as the supplier of the five gallon water refills? They delivered to us when we lived in Florida (very briefly). I'm a little disgusted now.

[ancianita]

30. I learned a while back when I first posted it, that some towns' elected leaders either never knew

Last edited Tue Sep 3, 2024, 03:56 PM - Edit history (1)

these ordinances were on their books or forgot to have them struck down. Could be human error, or could be a "likely story."

I'd call the legal dept of any town I've paid utilities to, to and find out if they still have such ordinances on the books. One would think the ACLU or other civil rights group would have had these struck down by now.

Guess unjust laws are cheaper to create than destroy.

[SWBTATTReg]

41. Yes, they dug that one law out of the books dated 1864 or something, related to abortion,

In AZ. The below write-up appeared in Time Mag, April 10, 2024. Other periodicals did cover this too, refer to the Time Magazine for more details:

The 160-year-old Arizona abortion ban that was upheld on Tuesday by the state’s highest court was among a wave of anti-abortion laws propelled by some historical twists and turns that might seem surprising. For decades after the United States became a nation, abortion was legal until fetal movement could be felt, usually well into the second trimester. Movement, known as quickening, was the threshold because, in a time before pregnancy tests or ultrasounds, it was the clearest sign that a woman was pregnant.

Before that point, “women could try to obtain an abortion without having to fear that it was illegal,” said Johanna Schoen, a professor of history at Rutgers University. After quickening, abortion providers could be charged with a misdemeanor. “I don’t think it was particularly stigmatized,” Dr. Schoen said. “I think what was stigmatized was maybe this idea that you were having sex outside of marriage, but of course, married women also ended their pregnancies.”

ME: It's scary that we have such laws on the books, but more so, what's out there on the books that we don't know about (and not just necessarily on Abortion either), that a zealous legislator or prosecutor may try and use to justify something in Court.

[ancianita]

42. Those two demographics are big. I'm sure there are still so so many state/county/town level laws that

Last edited Tue Sep 3, 2024, 08:27 PM - Edit history (1)

we don't even know about until humans in those places suffer.
Here's a clean-up proposal (admittedly I've no idea if it's legally possible) premised on our winning the trifecta in 2024, and it starts with the 119th Congress:

I would have the 119th Congress pass a law requiring that every state's AG review its laws in light of all new laws passed by the 119th. Congress's law would state that AG's should review any laws related to those the 119th passes, then produce a record of their compliance in taking their state law off the books by a deadline -- then confirmed and recorded in their state archives -- or face ongoing financial penalties stipulated in Congress's law, until the erased state law is confirmed as off their books and entered as such in their state's archives. Note: only 41 of 50 states have state archives.

How:
Of course, the first order of business of the 119th Congress would be to pass through the Judiciary committees, then get a majority vote, and then expand SCOTUS to 13 justices, then the Senate's four new confirmations would proceed. McConnell got his confirmations through pretty fast, and so can Schumer.

Next, if Congress's law is challenged (or any thereafter) and then get sent up to our newly expanded 13-justice SCOTUS, then upheld by them, it should turn out that the state-to-federal discrepancies that caused past harms should then get cleaned up as stipulated by that one law passed by Congress and upheld by the newly expanded SCOTUS.

Some would say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one...

[SWBTATTReg]

43. Very interesting, and one that I really think should be considered. I remember the noise when they pulled out this

1864 law, and I think that a lot of people were surprised that such things were on the books still, and technically still active. Scary indeed.

I do like your proposal. It's one that really merits a good look at. I wonder if any in Congress are looking at such things, to clean up what's got to be a mess on the legal books in every state and territory. Usually when they write a law, they do include language that such and such will supersede such and such, and include qualifiers and such, to draw limits and boundaries (and I'm sure each state is different in its approach). I hope that someone in DU land can offer more to us here on DU, if anyone in Congress or the states is taking such an approach.

[ecstatic]

44. +1000. Yeah we really need these laws off the books.

ASAP. You never know when republicans will try to enforce them again. We can't take that chance again.

[Blue Owl]

11. Donald "Whites Only" tRump

[Bev54]

12. This is finally getting out. I hope more than Newsweek will pick this up

Sounds like a job for Rachel, she can go into the history of sundown towns and then what exactly Trump is doing here, which is no doubt recruiting for his "civil war".

[BaronChocula]

16. This is how the segment on Rachel would begin

In 40,000 BCE, Howell, Michigan was a barren cold mass of land unwelcoming to anyone without a natural coat of fur.

[Wounded Bear]

13. Just locking down the KKK vote...nt

[BaronChocula]

14. He can't do anything right

But he does do everything white .

[live love laugh]

18. He didn't know ...

[Gore1FL]

21. I don't know what "backlash" mean in this context.

This seems right on brand for his supporters.

[usonian]

22. That's because he feels safe among armed white people. 😉

And he's probably got a ton of racist bullshit to unload.

And the cow towns among them won't mind the smell.

[COL Mustard]

23. I thought Sundown Towns were only in the Deep South.

The small town I grew up in was white only, by design. A few times Black families would try to move into the public housing development we had, but none ever stayed more than a day or two. I also remember, in the mid-1970s, a church member bringing a Black family to our (otherwise) all white Southern Baptist church. He did it twice. The first time, people left the pew where he brought them. The second time, people left. The third Sunday he wasn't there ever again. Again, this was in the 1970s. Disgusting.

[Zoomie1986]

33. They were everywhere.

This is the misconception most people have about the extent of racism in the US. It was never isolated to the south.

https://justice.tougaloo.edu/sundown-towns/using-the-sundown-towns-database/state-map/

It still isn't limited to the south. The most racist people I've ever encountered were in southern California. They were so racist that it shocked me--and I've lived in Mississippi. LAPD is by far the most racist police force in the country. They're so racist that they were under a federal consent decree for more than a decade. And the problems still aren't fixed there. They took delight in choking brown people to death there, and then blaming the victims for having something genetically wrong with them that made them more susceptible to death from chokehold.

I only wish I were kidding about that last part:

https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/socal-connected/clip/i-was-there-he-was-suggesting-that-blacks-were-not-normal-l-a-doctor-recalls-bizarre-phone-call-from-then-lapd-chief-daryl-gates

Even the average racist and corrupt southern sheriff wouldn't have trotted out that lunacy.

[COL Mustard]

35. I know that racism and other problems weren't Southern only

I'd never given thought about sundown towns outside my own experience.

Live and learn! Thanks! Hopefully we can someday put that bad experience behind us. Someday.

[malaise]

24. Saw this here

Rec

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219406755

[Orrex]

25. A friend of mine grew up in Kokomo Indiana

According to him, a nearby town had this prominent warning: "N****r, don't let the sun go down on you here."

That would have been the mid 1970s, and I'm sure that it wasn't the last such sign in this fine nation of ours.

[evolves]

27. Taking a page from the racist reagan playbook:

Ronnie announced his candidacy for the presidency in 1980 at the Neshoba County Fair in Neshoba County, Mississippi.

On August 3, 1980, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan appeared at the Neshoba County Fair in Neshoba County, Mississippi, to give a speech on states' rights. The location, which was near the site of the 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner [Civil Rights workers] was, according to critics, evidence of racial bias.
During his speech, Reagan said:
"I still believe the answer to any problem lies with the people. I believe in states' rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level, and I believe we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to that federal establishment." He went on to promise to "restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them". The use of the phrase "state's rights" was seen by some as a tacit appeal to Southern white voters and a continuation of Richard Nixon's Southern strategy, while others argued it merely reflected his libertarian beliefs in economics.

States' rights had for decades been a rallying slogan for racial segregationists, including Strom Thurmond in the 1948 presidential election and George Wallace in the 1968 presidential election, and several press writers interpreted Reagan's use of the phrase according to that tradition. Columnist Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote, "Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair," and that it "was understood that when politicians started chirping about 'states' rights' to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we're with you".


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan%27s_1980_States%27_rights_speech



Emphasis mine

[Zoomie1986]

34. This is BS

reagan announced his campaign for POTUS in NYC in November 1979.

Neshoba was his first public appearance after receiving the nomination at the RNC. That's it.

Bad enough that he gave a racist states' rights speech there, of all places, but IT WAS NOT A CAMPAIGN LAUNCH ANNOUNCEMENT. He had been a candidate for 9 months at that point.

[evolves]

37. OK-- I stand corrected.

He still made a dog-whistle speech at a location specifically chosen to insult/threaten POC and white allies from the region.

There's really no reason to be aggressively hateful towards me for making a mistake.

[nature-lover]

29. Is this where he said that he didn't need their votes, he had plenty of votes?

[Warpy]

31. Well, it's not like POC are all that well reprresented at his rallies for hate

so I think it';s just peachy and kind of tells everybody out there where he's really at.

Besides, pickings are slim, he's stiffed enough indoor venues that nobody will book him without having all the money up front and that's just not how he does things.

Soon he'll be trying to book high school baseball fields.

[usonian]

36. POC gotta be paid to attend.

And I don't think that many consider venue-stuffing to be proper "Black Jobs".



PLEASE



Here.

[orthoclad]

38. P25 is a cookbook!

stole your miracle pic.

[usonian]

40. Steal more!

I pulled that off the internet. He said a couple of things like that ... "I might have to leave the country" and so on.

More empty promises.

The latter work is courtesy of the internet, me, and the free GIMP photo editing program.

It's so CHEERFUL.

Hannibal Lecter and Kanamit can have him for dinner. With fava beans and a nice Chianti.

[Warpy]

39. Makes 'em a damn sight smarter than his usual fan club.