I didn't know learning can be quite disturbing.

Last night I learn something disturbing about America's history.  It was on the Investigation Discovery channel.  The show was called "Sundown Towns".  Towns, that before integration, made it clear to black people they were not wanted, and for their own safety, had better be out of town before dark, or something bad was going to happen

A young black man was doing research on these "Sundown Towns", and was curious as to whether these towns still existed.  He had a copy of an old book, written back before the end of segregation, it was a travel guide for black people meant to safely guide them around these northern "Sundown Towns".  His findings were astonishing.  He first traveled from New York City to the state of Indiana.  At the beginning of this journey he had a professor with him who was an authority on these towns and as they reached a certain point on his map, they stopped the car and began examining the countryside. They spread out a map, across which was a long highlighted line indicating they were about to cross into "Sundown Town" territory. 

As they traveled deeper into this territory, they began to see subtle signs that indeed these towns did at one time exist.  In one town they looked for a motel that once housed black people as they traveled, the building itself had been torn down, yet strangely the motel sign, rusted and unpainted still stood in its original spot.  A permanent reminder...there was a time blacks were not really welcomed here.  They traveled further north to a second "Sundown Town".  Here, they could intuitively feel they were not welcome.  Still, one of the producers, hungry, entered a local diner prepared to order himself a meal.  He began to talk to patrons about what he was doing in town, and the atmosphere in the place changed.  People stopped talking to him, apparently some folk actually left the diner.  Eventually, the owner approached him and asked him to leave the building.  He did, but was quite disturbed by the incident.  Later in the show, another member of the team entered the men's room of an establishment, and was shocked to find the walls of the stall had not been painted in eons, for on them had been scratched the 'n' word, swastikas, Jewish stars of David, and other questionable remarks.  It was stunning.

Eventually, they came to a small Indiana town where a young black woman had been murdered, in 1968, I believe.  She had been selling encyclopedias door to door, and for some reason was not able to get out of this particular "Sundown Town" before dark.  She became quite frightened when a car with two white men in it began to follow her.  She knocked on the door of a white couple and they, seeing her fright, invited her in, and called the police.  The police apparently showed no interest in the young girl's plight and did nothing.

This young girl realized she was putting this couple in grave danger, and even though they asked her to stay, she decided she had to try to get out of town.  In the show, the couple walked with the young man doing the show, to the spot a few blocks away from their home, where she had been found murdered, lying on the sidewalk.  She had been stabbed to death.  Today the scene is eerie and quite disturbing.  Her killers were never found, until recently when a young man phoned the police and told them he believed his father had been one of the men who had attacked her.  He was about ready to go to trial when he passed away from a terminal illness.  The other man still believed to be alive and at large.

As the show moved along, the moderator and his crew slowly headed back east.  As they went, using the book of  'Sundown  Towns', they constantly saw evidence of the past, old, old dilapidated signs with the only visible word "Sundown" on them.  While in one spot a black donkey is painted on a hillside, shorthand for "get your black ass out of town, before dark". 

Eventually they made a stop in Ohio, where long ago a young black doctor opened up a clinic. They interviewed a couple who were patients at the clinic who reported the town's folk made the doctor's life so miserable, even slandering him on trumped up charges, that he lost his license to practice medicine in Ohio.  For safety sake, he closed his clinic and left town and apparently the State.  When asked what the black population of the city is today, the couple said (guessing) 95% white, 5% other races.  Are blacks welcome?  "Yes", was their reply, "if they keep their place".

I tell you this show was shocking to me.  I wonder how many towns there are across our country today that still tolerate the "Sundown Town" mentality?  Oh, they no longer tar and feather folks, or hang them from trees, or burn their homes.  They, by law, cannot refuse them service in public places, and they don't have to ride at the back of buses.  Yet, these towns have apparently found ways to skirt the law, to me it is very clear blacks, and I'm supposing other minorities, are made to feel quite uncomfortable, out of place, and unwanted in these towns; the minorities have got to be living in turbulence and constant fear, yet by being law abiding citizens, they are also showing amazing bravery as well, as they are free to live where ever they choose. 

Supposedly we've come so far...yet, apparently we haven't.  I grew up in the north and east and now I wonder...I don't think my hometown was a "Sundown Town".  Or, was it and I just didn't know.