Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism

Bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen, exposes the secret communities and hotbeds of racial injustice that sprung up throughout the twentieth century unnoticed, forcing us to reexamine race relations in the United States.

In this groundbreaking work, bestselling sociologist James W. Loewen, author of the national bestseller Lies My Teacher Told Me, brings to light decades of hidden racial exclusion in America. In a provocative, sweeping analysis of American residential patterns, Loewen uncovers the thousands of “sundown towns”—almost exclusively white towns where it was an unspoken rule that blacks could not live there—that cropped up throughout the twentieth century, most of them located outside of the South. These towns used everything from legal formalities to violence to create homogenous Caucasian communities—and their existence has gone unexamined until now. For the first time, Loewen takes a long, hard look at the history, sociology, and continued existence of these towns, contributing an essential new chapter to the study of American race relations.

Sundown Towns combines personal narrative, history, and analysis to create a readable picture of this previously unknown American institution all written with Loewen’s trademark honesty and thoroughness.

• The Negro Motorist Green-Book: 1940 Facsimile Edition
• The Negro Travelers' Green Book: 1954 Facsimile Edition
• Travelers' Green Book: 1963-1964 International Edition (facsimile)
• Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
• The Negro Motorist Green Book: 1949 facsimile edition
• The Negro Travelers' Green Book: 1959 facsimile edition
• The Post-Racial Negro Green Book
• The Negro Motorist Green Book: 1947 Facsimile edition
• The Green Book: 1962 Facsimile Edition
• The Negro Motorist Green Book Compendium