Sundown towns.

[Stinky The Clown]

Just some historical perspective on the mind set of some of those involved in the whole Ferguson flavor of "justice"

Sundown towns were common in this area of Missouri. Not just Missouri, mind you, but the history is helpful.

Listen to this clip of of Melissa Harris-Perry. (sorry about the commercials)

http://www.msnbc.com/melissa-harris-perry/watch/the-history-of-sundown-towns-318926915949

Also, some textual background, from Wiki.

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

History[edit]
In some communities, signs were placed at the town's borders with statements similar to the one posted in Hawthorne, California, which read "Nigger, Don't Let The Sun Set On YOU In Hawthorne" in the 1930s.[2] James W. Loewen, the Washington, D.C.-based author, told The Washington Post in 2006 he found reports of thousands of such places, and sometimes, the sign makers tried to get clever. "Some came in a series, like the old Burma Shave signs, saying, " . . . If You Can Read . . . You'd Better Run . . . If You Can't Read . . . You'd Better Run Anyway."[3]

In some cases, the exclusion was official town policy or was promulgated by the community's real estate agents via restrictive covenants governing who could buy or rent property. In others, the policy was enforced through intimidation. This intimidation could occur in a number of ways, including harassment by law enforcement officers

[MineralMan]

1. I'm old enough to remember that my old home town was

one of those "Sundown Towns." I didn't see a black person except on television until I was in my teens, and that wasn't in my home town. I moved away from there as soon as I was 18.

[Gothmog]

2. There are still sundown towns in Texas

Keep away from Vidor Texas if you not lily white

[gollygee]

3. More info on sundown towns

http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/sundowntowns.php

[flyingfysh]

4. read the book by James Lowen

"Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism". You can start reading it in a few minutes if you have a Kindle.

[kentuck]

5. Corbin, Kentucky was a "sundown" town until...

... the late 20th century. It's surprising that they were all over the country. Racism has not disappeared from America.

[JEB]

6. Medford, Oregon was a sundown town as well.

After the policy supposedly ended there still were no Black people to be seen for a generation.

[kentuck]

7. As a young man..

...I worked in Corbin and I never knew it was a "sundown" town and no one ever mentioned it??

[Warpy]

8. I vaguely remember seeing those signs

hand painted on planks outside towns I wouldn't want to stay in more than a few hours dotted here and there in the south. I don't recall seeing them in Indiana, surprisingly enough, even in the area where my grandparents lived and had a cross burned on their front lawn.

The funny part was that these little holes of towns were twinned by other towns across some sort of barrier--railroad tracks, creek, paved roadway--where the residents were black and worked for the white folks in the sundown town a ten minute walk away or had small businesses that catered solely to black folks. In NC, I remember things like gas station twins across a 2 lane state highway, the same franchise (Esso) but one for black folks and one for white folks.

Most of the sundown signs had fallen into disrepair when I was a little kid, paint peeling and riddled with buckshot. The fact that their heyday was in the 1930s is not surprising. With jobs so scarce, white men were willing to pick cotton and work as janitors, leaving their black neighbors in the twin town with nothing.

The vestiges of this system can be found in DWB harassment, "Watchoo doin in this part of town, boy?" often being the opening statement from a cop in any traffic stop.