Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism

Professor emeritus at the University of Vermont, James W. Loewen has taught race relations for over 20 years. He won the National Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship for his New York Times bestseller, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. Sundown Towns is a thought-provoking survey of American towns with histories of racial exclusion.

From 1999 to 2004, Professor Loewen investigated the records of thousands of towns to identify those that were all white on purpose—some of which remain so to this day. Loewen reveals that, though normally regarded as a Southern phenomenon, these so-called sundown towns were in fact abundant in the North.

In unflinching detail, Loewen traces the rise of these towns across America, chronicling their violent histories.

“James Loewen’s new book will bring shock, then indignation, then wonderment as to what we can do to justify calling ourselves a decent society.”—Howard Zinn, author