Should Route 66 towns that were sundown towns apologize?

The above image is a postcard of the long-gone Royce Cafe along Route 66 in Edmond, Okla., from the 1930s or ’40s. Do you see anything different about it?

If you’re not spotting it, here’s a close-up the unusual part:

The “6,000 Live Citizens — No Negroes” part of the postcard was a symptom that Edmond operated as a sundown town for many years. If you’re not familiar with the term, sundown towns were purposely all-white and prohibited black people from being in city limits after sundown. If an African-American ended up being in a sundown town at nightfall, he or she often was expelled by local law enforcement or by vigilantes.

Author Christopher P. Lehman, an African-American and a former Edmond resident, recently wrote about Edmond in an opinion piece in the Oklahoma Gazette: “Should a Former Sundown Town Apologize?” Lehman provided context:

No African-American attended school there until 1974, and no African-American family lived there until 1976.

When I arrived with my family in Edmond in 1976, I was two years old. For a long time, I was the only African-American boy and one of two African-Americans in my grade in elementary school. I grew up thinking that I was a pioneer, one of the first African-American boys to do this in Edmond or that in Edmond.

It never dawned on me that the reason I was often the first was because of all the other African-Americans before me who wanted to live in Edmond but could not.

Lehman said Edmond prohibited African-Americans by ordinance from the city limits for generations. Replying to a follow-up email, Lehman said:

I contacted Edmond’s historical society a few years ago, and its staff mentioned an ordinance. The ordinance may even be in the archive there. The staff claimed that the city revoked the ordinance in 1972, but no realtor would show homes to my parents four years later (at least, not at first).

Deborah Baker, a curator at the Edmond Historical Society & Museum, said she was not aware of a sundown ordinance. “I have seen other references in our files to African Americans being asked to leave at different points in the town history,” she said in an email.

Lehman also referred to these links about Edmond’s sundown past here and here.

Edmond’s discrimination persisted about a decade after the Civil Rights Act became law in 1964. This is not ancient history, but living memory.

Edmond wasn’t the only sundown town on Route 66. According to James Loewen, who wrote a book about the subject, evidence strongly suggests these cities or areas on the Mother Road once were sundown towns:

  • Illinois: Berwyn, Cicero, Carlinville, Dwight, Gillespie, Girard, Granite City, Lexington, Madison, Mount Olive, Plainfield, Romeoville, Sherman, Staunton, Towanda, Virden, Williamsville.
  • Missouri: Carterville, Cuba, Marshfield, Shrewsbury, St. Clair, St. James, Sullivan, Webb City.
  • Oklahoma: Commerce, Edmond, Erick, Sapulpa.
  • Texas: Shamrock, Wheeler County.
  • New Mexico: Bernalillo.
  • Arizona: Kingman.
  • California: Arcadia, Azusa, Burbank, Fontana, Pasadena, South Pasadena.

The list proves historically significant because these were towns where African-Americans traveling Route 66 could not stay for the night. Sundown towns became a primary reason “The Negro Motorist Green Book” was published from the 1930s to the mid-1960s. Such history is why older black people often aren’t nostalgic about Route 66.

Lehman asks that Edmond apologize for its past:

An apology from Edmond’s mayor or its city legislature or both would be a significant, meaningful gesture because cities have long-lasting reputations. […] Edmond’s population has diversified since 1976, but its reputation and its history have yet to be fully addressed by the city government itself, the government that kept out African-Americans.

An apology would be unusual and different but invaluable and healing.

If Edmond were to be the first city or town in Oklahoma to apologize for its “sundown” past, it would set a template for the rest of the state. Sometimes being the first can be a good thing.

One could expand that request for apologies from other former sundown towns on Route 66. Instead of denying the past, acknowledging it could prove valuable for potential Route 66 tourists — especially older black people who felt unwelcome decades ago.

What do you think?

25 thoughts on “Should Route 66 towns that were sundown towns apologize?

  1. Are any of these towns “denying” what happened? And unfortunately, I’m sure it was not just these towns along Route 66…Perhaps these are the towns that had “official” policies…..I bet many others had their own policies. And not just along Route 66, but everywhere. Sad, horrible, but true.

    But asking for public apologies from local officials who had absolutely nothing to do with the past could only open up these communities for potential litigation. I doubt that a few words would spark tourism, yet quite possibly could do more harm than good.

    1. Kingman, AZ was not what you call a sundown town. My family came to this area after the Civil war – to two small mining towns outside and prior to Kingman’s existance. So I have had a large family presence in Kingman since the mid-1800’s. My Dad was one of twelve, Mom one of six. There were many Mexicans, Indians and a few black people but there was no prejudice against anyone. I never HEARD the word prejudice until moving with my husband and kids at age 26 to El Paso, TX. Looking back, at age 75, I now realize there were three white families in the all Mexican, Indian neighborhood I lived in but I never even considered this until my later years because it would have meant nothing since we were all best friends, slept under my Mom’s locust tree on old army cots on hot summer nights and told jokes and laughed our heads off. I am a red-headed Irish/English woman incidentally but mostly, ALL OF US WERE SIMPLY AMERICANS. WE BLED RED, WHITE AND BLUE. The lefties are trying to find racism where it did not exist. There was NO sign I have ever seen saying what you said and I would know. God knows, I had literally hundreds of cousins here. NOT ONCE DID I EVER HAVE ANYONE REMARK ON SUCH A SIGN OR SEE IT MYSELF AND I DROVE EVERYWHERE. This is a nothingburger – just the left, trying to continue to tear our country down and push their fake white supremacy garbage.

      Incidentally, Las Vegas is 100 miles north, we all went there often and Vegas was filled with black people who worked all kinds of jobs all over town so we were very familiar with blacks. And it was just fine. I am sure most blacks passing through would go on to Vegas to find jobs as little Kingman probably had few jobs here for anyone.

  2. The past is past, it’s history, leave it alone, but let it remind us how small minded our other generations were. I was raised in a Sundown town as most small towns in the Texas Panhandle were.

  3. A most interesting and important posting. I just wanted to say that a gallery will be devoted to this subject in the Autry exhibit including an actual “White’s Only” and “sundown town” signs as well as a copy of the “Green Book.” The exhibit will also explore the negative racially motivated impact of the road on Native Americans and Hispanics.

  4. Having lived a short time in both Carterville and Webb City in past years, I cannot remember any blacks living in either. As many may know, the Bradbury Bishop Deli was leased by an African American a year ago and recently closed. The new owner said that the community seemed to shy away from the place once he took over and attributed part of that to his selling barbeque (which was excellent). In retrospect, I see few black-owned businesses along the Route, except in the larger cities. I do not suggest that African-Americans are not welcome on the Mother Road, they certainly are. From a marketing perspective, I wonder if any studies have been made to see why this is, and what can be done to attract them to the Mother Road. The Route enjoys worldwide growing popularity, but we also need to increase “domestic” tourism as well…for ALL Americans, regardless of race.

  5. NO I do not think they should apologize for what happened in the past. But they, and all of us, must make sure it never happens in the present and future.

  6. To even read about things like this—though I know they happened—still never fails to surprise me and leaving me thinking, “How bizarre”—to tell certain people they were not allowed in a town at all or after certain times. It’s very foreign to me, though I’m clearly not of that generation. Even so…It does not seem right to me to ask the towns to apologize for something people who are very likely dead and/or whose families are not even there anymore did. As Gordon said, it can also open the door to litigation and frankly, it might hurt even more feelings to have it brought up again in such a fashion. It seems better to me that former “sundown” towns simply and clearly extend a welcome to everyone, making everyone feel comfortable during a visit or even just planning.

  7. An apology is a small thing, a symbolic act more than anything else, and NO, it would not open the town up to litigation. Any statute of limitations that might apply has long since expired. Symbolically, though, an apology would formally recognize a shameful and often hidden act from the past, and make it clear that Edmond and any other “sundown towns” along Rt. 66 are committed to not repeating their histories’ offenses.

  8. Not apologizing says to any African-American that their experience does not mean anything, invalidating them as humans. An apology says that what happened was real, and it was wrong, and that they did not deserve that treatment, as well as serving as a healing, welcoming statement for the future.

  9. I am an alderman in Girard Illinois
    I actually found this ridiculous law on a high school research paper in 1976. It was about old laws still in the books back then. I think it was rescinded since then. I have read in the old newspaper article’s about KKK gatherings in the 1920s. All I can say is that the city has came along way since then. I have some very good African American friends from this town and we have discussed this several times. In a sense it is embarrassing that some of my ancestors participated in this. It’s the past and nothing can change it but I am sorry this happened to many good people in our community. Education is the best answer to prejudice.

  10. I think something along the lines of “We are sorry this happened to you/your ancestors. You are most certainly welcome now” would be appropriate. It doesn’t take personal responsibility, but does acknowledge that it happened.
    I am 46 years old and am just now finding out about it. I lived in Edmond for 12 years (1989-2001) and had no idea. The past has been buried by those who are ashamed of it. There are still people living who were directly affected by this, and I do think they deserve an apology.

  11. APOLOGIZE!! For what letting Ni**ers turn everything they touch into a sht hole.. And affirmative action no wonder manufacturing went to sht!

    1. Point No. 1: I censored your comment, James. People who comment here are subjected to my rules.

      Point No. 2: James Caldwell and Jack Hollywood posted from the same IP address. Therefore, it’s strong evidence they are one and the same person.

  12. You are what is wrong with America. When you die the world will be a better place. Every single black person in America and I will come together and piss on your grave.

  13. I am glad to hear that as a White woman you were spared most of the ugliness that was happening elsewhere. As for Las Vegas, no Blacks – not even Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jr or the famous dance team The Nicholas Brothers – could enter a casino gaming area before 1971. They, of course, could be on stage entertaining but they also could not stay at the same hotel where they worked. It was a toxic mix of personal prejudice, monopoly-like private business privilege and moral cowardice. I assume that the vast majority of White patrons didn’t even notice or perhaps care about how odd or unfair this was.

  14. You may want to look up a recent theory by Dr. Joy DeGruy called “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome”. It proposes – based on actual field researcher – versus some uninformed pundit spouting theories from his basement – that the so-called “African American culture” on display in public (versus in private which White people almost never witness) is the result of 400 years of brutal persecution and slavery that warps a person’s interaction with world. For example, just like with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome affecting a homeless Vietnam War veteran, seeing him talk to himself, having hallucinations and taking drugs and unable to get out of a rut – you would not say that he is a “typical White person”. You would appreciate that he probably started out normal but now needs lots of help, and it really is not something than be solved by simply writing a check. You would recognize that the war, and society perhaps in general, is part of the problem. You would not just tell him – “Hey, it’s in the past – get over it and pick yourself up by your own bootstraps”, would you?

  15. The effects of systematic racism are so very much alive and relevant today. The essence of White privilege is to simply declare that the problem is in the past and is best left buried, even if the consequences remain. If it were that easy, the Jewish and Romani (gypsy) population of Germany would surely have recovered to its pre-WWII levels. You know that is not the case and the German people have actually tried to make amends for their past. It is almost like the Western Powers created the modern state of Israel as a way of putting out the “unwelcome mat” to Jews in Europe after the War.

  16. Rather than making generalizations about certain groups being “problem minorities” or “model minorities”, look into the history of the infamous Tulsa, Oklahoma Race Riots of 1921. Despite very strong Jim Crow segregation laws, the Black community of Tulsa was flourishing, both culturally and especially economically. This is because every dollar spent by a person circulated 7 or 8 times in the local economy – from grocery stores, to shoe repair, beauty salon, car dealership – to the point where many Blacks were quite prosperous and even had grand pianos in their living rooms, while the average White person was far worse off. This created a great deal of jealousy and resentment in the White population, which fueled a wholesale attack on the Black part of the city after a rumored “racial incident with a White woman” that never actually occurred. Law enforcement stood by (or even participated) as just the Black neighborhoods were burned to the ground. This was also the first and only time in history that an American city was firebombed from the air, as local White pilots and their friends literally dropped bombs on Black homes and businesses. Countless hundreds died and there was in the end no accountability.

    This is one of those stories that every Black person knows, but very few Whites have heard. Nonetheless, it is rather shocking that President Trump chose Tulsa for his first political rally to be on Juneteenth, which Blacks celebrate as the date when news of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 finally reached the deepest part of The South (Galveston, TX) in June of 1865. I am not a fan of conspiracy theories, but that sounds like just too much of a coincidence, and they only moved it one day later when it was brought to everyone’s attention. Yup, this sense of denial is life still on (or near) Route 66.

  17. Rather than European-Americans being jealous of successful African-Americans, Ugandan leader in the 1970s Idi Amin expelled some 60,000 Asians (mostly with Indian Subcontinent ancestry). Again on the grounds of jealousy; the simple fact was that the Asians (along with the Europeans in Uganda) were mostly better in business than the local Africans. Perhaps the Oklahoma Race Riots had part of their origin in the failure of some local European-Americans to succeed in business, and that fuelled jealousy. Even in the days of apartheid in South Africa there were many so-called ‘poor whites’ who, simply, did not have the intelligence to advance themselves. To ensure they had work, the government gave them jobs, usually quite menial ones. In any society there will be variations of intelligence and thus success. Occasionally those variations show themselves by ethnic differences.

  18. I began to look at the Route 66 News web forum several years ago because of my lifelong interest in transport of any type, whether on land, or by sea, or by air. And I continue to do so for the same reason; not for political purposes. However, since the ‘sundown towns’ matter is again under discussion on the forum, here are a few thoughts. It is worth pointing out that, because of the nature of the internet, views from people living around the world will often be different from those held and expressed by the residents of any given country. That is whether the views of those ‘foreigners’ are about a given country’s history or its present day matters.

    What are known as the United States of America were founded by Europeans who first ‘discovered’ the Americas, then supposedly did deals with some of the original owners of the land – to occupy areas they wanted for themselves.

    From the above came what was seen – and still is seen – by many as the treachery of setting up a rogue state on this occupied land, and having the temerity to call it The United States of America. Even worse, for this occupying minority to cobble together a ‘constitution’ that begins with the words, “We the People” – and the “all men are created equal” part of the illegal U.S. unilateral declaration of independence from Great Britain.

    The occupiers then took over further vast tracts also not theirs, fighting for the next hundred or more years countless skirmishes, battles and wars with those dispossessed original and rightful owners, labelling them as the wrong doers. All the while using overwhelming methods of warfare. They put those original owners into what were effectively concentration camps, naming them ‘reservations’, and the people ‘Red Indians’.

    If anyone wants to discuss the ‘sundown towns’, and to ‘apologise’ for them, they need to go back to the very origins of ‘America’, and how it was established. It is no wonder that, given how the USA came about, from the very start there was mistreatment of anyone not strong enough to retaliate.

    One can bring up the fact that any slaves have to be sold to be bought, and that, had fellow Africans not sold their kin – either to the Arab or the European slavers – there would have been no slave trade from Africa. And no African-Americans or whatever words one wants to use to describe such people.

    As for politicians of any stripe ‘apologising’ for what their predecessors may have done to others long ago, how does that help those long dead people? A person can only effectively apologise for something he or she has done, not for others’ actions.

    The most recently dreamed up ‘sin’ or ‘crime’ attached to Europeans/Caucasians is ‘White privilege’. Since all humans apparently originated in east Africa, and then spread throughout the world, there were then no ‘races’. Not until evolutionary differentiation began. Part of that differentiation resulted from people living in cooler parts of the world where the skin did not need large amounts of melanin to protect it from the sun. Along with the move away from near the Equator came the need to survive in wintry conditions. Ingenuity in constructing houses for survival during months of cold weather, along with growing and conserving food to be eaten in those non-productive periods, led to having to plan for at least half a year ahead. This changed – over tens of millennia – the way people’s brains developed; one result being that most inventions and improvements have come from peoples living in parts of the world with very variable seasons. As the saying goes: necessity is the mother of invention.

    This evolutionary creation of what are called different ‘races’ also led to an increase in what is natural throughout the animal world (humans are animals); what may be called ‘tribalism’ – favouring one’s own family, village, tribe, country over others. To the point of favouring the normal, the usual, the typical over what is abnormal, unusual, atypical. Thus an albino bird is said to be shunned by others in a dark feathered flock; and thus those of a minority race, religion, culture, etc will be differentiated against by the majority. It is part of animal and human nature. There can be no better current example of ‘tribalism’ in action in America than the 2020 US presidential election campaign; the Republican ‘tribe’ versus the Democrat ‘tribe’.

    The only “White privilege’ is that of improving the lot of people anywhere; what was once called ‘the White man’s burden’ – his duty. It is visible today in how the ways of Europeans have taken over from the ways of all other races – or been ‘appropriated’ by those other races. Whether in (with few exceptions) politics, dress, building construction, farming, medicine, communication, transport and (regrettably) warfare, these being the main fields of continual development and improvement over centuries if not millennia. Only in diet has it partly gone the other way. The popularity of Asian food with Caucasians mirrors how Asians have adopted many typically Caucasian dishes.

    While most of the above had no direct bearing on the ‘sundown towns’, it provides a background to their existence. That the original – and legitimate – North Americans were treated so badly by the invading/occupying Europeans, it never gave much hope for the descendants of the out-of-Africa slaves who were handled just about as harshly. At the same time, the annihilation of most of the last remnants of pre-European North American culture was being dictated by those same Europeans who had put themselves in control of much of the continent. Witness how the bison/buffalo herds numbering some 60 million animals in the late 18th century had been almost wiped out by 1889, with just 541 beasts remaining (Wikipedia).

    Just as with almost all animals, sight is the primary sense. And that dictates how both non-human animals and humans initially interact. The other main dictator as to how humans treat one another is culture; culture being one aspect of ‘tribalism’. Defence of one’s own culture is innate. That does not make it right and another culture wrong, but that trait is there and hard to ignore. Two World Wars were the result of differences in cultures; as are the outcomes of elections. The biggest cry today is for ‘diversity’, often in diversity of cultures. This emphasis on differences does not help race relations, nor how the past is seen and treated. The USA has still to live up to its motto, “E Pluribus Unum”. Once calling ‘a melting pot’, it now looks more like separate ingredients in a recipe not wishing to be mixed. Perhaps it was always so.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.