I'm researching segregation for a school paper and I remember that one of my past teachers (many years ago) told me that there were cities that would only allow for African Americans to enter a city when it was daytime. I know that during this time period, Jim Crow laws allowed for public facilities to be racially segregated, but surely they couldn't just block off a whole city at a certain time of the day.
Is this true? Or was my teacher lying to me about this?
Thanks!
"Sundown towns" had a well-known policy that blacks should not be in town except to transact business, so should not remain after sundown. The policies were generally extralegal, but that didn't mean they were imaginary. They survived in remote regions of the Midwest, mid-South, and Southwest in an era before civil rights statutes were interpreted to allow citizens to sue police and officials.
This Washington Post story gives the basics and suggests some qualms about the James Loewen book this website promotes.