Alabama
I’m sure this will spark an interesting discussion: you don’t have to go to South Africa to find White homelands.
He was typically frank about the Cullman sundown issue.
“Yes,” he told me, “there used to be signs on the railroad track, at the county line and all that. ‘Nigger, don’t let the sun set on your head in Cullman County.’ ”
He said the exclusion was rooted in the county’s ethic of self-sufficiency that its German settlers brought with them to Alabama.
“They believed in doing their own work,” he said. “They didn’t own slaves.”
That fact made Cullman and other places in north Alabama vastly different from the areas where big plantations flourished.
Was this one of those counties in AL that supported the Union?
This is not a strictly southern phenomenon. There is at least one county (won’t mention it here) in this state that excluded blacks and other minorities (only exceptions being Portuguese and Italians who formed their own communities near the factories where they worked) successfully for many years — up to the mid-sixties– because the local government, Klan, Masons, real estate dealers, landlords and employers were all tight-knit and determined, and the local population was small,
fairly ethnically homogeneous (interspersed mostly German and Welsh, and mostly Irish, Scots-Irish and Slavic patches), rural and stable. There was a considerable George Wallace vote in 1968. Across the county line, minorities existed for many years before any crossed the line, preceded by a white exodus from New York, New Jersey and Philadephia. It was still 98% white in the 2010 census, but is beginning to plunge now.
The massive entrance of white city people broke the back of the local resistance. The city people were disliked (“Those people ALL have problems!”) as they bought their way into the area. The green valleys are filling with “mcmansions,” BIG stores and every brand of franchise restaurant, and road traffic, and not very green anymore, thanks to taking the city peoples’ greenbacks.
“(T)he exclusion was rooted in the county’s ethic of self-sufficiency that its German settlers brought with them to Alabama. ‘They believed in doing their own work,’ he said. ‘They didn’t own slaves.’ ”
Naturally, I like this post, Hunter. I’ve seen that principle operate here. Work is very important. We are born to work. It is a shame to have others do it for us, or make money from the labour of others, especially the labour of a different people. True settler-Germans, whether of the pacifist sects or the “fighting,” political kind, won’t employ ANY minorities or other “outsiders,” including white “Englanders”! They will SELL their products and services to “outsiders” but won’t hire or live with them, and they buy as little as possible from them. Also: “The land is the heritage of the Lord, it shall not be sold forever.”
@Mosin Nagant: Very interesting; what state are you speaking of, if I may ask?
Correction on the Wallace vote: That was only in some townships, not county-wide. The Wallace vote increased across Pennsylvania from north to south, highest in Fulton County, still the most rural county, on the Mason Dixon Line, at 15%.
I think that was Winston County.
It’s an interesting find.
If Linder is browsing the site, I am sure he saved it. That’s why I posted it here.
As I explained on Facebook, if “the collapse” really were to happen, the state would rapidly break down on ethnic, cultural, racial and religious lines, and internet pen pals who share a common abstract ideology would be useless in such a situation.
In the Jim Crow era, there were sundown towns like Cullman in the South, Midwest, and the West which drove blacks out of town altogether. The only reason this was tolerated is because the central state was much weaker than it is today and state governments weren’t forced to police “civil rights.”
There were more sundown towns in the southern Midwest than anywhere.
The precedent of sundown towns show how an “ethnostate” might evolve.
It was less common in the Deep South than the Midwest. I had planned to explore this issue in depth in a series of posts about the demise of the North’s racial customs.
From your linked article: “Although the existence of such communities is common knowledge (…) almost no literature exists on the topic. Even book-length histories of the sundown towns omit their exclusionary policies (…) Among his findings is that most sundown towns existed outside of the Deep South. In Mississippi, for instance, there were no more than six such communities, while in Illinois, he found no fewer than 456.”
That is congruent with what I remember, and stories I still hear from older folks, about local exclusion.
“Sometimes entire counties went sundown, particularly when their county seats adopted the exclusionary policy (…) By its nature, much of Loewen’s evidence is anecdotal, though census records frequently support it. There are virtually no photographs of the notorious sundown signs; even racist lynchings seem to have been better documented by the camera. But the tales endure.”
Most of these exclusionary areas seem to have been OUTSIDE the South, in adjacent areas like southern Illinois and Indiana, Appalachian Pennsylvania, etc., and logically so, since much of the Deep South is majority black.
An interesting post, Hunter, much more agreeable than the “Southern Judaism” posts. Yes, there were “Southern” Jews like that in the NORTHERN county I referred to above who reportedly supported and helped manage local exclusion.
After the sea change in the late sixties, the northern “southern” Jews either switched sides or went neutral, Klan went underground, liberal city whites began to invade.
I wonder if there were ever any exclusion zones in any of the New England states?
Exclusion zones may no longer exist anywhere, but Amerika is still not BLACK run. Nor should nearly genetically identical whites north of the Line (the “damnyankees”) be identified as the tyrants — because the real problem is moral and religious!
Their was a sundowner town near me, I think the sign was stil lup until the 70s, actually. In fact, as I understand it, it is STILL a sundowner town. As late as the late nineties, the taverns in that town would not serve a nigger, on the very few occasions one happened to enter. In fact, one particularly wily and tough bar owner actually had a sign on the door circa 1995. In his other establishment in the neighboring town, a more classier place, he told the servers and bartenders to use the dress code whenever a nigger would happen to come in, including a few wearing business suits. I was present on the occasion a nigger salesman came in selling one of those vibrator massagers. LOL, this particular owner was there and setting at the bar. The nigger, one of those smiling and smooth talking ones, took the device out and started running it over the owner’s shoulders. The bar went silent as we watched the red come up the neck and into the face, the slow-burn fuse working to ignite. This man hated niggers. He was well dressed, but big and tough. Looked like and reminded you of those wealthy, fifty-some year old’s with the snow white hair like you see on tv playing crime bosses and such. Kinda like, whats his name, Dennise Farinza or whatever, played on Law and Order for awhile. This man had the very same disposition and temper as he always portrays.
Anyway, the nigger soon figured out he had really screwed up and had best leave in a hurry.
Most of the other towns here are not much different. Blacks are not welcome in many business establishments.
I believe it was a third of all towns in Indiana and Illinois.
My grand plan heading into this year was to do a comprehensive series on articles on the Upper South and the North’s racial customs.
Around the beginning of February, I jacked up the tempo in the gym, and by the time I got home at night I was too exhausted to write about much of anything. Maybe we can get back on track in the second half of 2013.
“My grand plan heading into this year was to do a comprehensive series on articles on the Upper South and the North’s racial customs.”
It should be very interesting. A more complex subject than the southern series, probably more difficult to research and explain.
“He said the exclusion was rooted in the county’s ethic of self-sufficiency that its German settlers brought with them to Alabama.”
Well, there goes the theory that German immigrants were spoiled by Bismarck’s 1871 reforms and brought communism with them to America. It’s definitely true that German immigrants in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan were hugely influential in the rise of unions in the 1880s, 90s, etc., but there’s a theory going around in various pro-white circles that certain white ethnic groups, like the Germans, are more prone to liberalism than, say, the British. While its no doubt true that the massive flood of European immigrants changed America’s Anglo-Protestant culture in a more liberal direction, that’s in no small part because most of those immigrants lived in the North. This offers more evidence for Hunter’s thesis about Yankee culture vs. Southern culture. In the South, German immigrants were self-sufficient conservatives who knew the score on race. In the North, those same immigrants became union agitators and liberal reformists.
I hope Melinda Jelliby is right that liberal policies on welfare and unions can be divorced from “anti-racism,” because to be perfectly the honest, the progressive era of 1896-1929 did a lot of good for white Americans. Most of you would probably disagree with that statement, but I’ve got no problem with any policy that objectively works for white people, and I’d say reforms like the 40 hour work week and a living wage worked for white people.
Anyway, I just think its remarkable how different Germans were in Alabama compared to the North. It seems like every other white ethnic group is the same way. Case in point: The Irish in Massachusetts are mostly ethnomasochist white trash, whereas the Irish in the South, particularly Appalachia, are as traditional as they come.