Hidden History with Clio

[Clio]

Hi!

Some of you may know me as Clio, some may know me as my old names Christa or Christa McGinn. I have been on E for almost 14 years, and although there have been breaks due to health and other personal things, I have met some of the most important people in my life here and consider E a vital part of my life and history.

That's not what this blog will be about, though. I actually joined E when I was working on my history degree, and celebrated as I graduated all those years ago. I am now in school for my master's degree in archaeology and anthropology, with a certificate in social justice. The only thing I have left now is my thesis.

All that was just to give a bit of background and to reassure you that I know at least a bit about what I'll write on. However, I will never claim to be an expert on all areas of history, as that wouldn't be possible. I have certain areas I'm interested in, but some require more research on my part than others. One area that interests me greatly is the history that is often overlooked or hidden from your history books. The history of indigenous peoples, LGBTQ+, women, people of color, disabled, mentally ill, etc. They are often little more than foot notes or only thought of as the "sad victims." This is not to say that many of their stories aren't sad, but they are so much more than that. They were leaders, inventors, builders, writers, artists, etc.

I also tend to prefer diving straight into the ugliness of history instead of looking at it with rosy glasses. I'm obviously super fun at parties. XD I think looking at the bad parts is necessary if we hope to make a better world for us and those after us.

This blog is primarily to tell the stories that aren't told in history textbooks and even correct some commonly held misconceptions. That isn't to say it will all be depressing, but there may be some uncomfortable things pointed out. I may also talk about current issues, but I will try to not step into the PROC type of conversations.

If you have ideas for what I should write about, you are more than welcome to PM me or reply here. I can't promise that I'll cover it, but I am open to ideas. I have some already planned, and I hope to get a first post out tonight or tomorrow. I also invite anyone to let me know if I've made a mistake. I will investigate all claims to see if I need to change my post or I will clarify. I will also add sources to all my posts, so you know I'm not just yapping.

I hope that this blog will interest anyone interested in history or just anyone who wants to check it out.

Thanks!

Love and History,

Clio

[Clio]

Sundown Towns: The Ugly Underbelly of Small-Town America

Some of you may already know what sundown towns are, or if you don't know the specifics, you know the general idea. They were brought to much of the public's attention with the movie Green Book and the TV show Lovecraft Country. That is to say, they were brought to the attention of many white Americans, as people of color have known about them from the beginning. As a very basic definition, there were towns and sometimes entire counties that essentially banned anyone who was not white from being in their town after the sun set. Sometimes even signs were put up on the edge of town to "warn" prospective visitors away.

Banning people of color from specific places is obviously not new, nor unheard of. However, the true extent of not only discriminatory legal practices before the civil rights era and unofficial ones after are little more than a footnote. I am going to give some very unpleasant examples, and if you are an American, your state may be mentioned. This is not to say any one state is worse or better than others, but to show the pattern of racism that has existed since before the United States was even officially a country. Personally, I am from Indiana, and it is one of the worst offenders. I do not take this as a personal attack, but rather something we can all learn from and hopefully do better in the future.

TW: In quoting some of the laws, there will be words shown that are now correctly known as slurs. It is important to show the actual vocabulary at the time.

In 1714, the general assembly of New Hampshire passed “An Act to Prevent Disorders in the Night.” This read: “Whereas great disorders, insolencies and burglaries are oft times raised and committed in the night time by Indian, Negro, and Molatto Servants and Slaves to the Disquiet and hurt of her Majesty's subjects, No Indian, Negro, or Molatto is to be from Home after 9 o'clock.”

This is the first official version of a ‘curfew’ for people of color, but it would not be the last. Laws preventing people of color, especially black people, from buying or renting property were prevalent during the Jim Crow era and before. In 1844, Oregon banned black people completely. Ironically, they had also banned slavery. So they didn’t want slavery…but they also didn’t want freed slaves in their territory. In 1853, all black people were banned from entering Indiana. If they were caught, they were fined. If unable to pay the fine, they could be re-enslaved and sold. They were far from the only states to institute laws like this, and contrary to what many people might believe, sundown towns were often in the north or west. The south had a large black population, and it would have been almost impossible to implement there. This didn’t mean that the south was any less racist, of course, as lynchings and severe discrimination were obviously very common there. This is just to say that the north was not any better in many ways.

Many areas will not claim a history of being a sundown town, but a look at population patterns can show a very different story. Ferguson, Missouri had 22,000 people within its limits in 1960, and only 15 of those were black. Curfews and regulations aimed at “decreasing violence” are often only aimed at predominantly black areas.

When not strictly prohibited from even being in the town, county, or state, there were strict regulations on where black people could live and work. One of the most egregious examples of a sundown town and its consequences was the story of Carol Jenkins. I will not get too explicit, but even so, if violence and specifically racial violence can be a trigger, please proceed with caution.

In 1968, Carol Jenkins was a 20-year-old black woman from Rushville, Indiana, who had just started a new job as a door-to-door encyclopedia salesperson. Her very first day on the job, she and three other co-workers (one black woman and two white men) went to Martinsville, Indiana. Although it was relatively late in the day, it was thought that evening was the best time to catch people at home. Unfortunately, Martinsville was a sundown town with many residents either members of or connected to the Ku Klux Klan.

As she made her way through the houses, a car began to follow her, and at one point shouted racial slurs. She tried to tell a police officer this, but technically no laws had been broken. Frightened, she made her way to a nearby house and asked if she could stay until the car left. The couple inside, the Neals, agreed and Mr. Neal checked outside finding a car that he could memorize the license plate numbers of. They offered to drive her to the rendezvous point that her coworkers had agreed upon, but she insisted that she didn’t want to be a further burden.

That was the last time anyone saw Carol alive. A few houses reported hearing a woman scream and a struggle, but when police found Carol, she appeared to be dead with no external reason. When they reached the hospital, they took off her coat and found that she had been stabbed in the heart. The Neals initially tried to help the police, but because they had helped Carol, they were harassed and even received death threats until they had to leave Martinsville.

Obviously, her family wanted to find the murderer, but unsurprisingly the Martinsville police were not much help. It took 30 years for them to solve her murder, due to the daughter of the murderer revealing what had actually happened that night. The primary murderer, Kenneth Clay Richmond, was arrested. However, his accomplice was never caught, and Richmond died of cancer before trial.

This is just one example of the sort of violence and harassment that people of color experienced in these areas, and there are many unofficial sundown towns still around today. Even though it is illegal to discriminate based on race, that does not mean it doesn’t still happen. The fact that people of color cannot feel safe even now is unacceptable.

I did not include even a fraction of the information available, but I highly encourage you to look into the subject. It is important to learn about these unpleasant bits of history so that we don’t repeat them. I will also recommend this site as the only researched list of sundown towns in the United States. I will warn you that you may not be happy, especially if you are from the midwest. We can only hope that they are no longer sundown, but it is often hidden from many residents.







Sources:

Brown, DeNeen L. (June 7, 2017). "When Portland banned blacks: Oregon's shameful history as an 'all-white' state". The Washington Post.

Acts and laws of His Majesty's province of New-Hampshire, in New-England: With sundry acts of Parliament. Laws, etc. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Daniel Fowle. 1759.

Loewen, James William (2006). Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. New York City: The New Press.

Loewen, James William (2009). "Sundown Towns and Counties: Racial Exclusion in the South". Southern Cultures.

"Sundown Towns by State". History and Social Justice by Tougaloo College.

Terry, Don. "34 years later, sad secret surfaces". Chicago Tribune.

[Remiel]

I like that you do not attempt to whitewash (pun intended) these stories.  We need to know our history, even the ugly parts.

[Clio]

I like that you do not attempt to whitewash (pun intended) these stories.  We need to know our history, even the ugly parts.

Thank you so much! I promise not all the entries will be depressing, but history isn't often happy. It's still good to know, though. <3

[TheTech]

Thank you so much! I promise not all the entries will be depressing, but history isn't often happy. It's still good to know, though. <3

Most of the time the younger crowd does not even know half the history I was taught in high school. This is the sad state of things so I am glad you are going to hit various things.

[Clio]

Most of the time the younger crowd does not even know half the history I was taught in high school. This is the sad state of things so I am glad you are going to hit various things.

Then you must have had a great school. That's awesome! I've usually found very much the opposite, as history books are gradually becoming more diverse and not just sticking to the whitewashed version many of us were taught. Gen Z and lower often learn about many more people of color, LGBTQ+, and other things...like how Columbus was a POS. I'm glad its changing, but it's hard to convince older Millennials, Gen X, and above that what they learned in school isn't the full story.

[Muse]

  Wow.  While none of this surprises me i didn't know the term or the specific institution either.  Thank you for the history. 

  On the topic of schools becoming more representative, I went to high school before the end of the cold war and my sister, after.  It's always a splash of cold water when she learned something in high school that I didn't know, or--more often--didn't learn 'til college. 

[RedRose]

The French, afaik, still don't discuss what really happened at Alesia. I was left thinking the Romans killed the civilians. It's so much worse than that, because the men actually kicked the women and children out and refused to let them back in.

[Clio]

I'm sorry that I have not been active on here. I'm currently working on my thesis proposal, which is in a way doing what this blog was created for...lol. Much of my time is spent researching for my proposal. However, I thought it might be interesting to cover a bit of the history of race in the European Middle Ages. This is actually part of my thesis, and although this blog may be a bit "stream of consciousness," I will always provide sources of course.

DISCLAIMER: I am white. I recognize that my research and approach to life come from an area of privilege, and I do not ever want to speak over or for people of color. The things I present here are the results of years of research into the history of race, racism, and systems of oppression. However, I am not perfect and if you notice a mistake or if I've said something insensitive, please let me know. I will do my best to make sure everything is accurate. Thank you. <3

Why People of Color Belong in Historical Media

For a long time, many medieval fantasy books/movies and historical media has been almost completely cast using white actors and/or descriptions. Although laden with historical inaccuracies otherwise, the "accuracy" of an all-white cast has been either tacitly or directly sold as truth. Unless there was need for someone enslaved or a "foreigner," it was assumed that all “true” Europeans in the middle ages were white. In newer remakes or shows that cast people of color in both important and noticeable roles, it is thought that this is forced diversity. "Wokeness." This is not the truth, though. For the vast majority of human existence, race as a genetic concept was not a commonly held opinion. It could be argued, of course, that this was because travel and transportation were not as common in those times, and therefore they didn't see others who were different from them. This is also not entirely true. Polynesians, the Norse, and the Chinese are just a few cultures that were excellent seafarers and are now known to have explored much more widely than previously believed. In fact, there is new evidence in the Pacific Northwest of the United States that shows Polynesians and other Pacific Islanders likely came to the Americans through a sea route much earlier than anyone knew. Pre-Clovis points found in Idaho show that the Ice Corridor theory is not the only way people migrated to the Americas.

All that is to say that the world has never been as small as we imagined it. Peoples interacted. They traded. They spread and assimilated. The concept of race as we know it today is a fairly modern one. For thousands of years, it was primarily a physical characteristic. No different than hair color or stature. Was there racial prejudice? Of course, but not the systemic oppression that began primarily during colonization. Before colonization, most differences were based on location and culture.

This, of course, does not mean that race is not real. It is very real, primarily BECAUSE of racism. Ancestry and culture are real. What has been previously assumed, that different races have different innate traits and skeletal builds has been debunked. There are many people who still believe that these outdated ideas are true, though, and they are generally the ones pointing to a homogenous white Europe that was never really the truth. Europe has always been a mixture of languages, peoples, cultures, and ancestries.

The presence of African Muslims in the Iberian peninsula during the 8th century CE is a fairly well-known history. There have been dark-skinned subjects in medieval art for a long time, and many of them even have sub-saharan African physicality. The idea of Europe being all white was created primarily in the 18th and 19th centuries CE. Using the work of scientific racists in anthropology, theories developed around skulls, height, skin color, etc. This is, in fact, where we get the term Caucasian. Caucasian became a "catch-all" term for whiteness that developed out of the idea that people from the Caucasus mountains had the most "beautiful" skull shape. However, most people who are white do not have Caucasian ancestry. And conversely, many people actually from the Caucasus mountains do not look like what is assumed to be "white." Caucasian is an incorrect term that was used to oppress people of color for generations.

When colonization became a widespread phenomenon, the monarchs and military who "discovered" these lands needed a reason for the crimes they inevitably committed. Therefore, using religion and "science," they both viewed and presented the indigenous peoples of the colonies as beneath them. If they could convince their countrymen that they were simply subjugating a sub-human and even "helping bring civilization," then it was not only allowed...it was encouraged. Taking natural resources, enslaving natives, and warring with those already on the land they wanted was now not evil--it was their God-given right in their minds.

Before colonization, slavery was not based on skin color. Slavery as a whole is obviously a very evil practice, but as many know, it has been present in every continent for millennia. However, for the vast majority of humanity, it was war, religion, and tribal conflict that produced enslavement. It only became a systemic racially based system after greed and exploitation demanded subjugation. This is not to excuse any enslavement, but to explain the difference.

I'm not sure this article makes sense, but these are things I think should be common knowledge. For many, it is. However, based on how people react to people of color being cast in medieval shows and movies, perhaps it isn't. People of color have always existed, and they have existed in roles as varied as those who are white. So when you see someone Black or Asian in a medieval show, take a second and realize that it is likely more historically accurate than if they weren't there. Whitewashing cinema is a well-known phenomenon, and "historical accuracy" does not excuse it.

Sources:

Albin, Andrew, Mary Carpenter Erler, Thomas O'Donnell, Nicholas Paul, Nina Rowe, and Project Muse. 2019. Whose Middle Ages? : Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past. New York: Fordham University Press.

Geary, Patrick J. 2002. The Myth of Nations : the Medieval Origins of Europe. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Heng, Geraldine. 2018. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Smedley, Audrey, and Brian D. Smedley. 2005. “Race as Biology Is Fiction, Racism as a Social Problem Is Real: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives on the Social Construction of Race.” The American Psychologist 60 (1): 16–26. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.60.1.16.

Rambachan, Aksharananda. 2018. “Overcoming the Racial Hierarchy.” Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities 5 (5): 907–12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-017-0458-6.

Saito, Natsu Taylor. 2020. Settler Colonialism, Race, and the Law : Why Structural Racism Persists. New York: New York University Press.

Wade, Lizzie. 2019. “First People in the Americas Came by Sea, Ancient Tools Unearthed by Idaho River Suggest.” August 29, 2019. Science Magazine. https://www.science.org/content/article/first-people-americas-came-sea-ancient-tools-unearthed-idaho-river-suggest.

Young, Helen. 2016. Race and Popular Fantasy Literature : Habits of Whiteness. New York: Routledge.