Sundown Towns Audiobook By James Loewen cover art

Sundown Towns

A Hidden Dimension of American Racism

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Sundown Towns

By: James Loewen
Narrated by: Norman Dietz
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About this listen

Sundown Towns examines thousands of all-white American towns that were - and still are, in some instances - racially exclusive by design.

Professor emeritus at the University of Vermont, James W. Loewen won the National Book Award for his New York Times best seller Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.

©2005 James W. Loewen (P)2008 Recorded Books
African American Studies Black & African American Racism & Discrimination United States Equality Thought-Provoking Inspiring
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Critic reviews

"Deserves to become an instant classic in the fields of American race relations, urban studies and cultural geography." ( Washington Post Book World)
"Sure to become a landmark in several fields and a sure bet among Loewen's many fans." ( Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about Sundown Towns

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An unsettling, heartbeakng, very important work

that ends, thankfully, on hopeful notes with thoughtful ideas for action. I heard things about neighborhoods near my home town that were painful, but I also heard things that help me look at the diversity in my current neighborhood with hope for the future.

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A required audiobook.

This book was a meticulous study into how blacks were treated in the north after about the 1890's when much of the gains made after emancipation began to reverse themselves and blacks, although free, found themselves in encreasinly hostile territory as a result of white backlash. Primary documents along with first hand accounts of whites living during the time solidify the authors claims. It would be better to listen to this along with the actual book inorder that one may refer to the extensive notes that are not in the audio version.

This book is inportant in that it helps us remember exactly how racist we were and may still be. Many people have a cartoonish view of what racism is, that it must be overt and blatant to qualify. However, although racism was quite overt in the period covered in this book, one can see how racism became more covert and subtle in recent times and how it hides in the structural and institutional realities today.

A book not for the faint of heart.

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15 people found this helpful

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If they only knew their own history

… the country would function so much differently! It’s no wonder based on this analysis that Africsn Americans are t far worse off than they are… how do we create some 250+ years of race based policy and then want to say a rising tide…

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Enlightening and Powerful

This book taught me more about growing up in a sundown town than anything else I have read. As children, we had no idea that our town was White by design, except that our fifth grade teacher, a nun, told us that an unwritten law in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, kept Black people from being allowed to stay overnight. She had read that in the New York Times. My mother told me, when I asked, that she remembered a law against Asians, which was on the books into the 1930s, according to Loewen. Everyone in the US needs to learn this history, meticulously documented by Loewen.

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Explains why people sometimes live where they do

What other book might you compare Sundown Towns to and why?

Lies My Teacher told Me

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

This book changed the way I thought about American towns and the geography of race. Loewen's work is phenomenal and a compelling read. Eye-opening and something every American should read.

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A must read for the World. Period!!

A must read for the world. Period!! Do this instead of marching, posting, or looting!!

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  • Overall
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Honest Reportage on American Racial's Shame

This is perhaps the best oral account and history of American racial shame. From former presidents to the American businesses, Loewen exposed the U.S. for atonement. This audiotape will make modern day racists look more like holocaust denials. Throughtout this audiotape, Loewen used facts, not assumption to buttress his objective point of views.

Sundown Towns is a must read for anyone--both Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans who are seeking self-liberation.

This tape will make you cry, and proud at the same time. We (as Americans) have a long way to go.

Loewen, thank you!

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Nothing new under the sun ...

King Leopold's Ghost - Adam Hochschild

Slavery by Another Name - Douglas A Blackmon

News for All the People - Juan Gonzalez & Joseph Torres

They call themselves the KKK - Susan C. Bartoletti

Black Ops Advertising - Mara Einstein

Death of a King - Tavis Smiley & David Ritz

High Price - Dr Carl Hart

Propaganda and the Public Mind - Damian Barsamian & Noam Chomsky

Behold A Pale Horse - Milton William Cooper

Where Do We Go From Here - MLK Jr

White Trash - Nancy Isenberg

The Man-Not - Tommy J. Curry

They Were Her Property - Stephanie Jones-Rogers

White Fragility - Robin DiAngelo

White Rage - Carol Anderson Ph.D

Stamped From The Beginning - Ibram X Kendi

The Half Has Never Been Told - Edward E Baptist

The Great Stain - Noel Rae

The Reckoning - Randall Robinson

The Accident of Color - Daniel Brook

Henry Ford And The Jews - Albert Lee

Beyond These Walls - Anthony M Platt

Sugar - James Walvin

Toussaint L'Ouverture - Phillip Girard

The Destruction of Black Civilization - Chancellor Williams

The Stolen Legacy - George G M James

Media Control - Noam Chomsky

To Be A Slave In Brazil - Katia M de Queiros Mattoso

Superior - Angela Saini

The Color of Law - Richard Rothstein

Red Summer - Cameron McWhirter

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa - Walter Rodney

The Crowd - Gustave Le Bon

The Condemnation of Blackness - Khalil Gibran Muhammad

The Empire of Necessity - Greg Grandin

They Came Before Columbus - Ivan Van Sertima

Germany's Black Holocaust - Firpo W Carr Ph.D

The Isis Papers - Dr Frances Cress Welsing

African Origin of Civilization - Cheikh Anta Diop

The Color of Compromise - Jemar Tisby

Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust - John Henrik Clarke

Christianity Before Christ - John G Jackson

Our African Unconscious - Edward Bruce Bynum

Blacked Out Through Whitewash - Dr Suzar Epps

War Against All Puerto Ricans - Nelson A Denis

War Is A Racket - Gen Smedley D Butler

The Delectable Negro - Vincent Woodard

Inhuman Bondage - David Brion Davis

Why Darkness Matters - Edward Bruce Bynum

The Iceman Inheritance - Michael Bradley

Unsettling Truths - Matt Charles & Soong-Chan Rah

Soul On Ice - Eldridge Cleaver

Black Like Me - John Howard Griffin

The Culture of Terrorism - Noam Chomsky

Silencing The Past - Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Faces At The Bottom Of The Well - Derrick Bell

Polaria - W H Muller

A Narco History - Carmen Boullosa & Mike Wallace

Dumbing Us Down - John Taylor Gatto

Across The Tracks - Alverne Bell & Stacey Robinson

The Burning - Tim Madigan

The Age ot Surveillance Capitalism , Shoshana Zuboff

Dirt - Terence P McLaughlin

Wilmington's Lie - David Zucchino

White Malice - Susan Williams

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Important History You Don't Know

The history of post Restoration racism in North and West as well as South. Ghettos were largely forced on black populations and white only towns persist today!

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A great untold history lesson

I really enjoyed this book. A lot of the information told in this book was brand new to me. It explains in detail why some cities were and still so divided.

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