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A sundown town is a town, city, or neighborhood in the United States that is purposely all-white, excluding people of other races. The term came from signs that were posted stating that people of color had to leave the town by sundown. They are also sometimes known as sunset towns or gray towns. ==History== In some communities, signs were placed at the town's borders with statements similar to the one posted in Hawthorne, California, which read "Nigger, Don't Let The Sun Set On YOU In Hawthorne" in the 1930s. James W. Loewen, the Washington, D.C.-based author, told ''The Washington Post'' in 2006 he found reports of thousands of such places, and sometimes, the sign makers tried to get clever. Some came in a series, like the old Burma Shave signs, saying, " . . . If You Can Read . . . You'd Better Run . . . If You Can't Read . . . You'd Better Run Anyway." In some cases, the exclusion was official town policy or was promulgated by the community's real estate agents via exclusionary covenants governing who could buy or rent property. In others, the policy was enforced through intimidation. This intimidation could occur in a number of ways, including harassment by law enforcement officers. Since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and especially since the Civil Rights Act of 1968 prohibited racial discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing, the number of sundown towns has decreased. However, as sociologist James W. Loewen writes in his book on the subject, ''Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism'' (2005), it is impossible to precisely count the number of sundown towns at any given time, because most towns have not kept records of the ordinances or signs that marked the town's sundown status. He further notes that hundreds of cities across America have been sundown towns at some point in their history. Additionally, Loewen notes that sundown status meant more than just that African-Americans were unable to live in these towns. Essentially any African-Americans (or sometimes other ethnic groups) who entered or were found in sundown towns after sunset were subject to harassment, threats, and violent acts—up to and including lynching.〔 The city of Goshen, Indiana was a sundown town for much of its history, forbidding African Americans from living in, or entering, the town, often under threat of violence. In March 2015, the city acknowledged this part of its past, apologizing and saying that it no longer condones such behavior.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=A RESOLUTION ACKNOWLEDGING THE RACIALLY EXCLUSIONARY PAST OF GOSHEN, INDIANA, AS A 'SUNDOWN TOWN' )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sundown town」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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