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"This is Klan Country. Love It or Leave It."
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article232986152.htmlWhat’s the history of Ku Klux Klan billboards near Smithfield? CuriousNC finds out
President Donald Trump’s now-infamous “go back” tweets directed at four U.S. congresswomen of color, followed by his “leave it” speech in Greenville last Wednesday (combined with the crowd’s “send her back!” chant) recalled racist language used against African Americans and other immigrants for decades.
It evoked a very specific memory for the Rev. William J. Barber II, the former president of the N.C. NAACP, a 2018 MacArthur Fellow, and co-founder of the Poor People’s Campaign.
On Wednesday evening, just minutes after the crowd’s “send her back!” chant at the Trump rally in Eastern North Carolina, Barber, who grew up in Goldsboro, tweeted a photograph of a billboard displaying an image of a hooded figure carrying a burning cross while riding a hooded horse, with giant words that say, “This is Klan Country. Love It or Leave It.” Below that, “Help Fight Communism & Integration” and below that, “KKKK” and “Welcome to Smithfield.” (The fourth “K” stands for Knights.)
Barber’s tweet read: “When Trump says, “If you don’t like it, leave it,” people I know say it reminds them of a sign like this from 1971 in a NC county near where I live.”
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D_tu9E0WkAMo7yd?format=jpg&name=small
For many North Carolina residents, it was the first they’d seen of this billboard. Others who grew up in the area remember it — and others like it — very well.
Read more here: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article232986152.html#storylink=cpy
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Sundown towns, also known as sunset towns or gray towns, were all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States that practiced a form of segregation historically by enforcing restrictions excluding non-whites via some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation, and violence. The term came from signs posted that "colored people" had to leave town by sundown.[1] "At least until the early 1960s, …northern states could be nearly as inhospitable to black travelers as states like Alabama or Georgia."[2]
Discriminatory policies and actions distinguish sundown towns from towns that have no black residents for demographic reasons. Towns have been confirmed as sundown towns using newspaper articles, county histories, and Works Progress Administration files, corroborated by tax or U.S. Census records showing an absence of black people or sharp drop in the black population between two censuses.
Discriminatory policies and actions distinguish sundown towns from towns that have no black residents for demographic reasons. Towns have been confirmed as sundown towns using newspaper articles, county histories, and Works Progress Administration files, corroborated by tax or U.S. Census records showing an absence of black people or sharp drop in the black population between two censuses.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
