[photo credit: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN]
Jesse Jackson (you'd think he'd want to change his name!) of Blanford, Ind., says that when black people come to town, 'my friends and I run them out.' The roots of racist violence run deep in Blanford: In 1923, when the Ku Klux Klan controlled the area, whites drove out the entire black population. Vermillion County has remained 99 percent white.
The American-Statesman clearly put a lot of time and effort into the history of racial expulsion in various towns and counties in the U.S.
Read for yourself.. There's a lot of content to this shameful malignity which began in the 1800s and is obviously present to this day.
Unfortunately, I'm having problems accessing some of the text from the interactive online site so I'll manually enter some quotes here from my hardcopy of the paper.
Whites often applauded when the expulsions occurred. In Arkansas, the Boone County Chamber of Commerce noted in a 1920s-era marketing brochure that the town did not have "mosquitoes or Negroes."
A similar brochure published around the turn of the century touting Comanche County, Texas, about 110 miles northwest of Austin, pointed out that it's population "is entirely and absolutely ALL WHITE; there is not a negro in the county, and the chances are there will not be any for many years to come."
Although more than a century has passed, the county remains virtually devoid of African-Americans...
A city employee in the county was quoted as saying "You don't see many of them (African Americans). It's noticeable when you do."
Check out the site. Even if you have the same problems I'm having accessing the text of the story, there are plenty of statistics and charts worth viewing.
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