It’s time for some people to talk about something they would rather forget.
The words on the signboard were dull. There was no question about that message or target.
The first word was a racist slur.
Then, “Don’t let the sunset on your head in this town.”
originally, “Sign of sunset” I went up to the station. After that, I moved to the middle of the main street.
It happened over a century ago. In Texas.
It wasn’t Just sign it that way in Texas.. I met people who claimed to have personally seen the sign at Bowie, Glenrose and Grand Saleen.
Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t even chosen Texas or the South.
Web search, I found Similar racist signs Mentioned in the towns of California, Washington, Nebraska, and Indiana. In a town in British Columbia, there was even a sign warning the Chinese to be off limits.
However, Deleon, 95 miles southwest of Fort Worth, has certainly had one of these signs for years.
It rose more than a century ago, in 1886, in the bitter decade after reconstruction.
It’s a long time ago, and the lovely people in that quiet peanut farmhouse town may rather forget it.
Two historians wrote about it, so I happened to find it.
The Deleon sign is actually part of a more shameful story in 19th century Texas.
White vigilants threatened black residents of Comanche County and deported them.
In the 1880s, Comanche County was a growing market for cattle and cotton. The towns of Komanchi, Deleon, and Gasteen and the surrounding counties were home to 8,608 people, including 79 black residents.
They were a time of trouble in Texas because of both racial relations and the judicial system. According to The New Handbook of Texas, the White Lynch mob began to undermine the entire judicial system in 1885, kidnapping and killing 23 white men, 19 black men, and one white woman.
The following year, what became known as the “Escape from Comanche County” began with the murder of a white woman, Sally Stevens.
A black suspect named Tom McNeill was lynched, according to a 1953 report by Southwestern Historical Quarterly historian BB Lightfoot. After the sign went up at Deleon Station, an armed white vigilant visited door to door and told all black residents to pack up and leave Comanche County.
One by one, all black families moved primarily to Waco or Dallas. They abandoned family homes, churches, farms, and land of lifelong memories.
By the 1890 census, black residents were two orphans who lived with a white family.
Later, Texas Central Railway Road asked to move the Deleon sign. The train porter was threatened.
According to the latest 1996 report from the local magazine Messenger, it was moved to a town in the middle of Texas Avenue between a peanut mill and a tractor dealer.
The previous explanation was stalled. “Because of the lack of a Negroid population, Comanche County is one of the few places in the South where there are no obvious racial problems.”
According to the new handbook, Comanche County did not have one black resident in 1940. By 1970, the census had counted two.
A 2000 census found 62 black residents in Comanche County, still less than in 1880.
Neither report mentions when the Deleon sign was withdrawn.