My grandfather was almost killed in a sundown town.

I never met him, but I remember my grandmother telling stories of how he would sometimes take cross-country trips. On many of these trips, he might find himself in a town he didnt know, and hed have to find lodging before dark, because well, he might be in a sundown town.

In sundown towns, Black folks were relatively free to roam during the day. But once the sun went down, they were liable to be arrested, beaten and sometimes killed, simply because of the color of their skin. The Oklahoma town where I now live used to be one such place. Sometimes, the founders and leaders of sundown towns would try to rationalize their treatment of people by talking about the menace of crime that followed Black folks. But really, it was just a way to keep people who looked like me in their place.

Story has it that one night my grandfather found himself in one of these towns. He had to keep driving for hours until he found a place that would let him stay overnight. He never ran into a police officer, thankfully. If he had, he could have been arrested or killed. Thats the kind of danger that Black people in the American South have historically had to contend with and this treatment did not stop with the passing of the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.