Singing Potatoes
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Tuesday, 19 February 2008
Well, at least it's something for the book...
Deliverance

On the highway between Lafayette and Indianapolis, there's this one exit that always catches my notice:

Whitestown / Brownsburg sign

Now, my assumption was that segregation had something to do with the nomenclature, but apparently Whitestown was named after Senator Albert Smith White, and Brownsburg after one of its first settlers, James B. Brown.

However, in the course of looking up that information, I discovered that Brownsburg had been a sundown town - a place where racial minorities were not permitted after the sun had set. I suppose there's some small irony that while Brownsburg is known to have had sundown laws, there's no evidence that Whitestown did. Nonetheless, the whole state has a fairly embarrassing racial history altogether.

I'd never heard of sundown towns before. But all this information fits right into some of the themes I'd planned for the novel I hope to write.


Posted by godfrey (link)
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