Behind the scenes with ProPublica reporter, who wrote about Anna’s history as a sundown town

On Nov. 7, ProPublica Illinois and The Atlantic magazine co-published an article exploring modern-day implications of Anna’s history as a sundown town that excluded black people from its borders.

The small Union County town was one of hundreds in Illinois that adopted racist policies and practices intended to send a clear message to African Americans that they weren’t welcome. But perhaps nowhere has this legacy been as deeply rooted as in Anna.

The town is named for the founder’s wife. But decades ago, Anna became A-N-N-A, an acronym for “Ain’t No N------ Allowed.” ProPublica Illinois’ Logan Jaffe read about the legend of A-N-N-A in a book called “Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism.”

But she wanted to know more about why it got that name, and whether people knew about it. In her article titled “The Legend of A-N-N-A: Revisiting an American Town Where Black People Weren’t Welcome After Dark,” Logan writes she discovered many people in the region do know about A-N-N-A and it’s general meaning, but weren’t sure how or precisely why it came to be.

As A-N-N-A was passed on from one generation to the next, Jaffe looks into how that has affected the town and the people who live there. Over the course of two years, she researched its roots and visited Anna on several occasions to talk to people as they were going about their lives.

Her first-person narrative reveals painful realities about the past and present. Yet, it concludes on a hopeful tone, leaving the reader with the impression that although change happens slowly, change can happen.

The Southern interviewed Jaffe, by phone and written correspondence, to learn more about her reporting on this story in Southern Illinois. The (lightly edited) questions and answers are below:

Q: Tell us about the story. What made you want to write it? What were some surprising discoveries you made during the reporting process?

A: I didn’t really know that this was going to be a story — or that it was a story that was worth writing — until maybe my second or third trip to Anna. I had read the book “Sundown Towns” by James Loewen and Anna is the first town mentioned. That book came out in 2005, and so I read that about A-N-N-A, and part of me was like, “There’s no way that’s still a thing.” But I was still curious. I’ve always been interested in origin stories and myths and legends, and how they may differ from what’s rooted in facts.

I used to work on a radio show called “Curious City” and we got questions from people around Chicago about things they wanted answers to. People would write and ask us things like: “Why is Half Day Road named Half Day Road?” and “Why in the suburbs of Chicago do so many suburban town names imply elevation when they’re completely flat?’” When I read about Anna in the book, I felt that genuine element of curiosity of an itch you need to scratch.

I also believe that white people, and white journalists, have a lot of work to do in revisiting the ways that stories about about race, identity and history have been told and communicated for the last century and even longer than that. Sundown towns — intentionally white communities — are not incidental, and learning about them can help raise questions for communities to decide what to do about them, if they choose to do anything.

The first indication I wanted to write about Anna came after I left a meeting in Carbondale, and my boss let me stay in the area for a few days to check out the town. I checked into the Super 8 motel, and I needed to go get dinner. I looked at Google and looked for wherever Main Street was, as I figured there’d be a restaurant there. When I got to Main Street, I went where most people were going. I was hungry. I wasn’t really thinking about reporting.

I walked into the bar and got into a conversation, and asked the person next to me to tell me about this town. When the first thing that person repeated to me was that Anna stands for A-N-N-A, it felt surreal. It was something out of the book that I wasn’t expecting to be true, or at least hear so quickly. To be clear, I’m white. The fact that another white person felt comfortable to casually say this to another white person, a stranger, in public, made me uncomfortable. I felt it was important to confront that discomfort in some way.

Over the next couple visits, I asked as many people as I could whether they also knew about A-N-N-A. That was the next surprise: Most people did. It became a story when, 20 people later, said they knew what it stood for. But when I’d ask why Anna stood for that, and what specifically happened, stories were all over the map. So people know, but it’s like any legend. You hear it. It gets repeated. It persists. But somewhere, the specifics are lost like a game of telephone. I wanted to unravel that.

Q: Sometimes, I hear people say that history is best left in the past. What do you think when you hear that statement as it relates to talking about racism?

A: There’s an assumption held by many white people that talking about race and racism only makes racism worse, so why even bring it up. But white people talk about race all the time, just maybe not in a space where their thoughts or ideas can be challenged. I think this plays out a lot in code words. For example, when white people refer to Cairo as a stand-in for talking about people who are black. Or even flying a Confederate flag — whatever your views on it are, if you fly it, it is a statement about your identity. Part of your identity is your race, though many white people often don’t think of whiteness as a racial identity that they express. One woman in Anna told me Anna hasn’t had many “racial issues” because not many black people live there, for example. White people aren’t exempt from having racial issues if only among other white people. White racism also harms white people.

A lot of people say we shouldn’t talk about the past because “it’s not like that anymore.” Sure, we don’t live in Jim Crow America anymore. But the fact is, on paper, Anna — and this goes for any community with a sundown history that is still overwhelmingly white — still looks much like it did before the Civil Rights era. That is because of choices people have made in the past to keep Anna white, but it is also because of choices people make today, and choices people can make in the future to accept or to change that demographic. White people made sundown towns. They can also unmake them.

Additionally, the mindset that difficult history is best left in the past is a mindset that has existed for generations. I wonder whether if Anna’s history as a sundown town had been acknowledged or documented within the community over time, the saying of A-N-N-A would have died out on its own. Maybe I wouldn’t have heard it that night. Maybe there wouldn’t have been a story to write. How do we know we are “over the past” if we don’t know, exactly, what happened? “Americans like ‘happy history,’ narratives that make us feel good. An honest and inclusive history includes events that should make none of us happy.” That’s a quote from David Pilgrim, the founder of the Jim Crow Museum in Michigan.

I hope I’m living in a moment at some point in my life in which we have understood our history so well that we can really move on from it. I think that is, partly, a goal. I think we’re very far from that goal.

Q: In your story, you write that there are hundreds of former or “recovering” sundown towns in Illinois. How can someone find out if they live in a sundown town?

A: The pervasiveness of sundown towns is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to quantify. But Dr. Loewen’s (author of “Sundown Towns”) research suggests there are 400 to 500 in Illinois and thousands around the country. They’re not confined to a specific region. They’re not confined to the South. They’re not confined to rural areas — there are wealthy suburbs of Chicago that have sundown histories waiting to be told. First, if you live in a mostly white community, it’s important to ask yourself why your community looks the way it does and be open to learning that it may not be an accident. Your community may be a sundown town or “recovering sundown town.” It also may not be.

Dr. Loewen suggests looking to historical census data. Was there a year in which your town had a significant population of people who were not white, and then sharply declined in a later year? That could indicate a place to start researching. One good tool is the Library of Congress “Chronicling America” digital collection of archived newspapers to find specific stories about your town. You may also check with a local historical society or library for oral history collections and other material. Most importantly, maybe, is to talk with older members of your community. What do they remember about the 1950s-1970s? You may consider asking “Why did this area have so few black people, and/or brown people, or Jews, Italians, Hispanics, etc.?” Some sundown towns purposely excluded other minorities as well. It’s important to document that history in some way.

Q: I’m sure your research included a lot of information that didn’t make the final draft. One thing I’m curious about that you addressed in a Twitter thread is what towns can do about facing their past. What did you discover? How common is it for towns to take action?

A: A few towns in the Midwest have formally tried to address their histories of being a sundown town, and acknowledge how actions of the past have affected the present. Some years back, I went to Goshen, Indiana, which passed a resolution apologizing for being a sundown town. Their city council passed the resolution unanimously. Resolutions may not carry much legal “teeth,” but they can be important symbols that represent and express community values both inside the community and also to outsiders.

I’m not in a position to say what the town of Anna should do. Doing nothing is also a choice. But there are decisions people can make every day, whether or not a community as a whole takes action. For instance, you make a decision when you decide to repeat A-N-N-A, or you overhear it and don’t confront it. These are everyday choices in how, and whether, you’re going to express that that mindset is OK with you or not OK with you. Whatever you choose to do, or not do, matters.

Q: What have you heard from people with connections to Anna and the surrounding area since the story was published?

A: I’ve heard from a lot of different people. For the most part, what I’ve heard from people who live in Union County is positive. I think for some people it has validated something they’ve experienced for some part of their life but haven’t been able to quite express. And then from some people, the responses have been ‘Why do we need to talk about this?’” and blame me for digging up skeletons. But, for many people, it doesn’t seem like these issues are skeletons. It’s a daily reality. I’m encouraged by how many people it seems do want to talk more about the story and surrounding issues. And I hope that those people find each other.

This story was originally published November 18, 2019 at 1:12 PM.