Nowhere is a visual exploration of everyday streetscapes in sundown towns— municipalities that forbade the presence of Black persons after sunset, under penalty of arrest, violent expulsion, or death. Towns historically designated as sundown pervade the United States, and while they may not formally bar Black people after dark, they remain overwhelmingly White. The legacy of mob violence filters through the interstices of social life in “former” sundown towns, which remain quietly and comfortably exclusionary today. An enduring threat means that for Black people, these places exist in an intangible netherworld. They are places that cannot be visited, and therefore do not exist. Sundown towns are nowhere, especially when they are in the middle of nowhere. These municipalities were and are places in which people classified as White live ordinary and even full lives, raising children, participating in civic organizations, dining out at restaurants, and enjoying leisure activities.

Drawing in large part from historian James Loewen’s definitive research on sundown towns as source material to identify these places, Nowhere brings sundown towns into legibility with a visual tour of everyday spaces and streetscapes via contemporary photographs by John Margolies and Carol Highsmith. These images are copyright free and available from the Library of Congress.