[Ads-l] "The 91"

[Margaret Winters]

Indeed not just in the south or just African-Americans.  Grosse Pointe, Michigan was notorious for the point system:


The Grosse Pointe area was well-known for the point system, in which those deemed undesirable (non-Protestants, Eastern Europeans, etc.) had to amass more points in order to purchase a home. Realtors and the Grosse Pointe Property Owner's Association would sometimes hire private detectives, who would find answers to various questions, including "Appearances - swarthy, slightly swarthy, or not at all?" and "Accents - pronounced, medium, slight, not at all?" The maximum score for the survey was 100, with most prospective residents needing a score of 50. However, according to Michigan Attorney General Paul Adams, "a Pole is expected to have five additional points. An Italian, Yugoslav, Greek, Syrian, Lebanese, Armenian, Maltese, Rumanian, or other southern European is required to have 15 additional points. A Jew is required to have 35 additional points and his points are more difficult to achieve because of penalties in a special marking system for Jews. Orientals and Negroes are not considered at all."


Even when we bought a house here in 2002 (without any of the questions asked in earlier times like what church would you attend if you moved here?), Jewish friends elsewhere in the region asked us how we could bring ourselves to live here.  There is a GP Jewish Council now and we have some African-American neighbors, but not many.


Margaret


----------------------------
MARGARET E WINTERS
Former Provost
Professor Emerita - French and Linguistics
Wayne State University
Detroit, MI  48202

mewinters at wayne.edu



________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2018 2:31 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "The 91"

> the colored neighborhood

Colored were allowed to live in Vegas back in the days of Jim Crow?!
They're barely allowed to live there today. Maybe the author was just
trying to add a little local color.😜 IAC, Nevada was a so-called "sundown
town" - NIGGER, DON'T LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON YOU HERE - state, in those
days. Depending on the state, Japanese-Americans, Jewish-Americans,
Mexican-Americans, Native Americans, and even dogs were also subject to
sundowning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/ApartheidSignEnglishAfrikaans.jpg]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town>

Sundown town - Wikipedia<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town>
en.wikipedia.org
Sundown towns, known as sunset towns or gray towns, were all-white municipalities or neighborhoods that practiced a form of segregation by enforcing restrictions ...


"Playwright John Henry Redwood III wrote the play *No Niggers, No Jews, No
Dogs* after he saw the words written on a sign from a sundown town in
Mississippi. The play is set in a sundown town in the American South."

From Here to Eternity: A Novel
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0812984315
James Jones, ‎George Hendrick - 2012 - ‎Preview - ‎Page 188
"DON'T LET THE SUN SET ON YOU IN HARLAN, NIGGER!"

Of course,  sundown towns weren't peculiar to the South.

https://books.google.com/books?id=FPxJ_aG_B-8C
Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism
James W. Loewen
The New Press, Sep 29, 2005 - Social Science - 562 pages
“Don’t let the sun go down on you in this town.” We equate these words with
the Jim Crow South but, in a sweeping analysis of American residential
patterns, award-winning and bestselling author James W. Loewen demonstrates
that strict racial exclusion was the norm in American towns and villages
from sea to shining sea for much of the twentieth century.

Ironically, Ferguson, Missouri, was once such a town, as were all other
towns in Saint Louis County, with the exception of Webster Groves, "St.
Louis author Jonathan Franzen's" true hometown, and Kinloch, a now
all-black village that was once, like the Watts district of Los Angeles, an
all-white town.

On Sun, Mar 25, 2018 at 6:36 PM, Jim Parish <jparish at siue.edu> wrote:

> I'm currently rereading Tim Powers' novel _Last Call_, and was just struck
> by something. Powers specializes in fantasy of the "secret history" type,
> so the following is set in (what purports to be) our world and timeline. In
> my experience, Powers does his homework, but the following seems like an
> anachronism to me.
>
> The first chapter is set in Las Vegas in 1943, and it's written in tight
> third person, through the eyes of one of the characters.
>
> "They drove around, and found a new casino called the Moulin Rouge in the
> colored neighborhood west of the 91."
>
> We've discussed the use of "the :number:" to refer to highways, but I was
> under the impression that that was a Southern California innovation, dating
> to sometime in the 1980s and usually referring to interstates . Would
> someone in Las Vegas in the '40s use it, to refer to (I presume) a state
> highway? Anyone know?
>
> Jim Parish
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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