“When the Sun Went Down”: Analyzing Campus Racial Climate Through Sundown and Freedom Town Legacies

• In Event: Centering Both the Who and the Where: Place, Space, and Belonging

Abstract

Isolation and hypervisibility are feelings that negatively impact the psychological well-being of Black individuals due to racialized violence. Scholars have extensively studied how white supremacy is upheld by historically white institutions (HWIs) and the detrimental impacts on Black campus members' engagement with campus life (e.g., Briscoe, 2022; 2023). This paper bridges post-secondary and Black geography literature to address racially hostile histories and environments experienced by Black campus members through counter-storytelling (Solorzano & Yosso, 2002). Explicitly, the author uses interview and archival data to argue how Sundown Town’s legacies shape the campus racial climate to maintain white supremacy at the University of Oklahoma located in Norman, Oklahoma.

Author

• Shawntal Zanderia Nasha Brown, University of Texas at Austin