HOLMES BEACH – According to a college website dedicated to social justice, Anna Maria Island’s largest city is open to all visitors, but only during the day.
The History and Social Justice website justice.tougaloo.edu/map/ displays a map that claims to identify current sundown towns, listing Holmes Beach as a “probable” sundown town.
Holmes Beach Police Chief Bill Tokajer said the label is completely false.
“No, we are not a sundown town,” Tokajer said. “We are a welcoming community 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year to anyone who wants to come live, work, visit or stay here. We just ask that anyone who comes out be a good neighbor.”
A sundown town is one where the vast majority or all of the population is white and minorities are not welcome after dark, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Sundown towns originated in the United States following the Civil War, and while any racial minority was targeted, many specifically targeted Black people. In these towns, if an unwelcome person was found within the town borders after dark, they were in danger of being arrested, assaulted or even killed.
While sundown town regulations largely disappeared after the end of segregation, in some places, people of certain races are still more welcome than others. The History and Social Justice website states that it’s committed to continuing the work of James W. Loewen by preserving historical records about race relations, the Civil War, gender relations and other hot-button topics. The website is hosted by Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi.
According to the website, Loewen began researching sundown towns in 1999 with the expectation that he would find about 10 in Illinois and maybe 50 more across the country. He found 506 in Illinois alone. In Florida, the website has flagged more than a dozen towns ranging in confirmation status from “possible” to “probable” to “surely.” There is no criteria listed on the website for how the confirmation determination is given, however, on the city page on the Tougaloo site, U.S. Census data is listed from Holmes Beach’s incorporation in 1960 through 2000 specifically noting the number of Black residents. The highest number listed on the site is six Black residents in 2000.
On the U.S. Census Bureau website, a total of 3,010 residents is listed as of the 2020 count in Holmes Beach. While white residents made up the vast majority of the population at 2,795, the site lists that there are five people who identified as Black, four Native American, 32 Asian, 1 native Hawaiian, 16 of other races and 157 who identified as biracial or triracial.
