Bid to silence Nevada sirens speaks volumes for justice
Every evening at 6 pm in the town of Minden, Nevada, a siren on top of the firehouse tower goes off in a place which has a population of about 3,000.
Some town officials say the blaring siren that also goes off at noon honors its volunteer fire department. Some residents say they think of it as a dinner bell. For members of the Washoe tribe, it is an echo from decades past when the siren served as a warning for Native Americans to leave the town before sunset.
In the early 1900s, “sundown sirens’’ were once popular in so-called sundown towns in the South and Midwest, where nonwhite residents were ordered to leave town in the evening.
Historians estimate there were as many as 10,000 so-called sundown towns across the US during their peak in the 1970s. Roughly 44 of the 89 counties along Route 66 which stretches from Illinois to California were sundown towns. Some posted signs that read “Don’t Let the Sun Set on You Here”, accompanied by a racial slur.
The laws often targeted black residents, though in some places it was meant to exclude a town’s Native American population, the Las Vegas Review-Journal said. The sirens sounded at 6:30 pm.
Douglas County, which encompasses Minden and a handful of other municipalities, enacted its ordinance in 1908 that took aim at Native Americans, requiring them to leave town by 6:30 pm, a half-hour after a town siren sounded each night, under threat of arrest, jail time or fines.
Douglas County remained a sundown town until June 27, 1974, when the law was repealed. Minden’s siren was briefly turned off in 2006, but it voted to turn the siren on again two months later to honor emergency personnel, the Review-Journal reported at the time. The siren has remained in effect, sounding at noon and 6 pm every day.
Under legislation signed on June 4 by Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak and which takes effect this autumn, communities are prohibited from sounding signals associated with a past law “which required persons of a particular race, ethnicity, ancestry, national origin or color to leave the town by a specific time”.
Changes required
Assembly Bill 88 (AB88) also requires public schools and charters, universities and community colleges to change any name, logo, mascot, song or identifier that is “racially discriminatory” or “associated with the Confederate States of America or a federally recognized Indian tribe”. Exceptions can be made only with tribal approval.
AB88 passed the state Assembly 36-6. But it barely cleared the Senate, with 12 members in favor, eight opposed and one excused.
Assemblyman Howard Watts, a Democrat representing Las Vegas in the Nevada Assembly, added the sundown siren provision to AB88, said the Review-Journal. He said it was directed at Minden.
Watts said he introduced the amendment after hearing from members of the Washoe tribe, the native people who were in Minden first, and non-indigenous residents about the history of the Minden siren and its connection to the sundown ordinance.
“There have been jokes made in schools and public spaces where indigenous peoples are present of, ‘Oh — it’s time for you to go,’” Watts said of the siren sounding. “It’s something that is still deeply hurtful,” he told NBC affiliate KRNV. “There are still members of the Washoe tribe and others who know exactly what it means when that goes off.”
Minden Town Manager J.D. Frisby told the Reno Gazette that the town does not consider the language in AB88 to apply to them since they have stated that the nightly siren is not related to the sundown ordinance but is rather intended to honor the town’s volunteer fire department.
Washoe Tribal Chairman Serrell Smokey said he is only asking that Minden silence the 6 pm siren because of its racist past. “You could play the siren every hour of every single day — except for 6,” he told News 4-Fox 11.