If you’re not familiar with this term, you’re about to be, because it looks like Trump is gearing up for his campaign’s final days by using a pretty particular strategy.

The phrase “sundown towns” comes from the time of segregation. It refers to cities whose population was entirely white, and where Black people were thought of as a danger to its occupants. Apparently worse at night, hence the term.

But they weren’t just considered a threat. Whites in these towns used intimidation, coercion, and even violence to keep nonwhites out. The towns were all-white by design. And it may surprise you to find out that many of these towns still exist.

Imagine that in 2024: A city where you simply don’t see any Black people. On purpose, because of the town leaders and bullies.

We’ve always known racism is the poison that runs in this country’s blood. It has been a stain on us since long before the Civil War, the defining moment in our history when the good guys won.

But just like you still see some jackwagons proudly flying the Confederate flag or some version of it, you can still see the tattered ribbons of racism that rules with an iron fist in some places. Groups like the KKK and the Proud Boys infiltrate our police departments. Thinly-veiled policies prevent minorities from voting. And redlining still happens anywhere they can get away with it and not be discovered.

In fact, one of the people currently running for president was sued by the Department of Justice half a decade ago for refusing to rent to Black people in his New York properties. His racism runs so deep that when the Central Park Five, the minority teens who were falsely accused of raping a woman in the city’s largest park, were exonerated by DNA evidence and cleared of all charges, he was outraged.

“What were they doing in the park? Playing checkers?”

That’s what Trump had to say about the overturning of their convictions, for which they spent time in prison. Of course, Trump was invested in them being guilty. After all, when the case was in court back in 1989, he spent more than you or I make in a year to take out full-page ads in New York’s largest newspapers calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five.

That’s hardly the extent of his disgusting racism, either.

An employee from one of his Atlantic City casinos accused him of getting undesirable Black people out of sight from his white patrons and he and his wife. “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor. It was the eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: they put us all in the back.”

That wasn’t a frivolous claim: New Jersey found there was enough evidence that it was true that the Casino Control Commission fined him nearly a quarter million dollars for doing it.

John O’Donnell, the former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, and he recalled a conversation with the boss:

I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.

[Talking about a Black employee to O’Donnell]

I think the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is. I believe that.

Well, it turns out that Trump is playing his greatest hits. He is currently touring almost exclusively “sundown towns” for his campaign stops and rallies.

A TikTok user first pointed it out in a video that, fair warning, is filled with expletives. But why wouldn’t it be? It’s outrageous that Trump is so obviously trying to appeal to the voters he knows he needs to keep in order to win.

“So I’ve been noticing a troubling pattern. Where Donald Trump has been holding his rallies the last few weeks has been egregious. Howell, Michigan. La Crosse, Wisconsin. Johnstown, Pennsylvania. What do these places have in common? They’re all sundown towns. This is where Donald Trump is choosing to hold his rallies. Sundown towns. They want to go back to f*cking Dred Scott.”

Odd that he should bring that up, because the National Federation of Republican Assemblies drew up a resolution that would bar Kamala Harris from holding office based on the historically awful Dred Scott Supreme Court case — a case that has of course been overturned long since.

The finding in that case, one where Scott and his wife sued for their freedom based on the fact that they lived in a state where slavery was illegal, was that Scott didn’t even have standing to SUE, because “a negro, whose ancestors were imported into (the U.S.), and sold as slaves,” could not be a citizen, and therefore couldn’t sue anyone in federal court.

Half the Republicans in America are claiming that Kamala’s not even Black, and half say she’s so black that she turned back time to before Dred Scott was overturned.

And Trump is coming to their hometowns to make them cheer.

Watch the video below, and again, content warning for the language within:

This gentleman has noticed something very disturbing. Trump has been holding his hate rallies in sundown towns. 😳👇 pic.twitter.com/6Y6zD1vkM2

— Bill Madden (@maddenifico) August 31, 2024

The backlash was pretty swift. Big presences on social media took notice of the man’s video and were quick to note their own observations of the same thing. The “Mueller, She Wrote” account on X tweeted “It’s not a coincidence that Trump keeps hosting rallies in sundown towns. Don’t forget he intentionally held a rally in Tulsa on the anniversary of the massacre.”

Joyce Vance, the outspoken former US Attorney from Alabama, saw the same pattern. “Interesting notice recently that Trump is holding his rallies in sundown towns. This caught my interest when he chose Cullman, Alabama, my Mother in Law’s hometown, as one of his 2021 stops for this campaign.”

Vance went on: “Could it be coincidence that is bringing Trump to these places? Anything is possible, but Cullman, for instance, is out-of-the-way. Any number of places in Alabama would’ve been more suitable. Sometimes the dog whistle is actually [words], loudly spoken.”

This man must be stopped.