Rachael Kirkconnel has inadvertently become the main focus of Matt James’ season of The Bachelor. She has been in the spotlight for photos from 2018 that showed her wearing a plantation-style dress at an “Old South” themed frat party. That might’ve gotten swept under the rug if it wasn’t for The Bachelor host Chris Harrison’s 13-minute tirade on Extra, during which he defended Kirkconnell’s actions and complained about the “woke police” and angry social media users. Like everyone, Rachael is a product of her environment, and it just so happens that Rachael’s environment has an extremely racist past.
During her hometown date, Rachael told Matt she’s from Cumming, Georgia. COVID-19 eliminated any chance of visiting her hometown, which many Internet users joked was for the best. The town has a very racist history of being a “sundown town.” A sundown town refers to any place that used to have restrictive curfew laws for African Americans. As the nickname suggests, sundown towns were highly-segregated cities or counties that Black people could only be in during the day. They could visit or even work in the town, but once night fell, any Black citizen found in the town could be arrested, beaten, or worse.
Travel guides called Green Books were published from the 1930s until the 1960s to help Black Americans navigate the thousands of sundown towns that dotted the map. Sundown towns existed across America for more than 100 years, from the South and the Midwest, out to California and New York. While sundown laws no longer exist, many of the former sundown towns are still heavily segregated. According to the Associated Press, people of color who go through sundown towns – also called grey towns or sunset towns, or sometimes not named at all – report being looked at strangely and feeling uncomfortable. Rachael Kirkconnell’s hometown is one of three official sundown towns in the state of Georgia.
In fact, Rachael’s whole county, Forsyth County, was considered a sundown town due to its racist curfew laws. As NPR detailed, the entire Black population was driven out of Forsyth County (of which Cumming is the county seat) by an angry mob in 1912. However, according to Cumming residents, things are changing. One Cumming local explained on Reddit that, as a growing suburb of the diverse city of Atlanta, Cumming is getting more and more socially and racially diverse. He also said that in the 2020 election there was an 8% growth in votes for the Democratic nominee when compared to 2016.
The 2019 US Census Bureau estimated the town’s racial population to be 83.1% White, 22.5% Hispanic or Latino, 6.2% Asian and Pacific Islander, 5.5% Black or African American, and .8% American Indian. This is not exactly the picture of a diverse city. Rachael might have gotten lucky that Matt James didn’t have to visit Cumming, Georgia, though Kirkconnell likely would not have mentioned its dark past. While we all reckon with the racial issues that The Bachelor has brought up, it’s important to shed light on what happened after dark in so many towns across America.
The Bachelor airs Mondays at 8 pm ET on ABC.
Source: AP, NPR, Reddit, US Census Bureau