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James W. Loewen (1942-2021)

We mourn the loss of our friend and colleague and remain committed to the work he began.

Lead

South Dakota

Basic Information

Type of Place
Independent City or Town
Metro Area
Politics c. 1860?
Don’t Know
Unions, Organized Labor?
Don’t Know

Sundown Town Status

Sundown Town in the Past?
Probable
Was there an ordinance?
Don't Know
Sign?
Don’t Know
Year of Greatest Interest
Still Sundown?
Don’t Know

Census Information

The available census data from 1860 to the present
Total White Black Asian Native Hispanic Other BHshld
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
2020

Method of Exclusion

  • Unknown

Main Ethnic Group(s)

  • Unknown

Group(s) Excluded

  • Native American

Comments

Teams from the Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux reservation,
in the Black Hills, report frequent harrassment when
playing teams in surrounding towns.

“One place where Pine Ridge teams used to get
harassed regularly was the high school gymnasium in
Lead…
“In the fall of 1988 the Pine Ridge Lady Thorpes
went to Lead to play a basketball game… Getting
ready in the locker room, the Pine Ridge girls could
hear the din from the Lead fans. They were yelling
fake Indian war cries, a ‘woo woo woo’ sound… As the
team waited in the hallway leading from the locker
room, the heckling got louder. Some fans were waving
food stamps, a reference to the reservation’s receiving
federal aid. Others yelled, ‘Where’s the cheese?’ the
joke being that if Indians were lining up, it must be to
get commodity cheese. The Lead high school band
had joined in, with fake Indian drumming and a fake
Indian tune.
The player who usually enters first “looked out the
door and told her teammates, “I can’t handle
this.” [Another player] quickly offered to go first in her
place… She came running onto the court dribbling the
basketball, with her teammates running behind. On
the court the noise was deafening. [She] went right
down the middle and suddenly stopped when she got
to center court [and] began to do the Lakota shawl
dance. The dance she chose is a young woman’s
dance, graceful and modest and show offy all at the
same time. [She] began to sing in Lakota, swaying
back and forth in the jump ball circle, doing the shawl
dance, using her warm up jacket for a shawl.
“The crowd went completely silent. ‘All that stuff the
Lead fans were yelling, it was like she reversed it
somehow,’ a teammate says. In the sudden quiet all
they could hear was her Lakota song. [She] dropped
her jacket, took the ball… and ran a lap around the
court dribbling expertly and fast. The audience began
to cheer and applaud. She sprinted to the basket, went
up in the air, and laid the ball through the hoop, with
the fans cheering loudly now. Of course, Pine Ridge
went on to win the game.”