Clarksville

[Cities]

A sleepy town in northeastern Texas with a Confederate monument and a population of less than three thousand people, half of whom are Black. County seat of Red River County, and the home of the historically largest institution of higher education in the state (prior to the Civil War, McKenzie College had a whole 300 students).

I saw the 2024 solar eclipse here. It was wild. City population doubled on the day, as minimal cloud cover was expected, and ~all the eclipse-watchers were white? Easily some of the starkest racial divides I’ve seen, although perhaps this because I only recently started tracking/seeing this (too much?)

Very strange. Implicit segregation as an aftereffect of historical segregation has stronger effects than I previously suspected.

Did get to meet some particularly eccentric eclipse-watchers however: think ex-SpaceX employee with his dad & manager who live in New Zealand and Montreal respectively.