sure Nym.
Growing up in exurban and rural Missouri I remember hearing many tales of black families being run out of towns in the 'old days'. The most commonplace was either burning down their house or throwing in a stick of dynamite.
It is no coincidence that the small town black population is concentrated - for example in Jefferson County almost all lived in Crystal City or Festus, while lots of other towns to this day have almost no blacks whatsoever.
Well, there have always been very few blacks here, and if there were a larger population, perhaps you'd have seen some things like that. But I know that the KKK certainly has no organized presence here, and the blacks that do live here (mostly in Marquette due to the university campus) have never had any particular incidents like that which you mention.
Now granted, anyone living in a place in which 99 percent of the residents are of a different race is probably going to feel a bit uncomfortable, and this would be true of either blacks or whites, so I can understand blacks from Detroit feeling "weird" about coming up here, just as most whites would feel the same way in Detroit.
