In 2019, sociologist Heather O'Connell wrote that sundown towns are "(primarily) a thing of the past",[29] but writer Morgan Jerkins disagreed, saying: "Sundown towns have never gone away."[30] Historian James Loewen, author of Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, notes persisting effects of sundown towns' violently enforced segregation even after they may have been integrated to a small degree, a phenomenon he calls "second-generation sundown towns."[30]