A sundown town is a municipality or neighborhood within the United States that practices or once practiced a form of racial segregation characterized by intimidation, hostility, or violence among White people directed toward non-Whites, especially against African Americans. Typically such towns originally had a majority African American population, whose residents were then violently driven out by whites with property being illegally seized as part of the process. The term "sundown town" derives from the practice of White towns then erecting signage alerting non-Whites to vacate the area before sundown.[1] Sundown towns might include entire sundown counties or sundown suburbs and have historically been strengthened by the local presence of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a White supremacist organization.[2] Discrimination practices commonly found in sundown towns became federally illegal during the 20th century.
Although the United States has a history of expulsion of African Americans from certain communities dating to the 18th century, sundown towns became common during the nadir of American race relations after the Reconstruction era ended in 1877 and through the civil rights movement in the mid-twentieth century. The period was marked by the lawful continuation of racial segregation in the United States, known as the Jim Crow era. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 codified enforcement of federal law abolishing restrictive housing covenants.
Sundown towns could issue written warnings to non-Whites by way of signage, city ordinances, housing covenants, and notices posted in local papers or directly on the homes of non-White families and their employers. Violent means of expelling minorities from their communities may include the realization or threat of firing gunshots and dynamite into their homes, burning down their homes, planting burning crosses and bombs in their yards, mobbing them, lynching them, and massacring them.
A sundown town is an all-White community that shows or has shown hostility toward non-Whites. Sundown town practices may be evoked in the form of city ordinances barring people of color after dark, exclusionary covenants for housing opportunity, signage warning ethnic groups to vacate, unequal treatment by local law enforcement, and unwritten rules permitting harassment. Sundown towns in the United States include present communities that do not "socially accept" people who are not White. Although African Americans are primarily the focus of sundown town claims, Chinese Americans, Jewish Americans, Native Americans, and Mexican Americans have also been subject to this discriminatory practice.[3]
Legally, municipalities cannot currently enforce restrictions or discrimination against people by race or other protected classes, but this has not always been the case. The 1948 United States Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer outlawed the legal enforcement of restrictive housing covenants. Although the Civil Rights Act of 1866 prohibited housing discrimination and defined equal protection, enforcement of such provisions would not be codified until the Civil Rights Act of 1968. As such, any location that is listed below is not an indicator of that place practicing traditional sundown town rules today.
It is our recollection that it was once 'against the law' for a negro to live in Cullman in this state.
In Cullman there are many handsome homes kept up in the best city style, and the people are so hospitable and social that visitors cannot help but fall in love with the place. Many of the older people speak no English at all, and will not allow it spoken in their families, and negroes are not allowed to live there at all. It seems very strange to find such a town in Alabama.
She said the remarks were especially troubling because [Scott] Beason chose to make them in Cullman, an overwhelmingly White city that once was known as a 'sundown town' because blacks feared being there after sunset.
Blacks were slow to settle in Arizona. At the time of Tempe's founding in 1871, only 155 were recorded throughout the territory. ... For its first 90 years, Tempe was considered a 'sundown town' where Blacks were welcomed for agricultural and other daily labors. But they were encouraged to live elsewhere.
On the survey from Bird's Point, Mo., to Jonesboro, Ark., I had a Negro cook. As Negroes were not allowed to live in Clay, Greene and Craighead Counties, Ark., my cook was a curiosity to the children. The women used to bring the children to camp to see him.
It must have bothered a few attending the stellar affair because in those days Hemet was pretty well a sundown town, meaning blacks could work over here during the day but they had better head for Perris or wherever at dusk.
Many residents came here from the South. Taft once was known as a 'sundown town,' meaning blacks weren't welcome. 'Although the "no colored allowed" signs are down now, there is still a lot of resentment,' said Police Chief McKee.
Text of [town councilman Bruno] Beckhard's statement follows: 'In the first place Gulfport has never receded from the position it took when most of the men were fishing and women and children were left alone, that no negroes would be allowed within the town limits after sundown. This is not a matter of statute, it is merely a condition that no St. Petersburg negro questions.'
'Believe it or not, we have 'black-outs' here. Negroes are not allowed to live in the city. They must live either in the country or on the R.-R. right-of-way.'
In the colony of Fitzgerald, in Georgia, there are very few negroes, and not one allowed to live in the city of Fitzgerald. The founders of this colony and the builders of this city are all Western people, and many of them old Union soldiers. But they met and solved the race problem by keeping the races separate and drawing, not only the color line, but the land line on the negro.
signs that usually said "Nigger Don't Let the Sun Go Down on You in ____."Anna-Jonesboro had such signs on Highway 127 as recently as the 1970s.
Although he says the Cicero march was a victory, residents of Cicero probably feel no different about Negroes than they did one week ago. (Negroes are not allowed to live in Cicero, but ironically, 15,000 of them work in the suburb's factories and stores five days a week.)
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Most of these towns, especially in the Midwest, were not close to any black population concentration and would not have confronted any inundation by African Americans had they failed to pass an ordinance. Consider De Land, for instance, a small village in central Illinois, population 475 in 2000. Present and former members of the De Land board of trustees agreed in 2002 that it had passed such an ordinance decades ago.
The citizens of Sandoval, Ill., will not allow any negro to live in their town. Several weeks ago two strange negroes were employed by a new carpenter who was not acquainted with the color-line law of the place, but it did not take him long to learn it when seventy-five of the 'best people' of the town waiting upon him and threatened to lynch the negroes if they did not leave at once.
At Sandoval, thirteen miles east of here, owing to the scarcity of labor, two strange negroes were engaged by some carpenters to help finish a house. Negroes are not allowed to live in that place, consequently a party of seventy-five waited upon them, threatening to lynch them if they did not move at once. Things were finally compromised, the men agreeing to leave town as soon as the building is finished.
There is a race war brewing in Ellwood [sic]. The citizens always have been averse to allowing negroes to live there. For the past twenty years occasionally a colored man or woman would come, but he would not be permitted to remain any length of time. Recently a number of negro families have located here. Within the last few days the entire negro population would have been notified to leave the city. Four of them, have been driven out this week, and the remainder have been given until Saturday night to move. Trouble is anticipated should any families refuse to comply with the demands.
Feeling against the negroes in Southern Indiana is becoming more intense each day, especially since the assault on a White girl last week. There are thousands of negroes in this city, and those living along the river refuse to work. In Howell, a small station below here, negroes are not allowed to live, all strange negroes being driven out of the town by the marshal. The color line has been drawn tightly since the race riot of one year ago to-day, when several White people were killed.
At Linton, Ind., in 1896, a coal company imported 300 negroes to take the places of strikers in one of the mines there. The negroes organized a company and drilled with rifles on the streets. One of them shot a White boy and the entire White population, aroused at midnight by fire bell, raided the negro quarters and drove every one of them from the city. Several of them were shot. Since that time not a negro has been allowed to live in the town. On July 6, Alex. Sanderson, a Terre Haute caterer, was employed to serve the banquet at the institution of a new lodge of the Elks. He took his cook and waiters with him and while the lodge work in the hall was going on several hundred miners assembled in the street and threatened to dynamite the hall unless the negroes were sent out of town. They were hurried into a cab and driven to Jasonville, where they were put on the train for Terre Haute. Six policemen hung on the carriage and beat back the crowd while the negroes were driven out of town.
During a month's sojourn in Ripley county I visited several towns without seeing a single Afro-American, and at Osgood, the largest town in the county, was informed that negroes were not allowed to live there, and that there was not a colored family within quite a number of miles of the town.
John Hay, the new secretary of state, was born in Salem, this state, about sixty years ago. That place has the unenviable distinction of being the only town in Indiana where negroes are not allowed to live.
She had seen many Indians in the pioneer days, but until she reached this city had never seen any person of African descent, as negroes are not allowed to live in Washington county.
In trying to prove that a negro wasn't killed in Altoona last week Editor Butcher of the Tribune says 'Negroes are not allowed to live in Altoona.' Clad Thompson believes that one wasn't.
Commenting on the complaint of the Altoona Tribune that a negro killing had been credited to Altoona when it should have read North Altoona, and the further suggestion by the Tribune that negroes are not allowed to live in Altoona, the Kansas City Star says neither are they allowed to live in North Altoona, evidently.
The little town of Centralia, Kan., is in the hands of a mob of negroes. The cause of the trouble grew out of the action of a number of citizens of Centralia, making an attack on the home of a negro by the name of Whitmire and firing several shots through the roof of his house and finally destroying his home and compelling the negroes to flee in the night for safety. No negroes are allowed to live in the vicinity of Centralia. The negroes returned in large numbers and rode up and down the streets firing their guns at random, driving all the whites indoors.
One of the leading colored men in southeastern Kansas is Mr. A. P. Roundtree, formerly of Topeka, Kans. He now resides at Groweburg [sic], a mining camp in which no negroes were allowed to live. Mr. Roundtree learned of this condition, went immediately to the company and agreed to furnish them all of the skilled colored miners needed, and that they would move into the camps, at once, if the company consented. Consent was given and Mr. Roundtree lead [sic] the colored miners to victory.
Nortonville and Howard are two Kansas towns where negroes are not allowed to live.
Among other things, I asked a burly fellow why there was not a single negro in the town of Scranton. He said: "Because we made it too hot for 'em here." I asked him how they managed it. He replied: "We jist tell 'em to GIT and they GITS."
There came near being a general fight between whites and negroes at Elva, Marshall county, last night. Elva is near the Calvert City section, where no negroes are allowed to live, and where seven or eight were recently shot by a mob of white men. The negroes were employed by the Standard Oil Company. Last night two negro tramps met a white man in the road and asked him if he knew where Calvert City was. He said that he did, but it was not very healthy there for negroes. This enraged him, and they both assaulted him with clubs and seriously hurt him.
The Labor Defense believes the Negro innocent of the crime and that he was 'framed' for daring to go thru Crescent Springs, Ky., where, according to the Labor Defense, Negroes are not allowed to live.
The Advertiser has delighted in finding Northern Cities where Negroes are not allowed to live or even to stay overnight, among them Owosso, Mich., birthplace of Thomas Dewey.
The importation of a large number of negroes into Doniphan nearly precipitated a race war. No negroes are allowed to live in the town and on their arrival the citizens undertook to drive them out. Several colored men were roughly handled and a number of white men and negroes were injured. Sheriff Morrill came to the rescue and an armed posse is now guarding the colored laborers. The citizens are determined the negroes shall not be allowed to remain and further trouble is expected.
Most of the refugees are making through the woods to Joplin, as Monett, the nearest town, has for years refused to permit a negro to reside there. Across the main street of Monett for years there has been a sign reading: 'Nigger, don't let the sun go down,' and no negro has been permitted to remain inside the corporation after dark.
Then came the contractors with their hundreds of horses, their powerful machines for moving and piling stone and earth, their great camp of men, Irishmen for foremen, Austrians, Italians and negroes, the last most woefully unwelcome in these two counties, where no negroes have been allowed to live for many years.
Hoboken, that unique suburb of New York, which has been maligned by many and spoken of derisively from Maine to California, has one claim to distinction: It has only one negro family within its borders. This is all the more remarkable because its neighbor, Jersey City, is full of colored people and outlying sections also have a large quota. ... Of the hundred and one reasons given for the diminutive size of the negro population of Hoboken, probably the correct one is that there is no way for negroes to earn a livelihood in the city.... There seems to be a sort of unwritten law in the town that negroes are to be barred out. This feeling permeates of everything. The Hobokenese are proud of the distinction conferred on their town by the absence of negroes.
The Ohio River & Charleston Railroad Co. will appeal to Governor Russell for protection for its gangs of negro laborers in Mitchell county. The residents of this county escorted three gangs of laborers to the border line and told them not to return under pain of death. It is the boast of the people of Mitchell county that no negroes are allowed to live or work there. Up to date the boast has been made good. The situation is serious, and blood may flow if the railroad company brings its colored laborers back.
Pine Bluff is governed by a mayor and board of commissioners, and negroes are not allowed to live within the corporate limits. There is a colored settlement near by, however, and a number of negroes are employed in the village, but in the day time only. Even the servant girls go home after supper and return in time to get breakfast.
Southern Pines, in Moore county, this state, is a typical northern community. It was built, is settled and is governed by people from the northern and New England states, and it is interesting to know how the negro is treated there. ... Southern Pines was founded by eastern capitalists as a resort for invalids and hundreds go there every winter seeking restoration of health. Its founders, notwithstanding their birth-place and traditions, did not allow any sentimental notions about the negroes to enter in their plans. No negro is allowed to live or do business in Southern Pines. They are all congregated in a place called 'Jimtown', and when they visit the town proper, are models of quiet and orderly behavior.
A dandy example is Fairborn, up until recent years a 'Sundown Town' where community forces worked in concert to keep Negroes out. ... He explained that two years ago real estate operators may have actually [been] afraid of some type of censure from their fellows and the community if they sold to negroes. Now the situation is reversed. The same formidable pressures would be brought to bear if they declined to sell to Negroes. ... He cites a shift of attitude on the part of the military at Wright-Patterson Air Force base, which has terrific influence on the economic and social life of the community, as partly responsible for the new atmosphere.
Eager for the new town to be accepted not only by these few but by the entire metropolitan community, federal officials dedicated themselves to abiding by 'community standards' in their new town. As a result, the suburban town project which had been planned for the needy, ignored the neediest. Although the two chief administrators of the greenbelts, Rexford G. Tugwell and Will W. Alexander, believed in equal benefits for blacks, prejudice prevailed and blacks were excluded from Greenhills.
In 1920, Warren G. Harding ran his famous 'front porch campaign' from his family home in Marion, Ohio; a few months before, Marion was the scene of an ethnic cleansing as whites drove out virtually every African American. According to Harding scholar Phillip Payne, 'As a consequence, Marion is an overwhelming[ly] white town to this date [2002].'
Negroes are not allowed to live in Reading or stay there after dark and the attack stirred residents to greater indignation than that aroused by several other attacks in the same locality.
A posse is hunting [Hezekiah] Scott, and he may be harshly dealt with if captured. Negroes are not allowed to live in Waverly. Scott tried to settle there, and [railway conductor William] Woods was one of those instrumental in driving him out. For this, it is said, Scott had sworn vengeance.
It was only a short time ago that negroes were not allowed to either live or die in Bartlesville.
'Negro, don't let the sun set on you here.' A sign containing the above command, which years ago was sufficient warning to negroes to stay away from Blackwell, and the fear which it brought to those going through this city has not been entirely forgotten yet.
Now in Durant and other towns in the Central District, and for that matter, in Holdenville, Ada and other towns in the territory notices had been posted for the Negroes not to let the sun go down on them in said towns.
United States marshals have been ordered to Glencoe, Oklahoma, to try to prevent a race war. People have never allowed negroes to live or stop there. When the Santa Fe Railway company brought forty negro laborers there to work they were visited by a committee of citizens who warned them to leave under penalty of a visit from vigilants with ropes, if they failed to go further. Trouble is feared.
Because the ban has been placed on the negroes by the citizens of Greer county, Okla., there will be an estimated loss of 5,000 bales of this year's cotton crop. Greer county, which, until a few years ago, was a part of Texas, is one of the big cotton producers of the territory. This year the farmers raised 20 per cent. increased acreage and a 15-per-cent. increase yield, but there is a labor famine. The growers have been threatened by the citizens in general upon every attempt to import negroes, but unless the necessary laborers are secured in the immediate future the financial loss will be great. The growers now have a movement on foot to bring 100 Mexican families to pick the cotton crop. Since the organization of Greer county no negroes have been allowed to live within its boundaries.
Negroes are not allowed to live or work in the town of Norman, containing 2,000 population. Last winter a negro went there to put a tin roof on a building. He was attacked by a mob and cruelly beaten. He brought suit for $20,000 against the town, claiming that the police officers failed to protect him.
William Pickens set a precedent last week when he led the forum meeting at the University of Oklahoma at Norman, a town near here where Negroes are not allowed to live, and several years ago 'dared not be seen after dark.'
The negro is thought less of here than the Indian. A negro is not allowed to live or stay in this town. They are hounded and driven out, mostly by the ultra abolitionists and hoodlums of the town.
'Norman was a very traditional Southern town,' [Norman Human Rights Commission chair Richard] Kenderdine said, explaining reasons for the opposition. Until the early 1960s, Norman was known as a 'sundown town' where blacks dared not be seen in public after dark, he said. And even in the late 1960s, blacks had trouble buying homes in Norman, he said.
Last week, after the riat [sic] at Stroud, a sign was painted and stuck up on one of the prominent corners which read: 'Nigger, don't let the sun go down on U.'
There will be no race question to bother the residents of Lemon [sic] in the immediate future. This is due to the fact that Negroes are not allowed to live in Lemmon. Several Colored men recently appeared here, and the citizens did not loke their looks the newcomers were quickly requested by some of the young men of the town to seek new fields. The Negroes lost no time in replying with the 'request.' It is believed they were from some of the larger cities.
I have been in Crossville before—but not for long. No Negroes are allowed to live here. On a tree near the city limits is this sign: 'Nigger, don't let the sun set on you here.' Since it is early morning and the sun long has set, I remain aboard the bus for the 20-minute stop here. I do see two Negro passengers going down a corridor into the kitchen for sandwiches, however. But even in this all-White community (one Negro family lived just outside it eight years ago, but has moved now) I can write about progress in the south—progress that would be noticed only by a Negro grown sensitive to the little shades of race relations.
The Negro population, which was very small, was located in two areas in Unicoi County: Sam's Gap, descended from slaves owned by Josiah Sams, and Erwin, where they were railroad laborers. In 1918, unrestrained, ghoulish, mob violence eradicated the Negro population in Unicoi County. Charles Edward Price Papers, Box 1, Folder 6, Blacks in Unicoi County, TN.
Alba, Texas was so named because settlers did not permit negroes to live there. Alba means 'white.'
It must be remembered that the labor situation at Alba and surrounding territory is different from that which prevails at any other lignite or coal mine in the entire State of Texas; this is due to the fact that the citizens of Alba and that community will not permit either negroes or Mexicans to work there. This makes the owners of the lignite mines at Hoyt, Tex., entirely dependent on white labor; whereas at other mines in Texas both negro and Mexican labor is permitted to enjoy the legal right to work.
It was pointed out that practically no negroes are allowed to live in Alvin and that Lapham's home was near the Mexican quarter of the town.
A state civil rights board indicated Tuesday Kennewick has virtually barred its gates to Negroes and gained a reputation as a 'sundown town' where Negroes must leave after dark.
The proclamation came a little over a month after Kabat apologized for La Crosse's history as a 'sundown town,' a city or village with either formal or informal codes that pushed black people out of the community after sundown, after a presentation from sociologist James Loewen at La Crosse City Hall. Loewen was invited by the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse and the city's Human Rights Commission.
As an African-American, Brooks was not allowed to stay overnight in Manitowoc, a 'sundown town,' after she gave a poetry reading in the city on May 9, 1968.
One Optimist claimed that loan requirements of the Federal Home and Housing Agency will force Sheboygan to sell homes to Negroes 'and when that happens the lid is going to blow off.' The same Optimist asserted that present city officials deny that Sheboygan has an ordinance preventing Negroes from living in Sheboygan. But, he claimed, Sheboygan adopted such an ordinance in 1887 – 'that no Negroes will be housed in Sheboygan – and it is still on the books.'
[James] Loewen's testimonies are remembered, secondary accounts. The Sheboygan Press archives also tell a story of discriminatory local discourse and policy. The very rumor of a sundown ordinance prompted then-Mayor John Bolgert in 1959 to outright deny that Sheboygan had any sundown laws. He cited as proof that black people were able to live in the city when they were playing baseball for the local minor league team. The same story reported a local pastor as saying there was no prejudice toward black people because there were none here.