Maps: Historical Sundown Towns

History and Social Justice website:

A sundown town is not just a place where something racist happened. It is an entire community (or even county) that for decades was “all white” on purpose. “All white” is in quotes because some towns allowed one black family to remain when they drove out the rest. Also, institutionalized persons (in prisons, hospitals, colleges, etc.), live-in servants (in white households), and black or interracial children (in white households) do not violate the taboo.

“On purpose” does not require a formal ordinance. If, for example, if a black family tried to move in, encountered considerable hostility, and left, that would qualify the town as “sundown.” Note that some sundown towns kept out Chinese Americans, Jews, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, even Mormons.

Not all towns are thoroughly confirmed. Look over the information provided and come to your own conclusion. And of course, a town may have been sundown once, but now is not. Ferguson, MO, was a sundown town between 1940 and 1960. By 2014, when racial conflict famously erupted there, it was 67% black, so it was certainly no longer a sundown town. However, like some other “recovering” sundown towns, it still displayed “second generation sundown town problems”, in this case an overwhelmingly white police force that still engaged in “DWB policing.”

Geographic Map of Historical Sundown Towns