Basic Information
- Type of Place
- Independent City or Town
- Metro Area
- Politics c. 1860?
- Don’t Know
- Unions, Organized Labor?
- Don’t Know
Sundown Town Status
- Sundown Town in the Past?
- Probable
- Was there an ordinance?
- Don't Know
- Sign?
- Don’t Know
- Year of Greatest Interest
- Still Sundown?
- Don’t Know
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | 2025 | 13 | ||||||
| 1870 | 4119 | 3 | ||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | 3358 | 0 | ||||||
| 1900 | 3818 | 0 | ||||||
| 1910 | 3789 | 0 | ||||||
| 1920 | 3929 | 2 | ||||||
| 1930 | 3984 | 0 | ||||||
| 1940 | 4566 | 1 | ||||||
| 1950 | 5619 | 3 | ||||||
| 1960 | 6163 | 0 | ||||||
| 1970 | 7053 | 49 | ||||||
| 1980 | 7111 | 18 | ||||||
| 1990 | 7241 | 22 | ||||||
| 2000 | 6828 | 13 | ||||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
Local resident said he is pretty sure that Ripon was always segregated when he grew up although the town claims to have been part of the Underground Railroad. Guess it was OK to have blacks pass through town, but not good enough for them to stay.
Black-faced “coach boy” statuettes are still in yards in Ripon.
Ripon has a black alderman!
Minstrel shows went on in Ripon and other Wisconsin towns at least to the 1960s.
According to a professor, black students in Ripon got followed around in stores much more than white students.
My wife tells me in all the many documents she read over the years at the Ripon Historical Society (she was once president), she does not recall any which suggest prejudice or that blacks may have been kept out or driven out. However, she agrees with your comment that this sort of informal norm is rarely written down. She mentioned that there are documents establishing that fugitives on the Underground Railroad were harbored in Ripon. Perhaps it was the New England Yankee influence in settlement, or the Fourierite influence of Ceresco, once a separate town, now the west end of Ripon, which was founded in the 1850’s as a commune (lasted less than a decade).
Her preference is for the loneliness hypothesis, especially in a town this size, but I can also cite individual examples of subtle and sometimes not so subtle prejudice related to me by black and Asian students here over the years. Yet, one of the city’s present aldermen is black (he’s a development officer at the college). So it is indeed hard to sort out.