Basic Information
- Type of Place
- Independent City or Town
- Metro Area
- Kansas City
- Politics c. 1860?
- Don’t Know
- Unions, Organized Labor?
- Don’t Know
Sundown Town Status
- Sundown Town in the Past?
- Possible
- Was there an ordinance?
- Don't Know
- Sign?
- Don’t Know
- Year of Greatest Interest
- Still Sundown?
- Surely Not
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | ||||||||
| 1930 | 2574 | 4 | ||||||
| 1940 | ||||||||
| 1950 | 3886 | 32 | ||||||
| 1960 | 5657 | 3 | ||||||
| 1970 | 5183 | 6 | ||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 4130 | 75 | ||||||
| 2000 | 4714 | 187 | ||||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
Said to be a sundown town, according to a resident who lived there from 1973-77 and 1986-many years. His father, living in KC, told him, and it was common knowledge.
In Andrew County, there was never any organized effort to make it a community of any one particular racial group. After doing our own investigation and discussions with several long time Society members and our Genealogy Department, there is no evidence of newspaper articles, signs, photographs or oral tradition indicating anything like this. There is no documentary evidence or stories of any community in Andrew County having kept any racial group from its city limits. Fortunately for our county, we should not be listed as a “Sundown Town” for your project.
Also, we are not aware of communities in adjacent counties that would be designated as such.
Incidentally, the only community in the state we are familiar with being associated with one racial make up is/was near St. Louis, Missouri; an all Black community, Kinlock, Missouri.
[Andrew County Museum]
Andrew County had 400 African Americans in 1870 and 250 in 1890 (out of 16,000), but just 42 by 1940 and 12 in 1950. Quite a decrease! I note that the county had just 5 African Americans by 1960.
***
Email 11/2007:
Message: This town is not in Andrew County. It is in Clay County.
A suburb, incorporated 1911, it was thought to be sundown be nearly everyone I’ve spoken with. I attended high school there in the 1980s, my parents went there in the 1960s. In the 1980s the black population of the high school was still about 1%.