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?
- Surely
- Was there an ordinance?
- Perhaps, Some Oral Evidence
- Sign?
- Perhaps, Some Oral Evidence
- 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 | 1702 | 0 | ||||||
| 1940 | ||||||||
| 1950 | ||||||||
| 1960 | 3810 | 1 | ||||||
| 1970 | 4791 | 1 | ||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 5334 | 12 | 0 | |||||
| 2000 | 6040 | 4 | 17 | 17 | 53 | |||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Threat of Violence
- Reputation
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
Emma Lou Thornbrough writes in _The Negro in Indiana_ (Indianapolis: IN Historical Bureau, 1957), “Negroes were not allowed in Scottsburg or Lexington in Scott County, and the census figures for 1890 and 1900 show only one colored person in the entire county. (p. 226) In 2000, Scott County had not one black household! Eleven blacks.
A woman who lived in Scottsburg, Indiana during the 1920s through the 1960s recalls that there was a prominent sign welcoming folks to Sandoval: “Welcome to Sandoval, the town where the sun never sets on a nigger.” Also, Scottsberg had an ordinance which required blacks to be out of town by sundown. Her mother had a teen aged house servant who had to driven out of town before evening fell each day. She had come to be in their household after having worked for them in Lake Charles, Louisiana and having left that state with them when they relocated to Scottsburg.