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?
- Don't Know
- Sign?
- Don’t Know
- Year of Greatest Interest
- Still Sundown?
- Probably Not, Although Still Very Few Black People
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | ||||||||
| 1930 | ||||||||
| 1940 | ||||||||
| 1950 | 3907 | 0 | ||||||
| 1960 | 5766 | 1 | ||||||
| 1970 | 7589 | 2 | 17 | |||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 8885 | 8793 | 2 | 1 | ||||
| 2000 | 9279 | 9038 | 8 | 2 | ||||
| 2010 | 11560 | 53 | 45 | 29 | ||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
- Jewish
Comments
A resident of Northwest Indiana and high school teacher emailed us: “For many years, there was a dance hall called the Midway Ballroom. My grandmother (and other elderly members of my family) clearly remembered a sign posted outside the dance hall that read “Gentiles Only.” This sign would have been present during the 1930s and 1940s, when my grandmother and gradnfather were in their 20s and 30s. There still seems to be a permeable anti-black sentiment in the town, but that is purely conjecture on my part. I can say with some degree of certainty that Cedar Lake was a sundown town as recently as the 1980s. I do remember some African Americans stating that they would not go into Cedar Lake at night for any reason. I would say that the African American population in Cedar Lake has increased since 2000, but I would not state that the town is exclusionary towards blacks.”