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?
- Perhaps, Some Oral Evidence
- 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 | 2,009 | 6 | ||||||
| 1950 | ||||||||
| 1960 | ||||||||
| 1970 | 13,524 | 31 | ||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | ||||||||
| 2000 | ||||||||
| 2010 | 13,956 | 250 | ||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Zoning
- Realtors
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
A former resident of Orange, Connecticut, described the town as “pretty white in the fifties.”
She gave the following account about her time spent in Orange: “In grade school I made friends with the only black girl I ever saw while I was there. My mother was negative about me going over this girl’s house so I never found out where she lived. There was a small area of military housing in the town. That girl wasn’t
around very long. When I was a little older, my father mentioned that Orange had zoning meant to keep the
black people out. At least that was the way he looked at it. Other than a small apartment building and a small trailer park, there weren’t any multi family units available for low income people. I guess the zoning was put in around the time of World War II or a little after.”
The former resident also spoke with an older Orange resident – “Doc” – who used to be a first selectman during the 80’s. She said Doc reported that his father was one of the people who tried to get the zoning in. He quoted his father as saying “We don’t want Orange
to turn into a red light district like New Haven!”
Doc thought that the realtors didn’t want the blacks to move in and were behind it all. He said he used to needle one of his real estate friends about why didn’t he sell to blacks. After many years of this, the realtor finally did sell a home to a black family, and immediately called up him to let him know. But still not too many blacks have moved in, and prices have remained high in Orange.
The former resident added that the towns of Orange, Bethany (where she currently resides) and Woodbridge are all still mostly white.
Email from longtime resident:
9/2010
“I grew up mostly in Orange. In high school, a black friend moved to our town. Within days there were flyers up in the neighborhood calling a “safety meeting.” This was not something that’d happened in that neighborhood before, and was pretty clearly motivated by their moving in.”