Basic Information
- Type of Place
- Independent City or Town
- Metro Area
- Politics c. 1860?
- Unions, Organized Labor?
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?
- 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 | ||||||||
| 1960 | ||||||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 2384 | |||||||
| 2000 | 2647 | 2616 | 4 | |||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
Main Ethnic Group(s)
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
email 1/2008 Auburn resident, 1971-89, reports Pawnee is sundown:
I saw the information regarding your research of Sundown Towns in the current Teaching Tolerance magazine. There are not many central Illinois towns listed on your list and I most certainly grew up in a sundown town. Auburn, where I spent the first 23 years of my life, was an all white town…no other ethnic groups were present or allowed. There was a saying that “once the sun went down, no niggers were allowed in town.” Well, in all actuality, no black people were allowed in town at all; day or night. All three schools from K to 12, were all white the entire time I was there from 1977 to 1989. As far as I know, until just recently, that hadn’t changed. But Auburn was not the only town, there was Thayer, Virden, Divernon, Pawnee, Girard…and some smaller towns in between that most certainly had unwritten rules about black people. I just thought that I would add to your wealth of information and maybe you could do some more research into the towns in central Illinois.