Tuscola

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?

Possible

Was there an ordinance?

Don't Know

Sign?

Perhaps, Some Oral Evidence

Year of Greatest Interest

Still Sundown?

Probably Not, Although Still Very Few Black People

Census Information

The available census data from 1860 to the present

	Total	White	Black	Asian	Native	Hispanic	Other	BHshld
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900	2498		70
1910
1920	2564		55
1930	2568		26
1940
1950	2960		4
1960
1970	3917							2
1980
1990	4155
2000	4448	4364	14
2010	4480		17					3
2020

Method of Exclusion

Main Ethnic Group(s)

Group(s) Excluded

• Black

Comments

I lived in Tuscola, Ill. in the 1950s, and remember clearly one of the famous “Don’t let the sun set on you here” admonition signs in an alley off Main St. by the Drug Store. I don’t know if Tuscola was considered a Sundown Town at that time, or not, but it was surely lily white at the time. I also remember hearing that area towns of Arcola, Monticello, and Villa Grove were ‘sundown towns'(2004)
The one I remember was posted in the alley, on the wall of a building, right at the alley entrance, by the Drug Store. (2004)

Between 1922 and 1924, the town had a pretty large KKK presence. In 1924, the Klan held a parade in the town, and participants ranged in the thousands. The Tuscola Journal has several articles during this time that chronicle the Klan’s activities, most of which seem to have been directed against immigrants and Catholics.

A publication by the county’s historical society chronicled the lives of several African Americans in the town between 1890 and 1940. The article highlighted the town’s tolerance at the time. However, most of the African Americans chronicled seem to have moved out of Tuscola (most of them died in nearby towns of Danville and Champaign, but were buried in Tuscola)