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?
- Yes, Strong Oral Tradition
- 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 | 3929 | 0 | 0 | |||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | 4410 | |||||||
| 1920 | 4299 | 0 | 0 | |||||
| 1930 | 4386 | 0 | 0 | |||||
| 1940 | 4828 | 0 | ||||||
| 1950 | ||||||||
| 1960 | 4119 | 0 | 0 | |||||
| 1970 | 4293 | 1 | ||||||
| 1980 | 3816 | 0 | ||||||
| 1990 | ||||||||
| 2000 | 3965 | 4 | 1 | |||||
| 2010 | 3750 | 20 | 5 | |||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
Current Aurora residents think that Aurora is sundown today, and an older resident rememberd that he saw signs. Nearby towns Rising Sun and Lawrenceburg have blacks, however.
Dearborn county has >200 blacks. But not Aurora, whose statistics are almost all-white.
A resident of Lawrenceburg, Indiana near Aurora informed us that “Aurora used to have a sign entering the city up until the 1980’s that said, “Niggers, don’t let the sun set on your back.” There were also three Klan parades in the late 1970’s down the main street.”
According to a man whose father was a resident of Aurora in the 1920’s: My father told stories of watching the KKK burning crosses outside of town. His family was well off at the time, so they had African-American servants. As he explained it to me, the women who did this work were required to get out of town before dark because of a sign at the edge of town that said, “N—–, Don’t Let The Sun Set On Your Head In Aurora.”
One past resident said, “A teacher once told me that years before my birth (1979) on fair evenings men would line the roof tops of the main streets with their firearms in order to ensure that the Black visitors would leave as the festivites wound down for the night.”