Home » Oklahoma » Blackwell

James W. Loewen (1942-2021)

We mourn the loss of our friend and colleague and remain committed to the work he began.

Blackwell

Oklahoma

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?
Surely
Was there an ordinance?
Don't Know
Sign?
Perhaps, Some Oral Evidence
Year of Greatest Interest
Still Sundown?
Probably

Census Information

The available census data from 1860 to the present
Total White Black Asian Native Hispanic Other BHshld
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930 9,521 5
1940
1950 9,199 5
1960 9,588 2
1970
1980
1990 7,538 6
2000
2010
2020

Method of Exclusion

  • Violent Expulsion

Main Ethnic Group(s)

  • Unknown

Group(s) Excluded

  • Black

Comments

According to the 1967 book From Slavery To Freedom,
by John Hope Franklin, Blackwell drove out its black
population around 1890.

“I grew up in the Cherokee Strip town of Blackwell,
Oklahoma. The sign there said, I believe, ‘The Sun
Doesn’t Set on a Nigger in Blackwell.’
“I was 7 when my family moved there in 1960. I never
saw the sign, but always heard about it from other
kids and even from adults. It supposedly hung over
the bridge into town. The town was very proud of it’s
anti black history. The folk tale was that the town’s
founder ‘Colonel’ Blackwell had killed a black man and
there had never been a black person in the town since.
I understand a black retired military officer lived
moved there sometime in the 70’s, after I had moved
away, but when I returned to visit in 2002, I was told
by a woman in the local museum that there were ‘still
no niggers, thank God, but the Mexicans have found
us.'”
-posted to the web, 2006