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?
- Sign?
- Year of Greatest Interest
- Still Sundown?
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | ||||||||
| 1930 | ||||||||
| 1940 | ||||||||
| 1950 | ||||||||
| 1960 | ||||||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 3969 | 3225 | 519 | 2 | ||||
| 2000 | ||||||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Threat of Violence
Main Ethnic Group(s)
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
7/2007
Your presentation on sundown towns recalled for me an incident related to me by friends who had experienced blatant racism in Bordentown NJ while on a trip from Washington, DC to New York City in 1934 or 1935.
The two young men, both students at The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH (where they could not live in a dormitory on the OSU campus) had visited a friend who was a student at Howard University in Washington. On the next leg of their trip — to take in New York City — they drove up through NJ, and decided to stop in Bordentown to get a bite to eat. They were told that not only would they not be able to do that, they had better get outof Bordentown “before the sun went down”. Needless to say, they did just that.
Neither of them ever forgot the pure hatred evidenced in the looks and manners of the restaurant owner and his customers as the two of them beat a hasty retreat from the premises. The two young men went on to graduate from college and to have successful professional careers in their home town, Cleveland, Ohio.
I checked the details of this story with the survivor, and he confirmed my recollection of the details as related to me many years ago.
You must remember that there were segregated schools in New Jersey when the Supreme Court decided Brown in 1954. There were many “white” towns in NJ well into the 1970’s — not by law, but just because everybody knew if you were “colored”, “Negro”, “Black” or African American — you weren’t welcome.