Basic Information
- Type of Place
- County
- Metro Area
- Far West
- Politics c. 1860?
- Don’t Know
- Unions, Organized Labor?
- Don’t Know
Sundown Town Status
- Sundown Town in the Past?
- Probable
- 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 | 47 | |||||||
| 1880 | 33 | |||||||
| 1890 | 5867 | 24 | ||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | ||||||||
| 1930 | 16740 | 133 | ||||||
| 1940 | 31477 | 7 | ||||||
| 1950 | 35748 | 7 | ||||||
| 1960 | ||||||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | ||||||||
| 2000 | 26978 | 26101 | 708 | |||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- English
- German Catholic
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
In 1890, there were 24 blacks in a total population 5,867. In 1930, there were 133 blacks in a total population of 16,740. In 1940, Buchanan County suddenly drops to 7 blacks, where it stays in 1950. So a pogrom happened in the 1930s.
Testimony of a local resident: “I never saw the signs, but when I was growing up in Virginia in the late ’50s, I remember hearing that the town of Mineral (in Louisa County) and the whole of Buchanan County (interestingly, in the mountains) were posted to warn Blacks.”
About Grundy, the county seat, people said, as a joke, “White man says to black man on the street, ‘The last train left 30 minutes ago. If you hurry you can catch it!'” It was a coal mining town whose population increased, but no blacks were let in.
Grundy has the new Appalachian School of Law, where an African killed a professor, dean, and student. There are African students, probably African Americans now. Peter Odighizuwa, 44, paranoid schizophrenic, was ruled unfit to stand trial, 8/8/2002. Stacey H. Beans, law student shot at close range, survived. “O, allegedly enraged at flunking out of the school, killed three and wounded three on campus 1/16/2002, authorities said.” (Fredrick Kunkle, “Va. Rampage Suspect Ruled Unift for Trial,” Washington Post, 8/9/2002.)
Testimony of a local resident: “When I was growing up I often heard that there were signs up on the roads leading into the Buchanan Co., VA line that stated something like “Nigger, don’t let the sun set on you in this county.”
I’m from Wise County, VA, and went over there on occasion. I never saw the signs but of course I wasn’t looking for them either.”
Testimony of a local resident: “I remember seeing with my own eyes signs around Grundy, Virginia proclaiming their lack of tolerance for ‘negroes after sundown’.”
An African American resident of Bluefield in Tazewell County recounts his experience in 1948: “Blacks were afraid to go to Grundy. A Jewish family had an upholstery shop in Bluefield. I worked for them. When we went to Grundy I had to get out of the cab and get in the back under a tarp until we got to the house. Then I got out and helped deliver the furniture. The people I was delivering to, they were as nice to me as anybody, gave me kool-aid and everything…Then I had to get back in the back under the tarp until we got back to Tazewell [County], and then I could get back in the cab.”
The following excerpt is from an interview done in 1991 as part of the Black Appalachian Oral History Project by Dr. Michael Cooke of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. In this project Dr. Cooke conducted 22 oral history interviews (on 25 tapes) of and about blacks in Appalachia, predominantly in Montogomery County, Virginia:
Smyth: “I will go ahead and offer something of the Sundown aspect of the town in which my parents grew up by and in, Grundy, Virginia. This was told to me by great-uncle. The town/county had been Sundown ever since a black man reportedly raped the white school teacher. The story goes that a mob grabbed him, hung him from the school’s steeple, and then burnt down the building. (Excessive, eh?) From that point on, my great-uncle said, Grundy had been Sundown. More interestingly, my parents had never heard the story.” (“Timeline of Black History at VT,”
Black Appalachian Oral History Project.
Interview with Ellison A. Smyth, Date of Interview: 5 March 1991; Blacksburg, VA
Interviewer: Michael A. Cooke, Assistant Professor of History, Virginia Tech.
http://spec.lib.vt.edu/archives/images/archives.gif,” accessed May 14, 2002.