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 | ||||||||
| 2000 | ||||||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
Email 1/2008
I just discovered your work- last year I discovered the phenomena. I grew up in the small town of Conestoga, PA. Known for cigars and wagons, rifles and Indian tribes, but not, it seems, for its sundowned black community.
Out of personal interest I had been reading the census entries for the past couple of centuries. I discovered that there had once been quite a large black community down in a “hollow” just outside of town. There had been a church, and a graveyard, and a well known woman “herb doctor” in the years after the Civil War. Then, mysteriously, they vanished from the records. Growing up in the 60’s there, I never even heard a rumor of the existence of a “darktown” in our community.
I did assume that they had been forced out by the Klan or similar organizations. We may be north of the Mason-Dixon Line geographically, but not so much mentally. Even the Italian family in town, our barber, was viewed with suspicion.
Thanks for tying this in with the larger picture. This phenomenon should be more widely understood.