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?
- Probable
- Was there an ordinance?
- Yes, Written Evidence
- Sign?
- Don’t Know
- Year of Greatest Interest
- 1890s
- Still Sundown?
- Probably
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | ||||||||
| 1930 | ||||||||
| 1940 | ||||||||
| 1950 | 1215 | 0 | ||||||
| 1960 | 1065 | 0 | ||||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 703 | 0 | ||||||
| 2000 | 593 | 576 | 2 | 2 | ||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
According to a local historian:
“The coal mining town of Corning, Ohio, in Perry County is probably such a town. There were local laws setting curfew times for blacks. A neighboring community became entirely African American.
The basis of my knowledge is having seen the record books and reading the law. The date was, I believe, 1898. The record books for the village of Corning were not well cared for, matter of fact they were in an attic above an abandoned fire station. Corning is a very small town, but I think some of the local people rescued the records they could on being made aware they were there. Whether they have these books or whether they are in an archive now I couldn’t say for sure.
The neighboring community is Rendville. Adam Clayton Powell (again I’m not sure if it was Sr. or Jr.) was born there. Rendville did not begin as a black community, but it was one of many towns that sprang up in the late 19th century because of coal mining in the area. Rendville actually began as the
town for the workers of the W.P. Rend mine, the first settlers were mostly Irish, I have read. Over the years, and after some nasty mine strikes, there were more and more black miners (often brought in because of mine strikes to work in place of the strikers). As you might imagine, there was hostility, and segregation was in effect in most extractive industry towns in southeast Ohio. Corning is one village that actually had laws.
I don’t know of any incidents of black people trying to move to Corning, but Rendville was only a matter of a couple hundred feet across the railroad tracks and auto road.”
In Ohio, mine companies put blacks in Buchtel and Congo hamlets and in Rendville, which was half black, and Corning, which had a black section of town.
[Ronald L. Lewis, Black Coal Miners in America (Lexington: UP of KY, 1987), 86.]