Basic Information
- Type of Place
- Independent City or Town
- Metro Area
- Politics c. 1860?
- Strongly Republican
- Unions, Organized Labor?
- Don’t Know
Sundown Town Status
- Sundown Town in the Past?
- Possible
- Was there an ordinance?
- Don't Know
- Sign?
- No
- Year of Greatest Interest
- 1900?
- Still Sundown?
- Surely Not
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | 2579 | |||||||
| 1900 | 5904 | 11 | ||||||
| 1910 | 8102 | 13 | ||||||
| 1920 | 7871 | 17 | ||||||
| 1930 | ||||||||
| 1940 | ||||||||
| 1950 | 11708 | 4 male | ||||||
| 1960 | 18486 | 53 | ||||||
| 1970 | 32949 | 597 | ||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | ||||||||
| 2000 | ||||||||
| 2010 | 44030 | 5596 | 1732 | |||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
“When I taught at Northern Illinois U., 1959 67, DeKalb allowed no black students to rent in town nor were they welcome in local bars and restaurants (the campus itself was even segregated for a time).” — historian Mel Dubofsky, email, 6/2002.
Two people told me the local oral history that a deal was cut, whereby DeKalb did not contest Sycamore’s right to remain the county seat, even though it was smaller than DeKalb, if it would take DeKalb’s blacks. One retired NIU professor:
“According to local legend, in the early days of DeKalb County, Illinois (ca. 1850s), when the county was organized there was the usual county seat battle between two towns: DeKalb and, four miles away, Sycamore. It was resolved in this fashion. Sycamore became the county seat on the condition that it accept all the blacks moving into the area. When I moved to DeKalb in 1959 for my first teaching position, it was still nearly lilly white. Even NIU black faculty (a very few) lived then in Sycamore.”
A friend in Illinois educational circles then reported to me: “long time residents think there may be something to this story. There is a well established black community in Sycamore, occupying the same neighborhood where they have resided for many decades.”
On the other hand, one local historian retorted that this idea was nonsense and he had never heard it.