Eugene

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?

Surely

Was there an ordinance?

Yes, Strong Oral Tradition

Sign?

Perhaps, Some Oral Evidence

Year of Greatest Interest

Still Sundown?

Surely Not

Census Information

The available census data from 1860 to the present

	Total	White	Black	Asian	Native	Hispanic	Other	BHshld
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910	9559		6
1920	10593		9
1930	18901		5
1940	20838		7
1950	35879		55
1960			179
1970	76346		600					103
1980
1990	112669		16					2
2000			1729	4916	1281	6843	3003
2010
2020

Method of Exclusion

• Threat of Violence

Main Ethnic Group(s)

• Unknown

Group(s) Excluded

• Black

Comments

“By 1923 Eugene would be described as one of the
‘thoroughly Ku Kluxed cities of Oregon.'” “Eugene’s
few dozen black families, whose men were
predomantly railroad employees and women domestic
servants, lived in small residential pockets near the
Ferry Street Bridge [now part of Eugene, but formerly a
separate town] and in West Eugene [a separate town].”

“She looked at me like I was stupid and said
something to the effect that sundown laws were on
the books (but ignored) until about 15 years ago, and
that it was a really big deal, and not a secret, and
anyone who said Eugene wasn’t sundown must not
have lived here very long…. I asked how she knew this
and she said ‘everybody knows it.'”
– posted to the web, 2003

“There was a recent serious controversy over
removal of a 47’ high concrete cross in a park atop
Skinner’s Butte, the high point of the city: the atheists
finally got it removed as a church/state violation over
the opposition of conservative Christians. Only
occasionally mentioned was the fact that the cross was
apparently a concrete version of the wooden cross
burned atop the Butte starting in the 1930s to warn
off non whites.”
-posted to the web, 2003