Basic Information
- Type of Place
- County
- Metro Area
- Politics c. 1860?
- Unions, Organized Labor?
Sundown Town Status
- Sundown Town in the Past?
- Surely
- Was there an ordinance?
- Don't Know
- Sign?
- Perhaps, Some Oral Evidence
- 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 | 7749 | 6851 | 898 | |||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | 10559 | 9072 | 1487 | |||||
| 1890 | 1288 | |||||||
| 1900 | 11550 | 10467 | 1083 | |||||
| 1910 | 11940 | 10842 | 1098 | |||||
| 1920 | 11755 | 11725 | 30 | |||||
| 1930 | 10624 | 10607 | 17 | |||||
| 1940 | 41 | |||||||
| 1950 | 47 | |||||||
| 1960 | 12170 | 12166 | 4 | |||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 44083 | 43573 | 14 | |||||
| 2000 | 98407 | 93531 | 684 | |||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Violent Expulsion
- Threat of Violence
- Reputation
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
In September of 1912, African American Edward Collins was shot in jail by a mob. In the aftermath of this, white vigilantes circulated flyers demanding that all blacks leave Forsyth County.
In January, 1987, when Atlanta Councilman Hosea Williams and other civil rights demonstrators marched in Forsyth County, GA, the KKK harassed them. Only five people from Forsyth County joined the march. “A week after that incident, 25,000 demonstrators from across the country joined Williams for a second parade in Forsyth County. In August, the KKK staged its own march in Forsyth County 2014 and drew about 100 participants. ‘That just shows you what a pitiful state we’re in these days,’ grumbled Venable. ‘Hosea Williams can get thousands of people out to march, and the Klan gets 100. He looked around at the some 400 self-proclaimed ‘racialists’ attending his Labor Day rally and shook his head. ‘Used to be we had dozens of chartered buses from all over the country bringing people in for our Labor Day rally. Why, governors used to be KKK members. Now look at us.”
-“Klan Concedes It Is Fighting A Losing Battle In Courts”, Strat Douthat, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 11
October 1987
Forsyth County was featured on a 1987 episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show. When Winfrey asked a resident of Forsyth County if they believed people
of color had the right to live wherever they wanted, the person responded “They have the right to live wherever they want to, but we have the right to choose if we want a white community also. That’s why we moved here.”
Another resident said “I’m afraid of them coming to Forsyth County. I lived down in Atlanta. I was born in Atlanta, and in 1963, the first blacks were bused to West Fulton HS, and I go down there now, and I see my neighborhood and my community, which was a nice community, a nice neighborhood, and now it’s nothing but a rat-infested slum area because they don’t care. They don’t care… And if niggers come in here, it’s going to be like Decatur, DeKalb County, Fulton County, Atlanta. It’s going to be nothing but a slum area.”
Another audience member commented that “I’ve invited blacks that I work with to my home, but they wouldn’t come because of where I live.” In a 2001 update, Winfrey noted that several black people had moved to the county since 1996 and weren’t experiencing problems.