Home » Ohio » Galion

James W. Loewen (1942-2021)

We mourn the loss of our friend and colleague and remain committed to the work he began.

Galion

Ohio

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?
Possible
Was there an ordinance?
Don't Know
Sign?
Don’t Know
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 7214 14
1920 7374 5
1930 7674 1
1940 8685 10
1950 9952 3
1960 12650 3
1970 13123 1
1980 12424 8
1990 11785 11
2000 11341 25 35 30
2010 10512 50 14 21
2020

Method of Exclusion

  • Unknown

Main Ethnic Group(s)

  • Unknown

Group(s) Excluded

  • Black

Comments

After a lynching, such as in Akron, Galion, and Urbana, “I found the prejudice much stronger than it was before the lynching, and the Negroes fewer in number.”
[Frank U. Quillen, The Color Line in OH (Ann Arbor: Wahr, 1913), 115.]

Galion had a lynching in 1882.
Frank Fisher, black, lynched for assault of young girl, 4/30/1882, NY Times 5/1/1882.

Email testimony from a former resident: “I can only offer dimly remembered anecdotal evidence for this, but my family lived in Galion from 1964 until 1966; however many years later when we moved away, my mother told me that when she and my father first moved to town, the real estate agent who showed them around mentioned that the last “Negro” who had tried to move there had been lynched, something she (the real estate agent, not my mother, thankfully) seemed to feel was something of a selling point.”

Email testimony from a former resident: “I lived in Galion, Ohio from 1952 until 1964 and found it to be extremely biased and unaccepting of anyone from the [black] race, anyone outside of those who came from certain ethnic backgrounds, those below a certain economic status, and a nonacceptance of people who were of certain religions other than protestant. I have lived in 15 different states and have found that Galion was the hardest adjustment that I have ever tried to make.”