Basic Information
- Type of Place
- Independent City or Town
- Metro Area
- Far West
- 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?
- Don't Know
- Sign?
- Yes, Strong Oral Tradition
- Year of Greatest Interest
- c.1935
- Still Sundown?
- Probably
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | ||||||||
| 1930 | ||||||||
| 1940 | 1476 | 5 | ||||||
| 1950 | ||||||||
| 1960 | 2287 | 1 | ||||||
| 1970 | 2954 | 0 | ||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 1140 | 62 | ||||||
| 2000 | 1105 | 198 | ||||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
* Of the 62 reported African Americans in Grundy in 1990, all are under the age of 19. This suggests that there is an orphanage or other institution in the town, rather than black residents.
* Of the 198 African Americans reported in 2000, all but 5 were under age 19, again suggesting non-household persons.
Grundy is the county seat of Buchanan County. In 1890, the county had 24 blacks in a total population of 5,867. In 1930, there were 133 blacks in 16,740. In 1940, Buchanan County suddenly drops to 7 blacks, where it stays in 1950. So a pogrom probably happened in the 1930s.
Testimony of a former resident: “I never saw the signs, but when I was growing up in Virginia in the late ’50’s, I remember hearing that town of Mineral (in Louisa County) and the whole of Buchanan County (interestingly, in the mountains) were posted to warn Blacks not to let the sun set on them there.”
Testimony of a former resident: “When I was growing up I often heard that there were signs up on the roads leading into the Buchanan Co., Va. line that stated something like ‘Nigger, don’t let the sun set on you in this county.’
I’m from Wise County, Va., and went over there on occasion. I never saw the signs but of course I wasn’t looking for them either.”
Testimony of a black resident of nearby Bluefield, VA, describing his experience in Grundy in 1948:
“Blacks were afraid to go to Grundy. A Jewish family had an upholstery shop in Bluefield. I worked for them. When we went to Grundy I had to get out of the cab and get in the back under a tarp until we got to the house. Then I got out and helped deliver the furniture. The people I was delivering to, they were as nice to me as anybody, gave me kool-aid and everything. Then I had to get back in the back under the tarp until we got back to Tazewell [County], and then I could get back in the cab.”
Testimony of a former resident: “I remember seeing with my own eyes signs around Grundy, Virginia proclaiming their lack of tolerance for ‘negroes after sundown.'”
“I will go ahead and offer something of the Sundown aspect of the town in which my parents grew up by and in, Grundy, Virginia. This was told to me by great-uncle. The town/county had been Sundown ever since a black man reportedly raped the white school teacher. The story goes that a mob grabbed him, hung him from the school’s steeple, and then burnt down the building. (Excessive, eh?) From that point on, my great-uncle said, Grundy had been Sundown. More interestingly, my parents had never heard the story.”
(Black Appalachian Oral History Project
Interview with Ellison A. Smyth, 5 March 1991. At “Timeline of Black History at VT,” http://spec.lib.vt.edu/archives/images/archives.gif”)
Two additional former residents claim that all of Buchanan County is sundown.
Grundy has the new Appalachian School of Law, where an African student killed a professor, dean, and student. There are African students, and probably African Americans students, now. Peter O, 44, paranoid schizophrenic, was ruled unfit to stand trial, 8/8/2002. Stacey H. Beans, law student shot at close range, survived. “Odighizuwa, allegedly enraged at flunking out of the school, killed three and wounded three on campus 1/16/2002, authorities said.” The incident seems to have nothing to do with Grundy’s racial history.
In fall, 2013, Grundy HS had a black student as homecoming king and a white female as homecoming queen, according to a resident, 3/2014. This shows real change in racial attitudes, at least among students.