Basic Information
- Type of Place
- Independent City or Town
- 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?
- Don’t Know
- 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 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | ||||||||
| 1930 | ||||||||
| 1940 | ||||||||
| 1950 | ||||||||
| 1960 | ||||||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 3706 | |||||||
| 2000 | 3557 | 3524 | 4 | |||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Police or Other Official Action
- Reputation
Main Ethnic Group(s)
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
Although there never was an anti-black ordinance, it was well understood that blacks were not permitted to stay in town over night. In the late 1940s, the police often followed any car containing blacks that turned off Route 37 into town. And there were many such cars on that Route because it was a main line from the South to Chicago. (Taken in 2002 from a former student.)
There were black maids in Johnston City in the 1920s but “they weren’t allowed out of doors after dark.”
If a black person had tried to move to that southern Illinois town, the chief of police “would have told them to leave, and that would have been all it would take.”
When I was a sophomore in HS (late 1980s), we had a black family move in town for about a month. They were driven out by hate crimes.