Malvern

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?

Probable

Was there an ordinance?

Sign?

Yes, Photo or Written Evidence

Year of Greatest Interest

Still Sundown?

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
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
2020

Method of Exclusion

Main Ethnic Group(s)

Group(s) Excluded

• Black

Comments

email 1/8/2008:

My late father told me on several occasions, with shame, about a sign just like the one you talk about that was posted on the outskirts of his hometown, Malvern, Iowa. So I would say that his memories would be from the 1920s and 1930s. He never mentioned any black families in Malvern, and I don’t remember seeing any black people in any of the old photos I’ve seen, including his high school yearbook — I’ll check again, though. Never heard of anyone having domestic help — certainly our family didn’t. I’m sure my father was raised to be prejudiced toward blacks — but his thinking definitely had changed by the time I came along in 1950. There were never any racial remarks, jokes or slurs in our house — which is why it was all the more shocking to hear about the Malvern sign.

I also remember that he described Malvern as a place divided socially by the railroad tracks — with the Catholic Church and poorer people on the “wrong” side. My father’s father was German (both paternal grandparents were immigrants); his mother’s family was English (maternal grandfather an immigrant; maternal grandmother from English family that arrived in 17th century). His German grandmother was born Catholic, but they lived on the “Methodist” side of the tracks and she didn’t attend mass.

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