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James W. Loewen (1942-2021)

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

Mize

Mississippi

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?
Surely
Was there an ordinance?
Don't Know
Sign?
Perhaps, Some Oral Evidence
Year of Greatest Interest
Still Sundown?
Don’t Know

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 309 0
2000
2010
2020

Method of Exclusion

  • Threat of Violence
  • Violence Towards Newcomers
  • Private Bad Behavior
  • Reputation

Main Ethnic Group(s)

  • Unknown

Group(s) Excluded

  • Black

Comments

All around Mize are areas with considerable black populations.

“Sullivan’s Hollow (near Magee, MS) was notorious with a sign like ‘Niggers, don’t let the sun go down on your ass in Sullivan’s Hollow.” (MS native, 2005)

“Mize, Mississippi, nicknamed the “No-Nigger” capital of Smith County, is located on the Gulf and Ship Island Railroad. The population in 1930 was 439.” (“Mize, Smith County,” WPA file at MS Dept. of Archives and History.)

“In all of the history of the town there has never been a Negro in Mize. There is no law to keep them out, but fear of the rather forbidding Sullivan Clan, who came here from Island [sic] and settled on a homestead now known as ‘Sullivan’s Hollow,’ has accomplished this. Farmers in Mize are unable to get colored hands; and housewives cannot get colored maids.” “Mize, Smith County,” WPA file at MS Dept. of Archives and History.

“In 1963 in the governor’s race in MS, legends about the Hollow were used to make a telling political point. Among the candidates was Charles Sullivan, a Clarksdale attorney whose forebears came out of the Hollow. He assured his listeners that a few days in Sullivan’s Hollow would do a world of good for Bobby Kennedy and Chief Justice Earl Warren. They knew exactly what he implied.” (Ann Hammons, Wild Bill Sullivan (Jackson: UP of MS, 1980), 52-56).
“It is generally agreed that very few blacks were welcome in the Hollow. Most of the ones who lived there in the latter nineteenth century were descendants of family slaves. Once Neece and Bill [Sullivan] caught a black man, tied a bundle of bobwire to his back, and made him get down on all fours and crawl a mile, before telling him to leave the Hollow.” (Ann Hammons, Wild Bill Sullivan (Jackson: UP of MS, 1980), 52-56).