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?
- Perhaps, Some Oral Evidence
- Year of Greatest Interest
- Still Sundown?
- Probably
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | ||||||||
| 1930 | ||||||||
| 1940 | ||||||||
| 1950 | ||||||||
| 1960 | ||||||||
| 1970 | 1155 | 0 | 0 | |||||
| 1980 | 1495 | 0 | ||||||
| 1990 | 1424 | 0 | ||||||
| 2000 | 1152 | 0 | ||||||
| 2010 | 1184 | 3 | 0 | |||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Threat of Violence
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
An Indiana lawyer related in 2004 that because stone carvers didn’t want black strikebreakers, they kept out all blacks, with signs to that effect. He personally saw the signs.
A 2007 newspaper account tells of an IU geologist who visited the quarry in Oolitic in 1980 and was told by a resident that the reason “why it’s a nice town” was that “‘There ain’t no niggers here.'”
The 2010 Census also lists five persons of mixed black/other ancestry.
A resident of Lawrence County who grew up in Oolitic wrote in 2013, “I seriously doubt if 95% of current Oolitic residents would mind if a black family moved in, and thankfully those who would mind are the oldest segment of the population. There are Asian students attending school in Oolitic now too, which I think is a great sign that most people are past the racism of the past.” Hopefully his optimism is right, but his statement raises two questions. First, it should not be whites’ business to mind or not to mind if a black family moved in. They would never think to mind or not to mind if a white family moved in, but would base their welcome level on the individual characteristics of its members. Second, Asian Americans have become “honorary whites” in a sense, so their acceptance does not necessarily presage a similar response to African Americans.