Basic Information
- Type of Place
- Independent City or Town
- Metro Area
- Boot Heel/SE
- 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?
- Don’t Know
- 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 | 1156 | 0 | ||||||
| 1960 | 1090 | 0 | ||||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 1164 | 1 | ||||||
| 2000 | 1264 | 5 | ||||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
“In 1939 racial friction broke out between blacks and whites in the small town of Oran. The trouble developed around a dispute over the right-of-way on a sidewalk. Then a mob decided to run all blacks out of town. State troopers were called in when the mob nearly destroyed a black family’s house.”
Testimony: Oran, in boot heel, had race riot between 1937 and 1939, drove blacks out.
Missouri’s Black Heritage by Gary Kremer and Antonio Holland (University of Missouri Press, 1993) is an excellent overall guide to African American history in Missouri. It is well footnoted and may suggest further avenues of research. On page 153 they do mention an incident in the town of Oran in 1939, when a mob decided to run all blacks out of town, and note that the entire black population of Ste. Genevieve left town after threatened lynchings in the 1930s.
Testimony: In 1937 a black and white man fought in downtown Oran. The black man killed the white. That night all blacks fled Oran.