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?
- 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 | 1125 | 1 | ||||||
| 1960 | 1125 | 0 | ||||||
| 1970 | 1641 | 6 | ||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 2363 | 13 | ||||||
| 2000 | 2399 | 4 | ||||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
Testimony of a former resident:
“The town I grew up in (Russell Springs in Russell Co.) ejected blacks from the city shortly after 1900, and they then settled in the county seat of Jamestown. There were no blacks in Russell Springs when I was growing up, but there are a few now, although fewer than 100 still in the whole county. I’ve only heard this word of mouth and haven’t seen any documentation, but I suspect it was quite common throughout the state.
I was born in 1949 and lived in R.S. off and on through grad school. There was a consolidated county high school, which usually had no more than a half dozen blacks. There was no problem with integration of the high school, probably because the numbers were so low. There was almost no racial awareness, at least of which I was conscious, and the civil rights and integration struggles elsewhere seemed very far removed from our situation. There also were no Asians or Jews and very few Catholics. It was an extremely WASP population that was simply taken for granted. That has changed somewhat over the years. There is a fairly substantial Catholic community, some Jews who have settled in the county after retirement following years of vacationing at Lake Cumberland, a handful or Asians, but no more blacks than fifty years ago. The only difference is that maybe two or three blacks live in Russell Springs now.
As I recall the story, there was some incident that triggered the ousting of blacks from R.S. sometime after 1900, but I don’t know what it was. There was a lynching in the county during the early part of the century, but it was a white man who was lynched after he raped a young girl, so I’m sure that wasn’t the incident.”
Russell Springs
I could find nothing on Russell Springs through 1940, a small town located in Russell County. I can continue to look in later censuses if necessary.