Basic Information
- Type of Place
- CDP, Unincorporated Borough, or MCD
- Metro Area
- Long Island
- 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?
- Surely Not
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | ||||||||
| 1930 | ||||||||
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| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | ||||||||
| 2000 | 16735 | 16033 | 121 | 340 | 7 | 505 | ||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
From Nancy C. Curtis, Black Heritage Sites: The North (NY: New Press, 1996): Father Divine, the famous black preacher, “acquired property in 1919 in the all-white suburb of Sayville, LI. (p. 31) So it may have been all-white on purpose before then, but not since.
According to resident who grew up in Sayville: “Until the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, there was an unofficial policy (tradition, if you will) of separating all of the non-white and/or non-Christian students into their own class year after year. The justification given was that it helped the real estate people by keeping property values up. If someone asked how Sayville handled ‘those people’ they could explain that their kids would be kept apart from ‘those kids’. Additionally, black people were confined (again, unofficially) to Hanson Place and Oak Street just south of the train tressel. This stopped less because of the passage of the Civil Rights Act itself, and more because that gave the local Episcopalian minister the confidence to go around threatening people with the ACLU if they didn’t.”