Home » Texas » Shamrock

James W. Loewen (1942-2021)

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

Shamrock

Texas

Basic Information

Type of Place
Independent City or Town
Metro Area
Politics c. 1860?
Unions, Organized Labor?

Sundown Town Status

Sundown Town in the Past?
Probable
Was there an ordinance?
Don't Know
Sign?
Don’t Know
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
2000
2010
2020

Method of Exclusion

  • Unknown

Main Ethnic Group(s)

  • Unknown

Group(s) Excluded

  • Black

Comments

“Until recently [1926], Shamrock was an all-white town and Wheeler County an all-white town county. As one man put it, Negroes were not even permitted
‘to stick their heads out of the train coaches.’ Negroes first came into Shamrock about 1926, when an out-
of-town construction company paved the streets.” Then cotton came in, “and Negroes were brought in to pick the cotton. Most of them left when their work
was over, but some remained.” Incited by Jesse Lee Washington’s crimes in the summer of 1930 (Washington was nearly lynched), a considerable element of the white people insisted upon running all
the Negroes out of this “white man’s country.”
-from a 1933 book

Message 01/06/2008: I was six years old in 1959, and I was living in nearby Dumas, Texas. I can still very clearly remember hearing an adult (resident of Dumas)say that Shamrock “knows how to treat their niggers; they don’t let’em out after dark.”