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?
- Surely
- 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 | ||||||||
| 1960 | 731 | 0 | ||||||
| 1970 | 684 | 0 | ||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 827 | 0 | ||||||
| 2000 | 879 | 8 | 2 | 0 | ||||
| 2010 | 826 | 7 | 3 | 1 | ||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Violent Expulsion
- Threat of Violence
- Violence Towards Newcomers
- Private Bad Behavior
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
“There are counties and towns where no Negro is permitted to stop over night. At Syracuse, OH, Lawrenceburg, Ellwood, and Salem, IN, for example, Negroes have not been permitted to live for years. If a Negro appears, he is warned of conditions, and if he does not leave immediately, he is visited by a crowd of boys and men and forced to leave.”
[Ray Stannard Baker, Following the Color Line (NY: Harper Torchbook, 1964 [1908]), 126.]
“For White Men Only,” Fairmont, WV, Free Press, 12/7/1905
“In Syracuse, Ohio, on the Ohio river, a town of about 2,000 inhabitants, no Negro is permitted to live, not even to stay overnight under any consideration. This is an absolute rule in this year 1905, and has existed for several generations. The enforcement of this unwritten law is in the hands of the boys from 8 to 20 years of age, while the attempt of a Negro to become a resident of the town is resisted by the residents en masse.
When a Negro is seen in town during the day he is generally told of these traditions … and is warned to leave before sundown. If he fails to take heed, he is surrounded at about the time darkness begins, and is addressed by the leader of the gang in about this language: ‘No nigger is allowed to stay in this town over night. Get out of here now, and get out quick.’
He sees from 25 to 30 boys around him talking in subdued voices and waiting to see whether he obeys. If he hesitates, little stones begin to reach him from unseen quarters and soon persuade him to begin his hegira. He is not allowed to walk, but is told to ‘Get on his little dog trot.’ The command is always effective, for it is backed by stones in the ready hands of boys none too friendly.
So long as he keeps up a good gait, the crowd, which follows just at his heels, and which keeps growing until it sometimes numbers 75 to 100 boys, is good-natured and contents itself with yelling, laughing, and hurling gibes at its victim. But let him stop his ‘trot’ for one moment, from any cause whatever, and the stones immediately take effect as their chief persuader. Thus they follow him to the farthest limits of the town, where they send him on, while they return to the city with triumph and tell their fathers all about the function, how fast the victim ran, how scared he was, how he pleaded and promised that he would go and never return if they would only leave him alone.
Then the fathers tell how they used to do the same thing, and thus the heroes of two wars spend the rest of the evening by the old campfire, recounting their several campaigns.
The cause of this extraordinary race prejudice is hard to discern. The majority of the inhabitants are not from the South, but, strange to say, are of New England stock.
Since the town was founded, about 1815, not a Negro family has lived in it. About the year 1855 two Negroes were employed as domestics by a family in the extreme lower end of the town, practically in the country, but they did not stay long. Since the Civil War two attempts have been made by Negro families to settle in the town, but both families were summarily driven out.”
“No Negro is permitted to stay in [Syracuse] overnight under any consideration. This is an absolute rule at the present day, and such has been the custom for several generations. The enforcement of this unwritten law … is mostly in the hands of the boys from 12 to 20 years of age…. When a colored man is seen in the town during the day he is generally told of these traditions and is warned to leave before sundown. If he fails to take heed, he is surrounded at about the time that darkness begins, and is addressed by the leaders of the gang in about this language: ‘No nigger is allowed to stay in this town over night. We don’t care what you are here fore. Get out of here now, and get out quick.’ He sees from 25 to 50 boys around him talking in subdued voices and waiting to see whether he obeys. If he hesitates, small stones begin to rain upon him from unseen quarters, and this soon persuades him to begin his hegira. He is not allowed to walk, but is told to ‘get on his little dog trot.’ The command is always effective, for it is backed by stones in the ready hands of boys none too friendly. So long as he keeps up a good gait, the crowd, which follows just at his heels, and which keeps growing until it sometimes numbers 75 to 100 boys, is good-natured and contents itself with yelling, laughing, and hurling gibes at its victim. But let him stop his ‘trot’ for one moment, from any cause whatever, and the stones immediately begin to fall. Thus they follow him to the farthest limits of the town, where they send him on his way, while they return to the city with triumph and tell their fathers all about the function, how fast the victim ran, how scared he was, how he pleaded and promised that he would go and never return if they would only go back and leave him, how Johnnie Jones hit him with such a big rock that it knocked him down. Then the fathers tell how they used to do the same thing, and thus the heroes of two wars spend the rest of the evening by the old campfire, recounting their several campaigns.”
“All the surrounding towns have a considerable Negro population. Just three miles below is the small town of Kerr’s Run, which has more black residents than white. Most of them are afraid to go up to Syracuse even during the daytime… Syracuse is the eastern terminal of the White Collar Line Steamboat system from Cincinnati. Many of the Negro hands on this line are afraid to go up into the town to load salt and to get freight unless the steamboat officers are with them.”
More in hard file about one black family that lives just beyond the town limits and what happened to them. “A daughter of this family attended the HS in the class before that of the writer. Living within the limits of the HS special district she could not be debarred but she was practically ‘sent to Coventry.’ None of her schoolmates ever talked with her and they objected so much to sitting near her that the principal had to arrange a desk for her completely removed from the rest of the school. For weeks, it seemed, the poor girl never spoke a word from the time she got on the school grounds until she left.” Then she got TB, had to give up attending, and was allowed to graduate, although several of her classmates objected to her attending the graduations ceremony. She attended anyway, died two weeks later. “Still no Negro lives within this town, no Negro works beside the white man during the day, and no Negro so much as breathes the night air within its gates. By the women the Negroes are dreaded and feared, even in the daytime. The little children are taught to fear the ‘Black Man’ with all the horrors associated with that name. The writer has seen many a child in this town frightened almost into hysterics at the mere sight of a colored man.” “Since the town was founded, about 1815, not a Negro family has lived in it…. Since the Civil War two attempts have been made by Negro families to settle in the town, but both were summarily driven out.” Tells of 1886 incident, “the last attempt of a colored man to set up his household gods in the Negro-hating town of Syracuse.”
[Frank U. Quillen, The Color Line in OH (Ann Arbor: Wahr, 1913), 160-65.]
*1960 and 1970 information is taken from Sutton Township, to which Syracuse belongs. Both decades, Sutton did not have a single African American living there.