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African Americans who lingered in sundown towns even during the daytime experienced harassment, threats, arrest, and beatings.

Racial exclusion in sundown towns was also achieved with violence. Businesses that served Black customers or hired Black employees would be boycotted by the white townspeople, ensuring that Blacks had few, if any, job opportunities in those communities. In the 1940s, Edmond, Oklahoma promoted itself on postcards with the slogan, “A Good Place to Live…No Negroes.” The town of Mena, Arkansas advertised its many charms: “Cool Summers, Mild Winters, No Blizzards, No Negroes.” In other cases, the policy was enforced through less formal norms and sanctions.

One in Alix, Arkansas, in the 1930s, for instance, read, “N-r, Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On You In Alix.” Others stated, “Whites Only After Dark.” Many sundown towns used discriminatory housing covenants to ensure no non-white person would be allowed to purchase or rent a home. In its most blatant form, signs were posted at the city limits. The means to announce and enforce racial restrictions varied across the country. As Blacks began to migrate to other regions of the country, many predominantly white communities actively discouraged them from settling there. They began to proliferate during the Great Migration, starting in about 1910, when large numbers of African Americans left the South to escape racism and poverty.

Although the term most often refers to the forced exclusion of Blacks, the history of sundown towns also includes prohibitions against Jews, Native Americans, Chinese, Japanese, and other minority groups.Īlthough it is difficult to make an accurate count, historians estimate there were up to 10,000 sundown towns in the United States between 18, mostly in the Mid-West and West. The name derives from the posted and verbal warnings issued to Blacks that although they might be allowed to work or travel in a community during the daytime, they must leave by sundown. Sundown Towns are all-white communities, neighborhoods, or counties that exclude Blacks and other minorities through the use of discriminatory laws, harassment, and threats or use of violence.