sundown town

noun · Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, the Ozarks, and the West more than the Deep South · 1900s

✓ Verified

A town that excluded Black residents and travelers after nightfall, enforced by ordinance, by sign, by whistle or siren, and by violence. The exclusion was not a matter of custom in most cases but of policy, and it was frequently announced at the town line in language that left nothing to interpret. The practice ran roughly from 1890 into the late 1960s and was densest not in the Deep South but in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, and the West.

“He drove the long way around because that whole county was sundown towns and he was not going to test it.”

In the mouths of Black travelers, a piece of route knowledge — a place you plan around. The information moved by word of mouth, by porters and drivers, and in print through the Green Book, and knowing which towns were which was a practical condition of moving through the country at all.

“Ask your uncle before you take that road. He can tell you every sundown town between here and Springfield.”

Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.