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?
- Surely
- 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 | ||||||||
| 1940 | ||||||||
| 1950 | ||||||||
| 1960 | 23548 | 189 | ||||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | ||||||||
| 2000 | 38708 | 530 | ||||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
“From 1949 to 1953 we lived in Richland, WA… One
thing that struck me was that Richland was not
integrated in those days, there were no blacks allowed
in the town. The town was small, it was safe…
[Blacks] couldn’t live in the town, and I don’t know why
that is or was.”
-former Richland resident
Of the Tri-Cities (Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco,
“There were no blacks allowed in Richland or
Kennewick.”
A college student who grew up in Richland reports
that Richland had about 20 blacks when he was in
high school. “There were racist jokes told in my
presence.”
“Did I feel safe growing up in Richland? Yes. Did I
feel deprived? Not necessarily. Did I have any idea
what the rest of the world was like? No way. The first
African American to graduate started high school in
1956, two years after I graduated. And is Richland still
‘lily white’? Yeah, pretty much so.”
-former resident
“My understanding is that in Richland it was not so
much actual in writing covenants as it was corporate
(and perhaps earlier government) policy. You couldn’t
live there unless you worked at Hanford. Thus, if no
blacks were hired, no blacks would be living there.”
-Richland resident