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
| 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
Malcolm X rights in his autobiography that in the
1930s “Negroes weren’t allowed after dark in East Lansing proper.” When his father purchased a house in a white part of town, the family was burned out. When the Littles moved to the outskirts of East Lansing, whites “harassed us so much that we had to move again, this time two miles out of town.”
8/2014 email from a longtime resident: “i lived in east lansing from 1952-1970 and never knew about this. no signs, no talk, maybe 5 blacks in el high school, no black teachers. lots and lots of blacks in msu. a few in apartments on my paper route early ’60’s. john.”
7/2013 email: “East Lansing was not only all-white but practially all-Protestant. At the time the city was organized, People’s Church (interdenominational church but under Congregationalist auspices) was also created. It was the only church in the city for decades. The city’s first zoning code, in 1926, was expressly intended to exclude other religious organizations.
Research in the city council minutes has not turned up any explicit sundown ordinance. However, the few black students at Michigan State College (later MSU) were not allowed to live on campus or nearby; they had to commute from Lansing.
As far as I know, no African-Americans or Jews lived in the city until the 1960s.”