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?
- Perhaps, Some Oral Evidence
- 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 | 9,521 | 5 | ||||||
| 1940 | ||||||||
| 1950 | 9,199 | 5 | ||||||
| 1960 | 9,588 | 2 | ||||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 7,538 | 6 | ||||||
| 2000 | ||||||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Violent Expulsion
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
According to the 1967 book From Slavery To Freedom,
by John Hope Franklin, Blackwell drove out its black
population around 1890.
“I grew up in the Cherokee Strip town of Blackwell,
Oklahoma. The sign there said, I believe, ‘The Sun
Doesn’t Set on a Nigger in Blackwell.’
“I was 7 when my family moved there in 1960. I never
saw the sign, but always heard about it from other
kids and even from adults. It supposedly hung over
the bridge into town. The town was very proud of it’s
anti black history. The folk tale was that the town’s
founder ‘Colonel’ Blackwell had killed a black man and
there had never been a black person in the town since.
I understand a black retired military officer lived
moved there sometime in the 70’s, after I had moved
away, but when I returned to visit in 2002, I was told
by a woman in the local museum that there were ‘still
no niggers, thank God, but the Mexicans have found
us.'”
-posted to the web, 2006