Basic Information
- Type of Place
- Independent City or Town
- Metro Area
- Politics c. 1860?
- Don’t Know
- Unions, Organized Labor?
- Don’t Know
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 | 9,603 | 0 | ||||||
| 1940 | 11429 | 11410 | 1 | 18 | ||||
| 1950 | 27,006 | 4 | ||||||
| 1960 | 33,412 | 51 | ||||||
| 1970 | 52,117 | 50241 | 485 | |||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 80,071 | 2,861 | ||||||
| 2000 | 95694 | 78812 | 4080 | 3390 | 4262 | 3723 | 5150 | 1427 |
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Police or Other Official Action
- Reputation
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
“A gang of ruffians have disgraced this city again in
an attempt to maintain the vicious reputation of the
city not to let Negroes stay in the municipality after
sundown. For many years Norman has had signs
and inscriptions stuck around in prominent places
which read: ‘Nigger, don’t let the sun go down on
you in this berg.’ Saturday night, when Singie
Smith’s Orchestra of Fort Worth,Texas, attempted
to play in the dance hall where they were employed
by the students of the University [of Oklahoma], a
mob of outlaws stormed the hall and practically
wrecked it…
“The orchestra was taken to the interurban station
and sent to OK City when the mob grew in strength
and it became evident that there would soon be
trouble. Fights occurred between the mob and
students who formed a bodyguard while the
Negroes were escorted to the station.
“Negroes are occasionally seen on the streets of
Norman in the daytime, but the ‘rule’ that they leave
at night is strictly enforced. Several other OK towns
have similar customs.”
-“Norman Mob After Singie Smith Jazz”, Oklahoma
City Black Dispatch, 9 February 1922
“I’m told that Norman had ‘sundown’ signs on either
end of Main Street until 1965 and removed them
only because Look Magazine made overtures about
awarding ‘All American City’ status.”
-University of Oklahoma professor
“In 1948 a graduate student from Panama and his
wife came to Norman with their black maid. One
evening at sundown the maid was hanging clothes
out on the line. Apparently someone reported her
to the police, because they came and arrested her
and took her to the station. She was frightened
because she could not speak English and did not
know why she was picked up. Her employer went
with another Panamanian student… and got the
maid released and, I believe, got the university
administration to talk to the police so the maid
would be safe from police harassment…
When I arrived in Norman in 1961, not one rooming
house in Norman would rent to blacks. Married
black students had to live in the university’s
extremely inadequate married people’s housing or
they didn’t bring their families to Norman and lived
in the dorms.”
In 1934, Dr. George Cross came to Norman from
South Dakota to assume the presidency of the
University of Oklahoma. “The salesman in the store,
knowing that I was new, undertook to tell me a few
things that he thought would be useful to me. One
thing he said that really jolted me was, ‘You’ll never
have to worry about a nigger problem in Norman.’ I
looked at him inquiringly. He said, ‘We have an
unwritten law that niggers can’t be in Norman after
sundown.’
I said, ‘Well, just how do you enforce an unwritten
law?’ And he said, ‘Oh, we don’t have to enforce it.
the niggers understand the situation and they
don’t stay in Norman after sundown.'”
-from Dream Makers, Dream Breakers, The World
of Justice Thurgood Marshall, Carl T. Rowan,
Norman, OK has joined The Inclusive Communities Partnership of the National League of Cities.