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?
- 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 | ||||||||
| 1940 | ||||||||
| 1950 | ||||||||
| 1960 | ||||||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | ||||||||
| 2000 | 578 | 551 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 0 | |
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
“My parents have a cabin in Hardy, Arkansas, on the
Spring River. My mother has asked me to look into
something she heard from a neighbor – that Hardy
used to have a large billboard in its downtown
proclaiming its sundown law. I haven’t come across
any confirmation of this yet. But Hardy remains an
uncomfortable place for minorities, something our
multiracial family experiences subtly. There are white
supremacy militia groups active in the vicinity, and
every weekend the river is crowded with drunk white
out of towners. There are very few non white
residents of the town. The tourist shops carry
Confederate memorabilia and watermelon slave
caricatures. We are always very careful and very very
polite.
“In 2001, one of the few black out of towners
drowned. He was standing in shallow water, shouting
recommendations to canoeists as they navigated the
falls. Reports are that he was drunk and didn’t know
how to swim. He was surrounded by many other
people who were drinking. I don’t know whether
bystanders’ racism, conscious or unconscious, played
any role in his drowning. His death didn’t get more
than a mention in the paper.”