Basic Information
- Type of Place
- County
- 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
- 1883
- 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 | ||||||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | ||||||||
| 2000 | 18,986 | 16,589 | 312 | 535 | 373 | 1,147 | 602 | |
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Threat of Violence
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
According to Arkansas historian Tom Dillon, In 1883 a prosperous black homesteader by the name of Burrell Lindsey fled his farm and walked all the way to Conway, where he filed a complaint about the threats blacks faced in his area. About five months earlier, on August 30, 1882, a black man found a warning tacked to a tree on his land: “Notice is her by giving That I sertify you, Mr. Nigger, just as shore as you locate your Self her death is your potion, the Cadron [river]
is the ded line, your cind cant live on this side a tall…. [sic]” In this case Federal authorities filed charges
against six white males, all of Van Buren County, and all “of evil minds and dispositions.” Dillon concludes, “While the historical record is too inconclusive to determine the outcome of this onfrontation, it is clear that black homesteaders were not welcome in certain areas of Arkansas. As time passed, this process of “racial cleansing” spread
from rural areas to many towns.”
Van Buren County did not go totally sundown. A small black community, slowly decreasing in size, long existed (and still does, we think) north of Clinton.