Oildale

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?

Yes, Strong Oral Tradition

Year of Greatest Interest

Still Sundown?

Probably Not, Although Still Very Few Black People

Census Information

The available census data from 1860 to the present

	Total	White	Black	Asian	Native	Hispanic	Other	BHshld
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970	20879		9
1980
1990			40
2000	27885	24814	95	93	611	2828	1337
2010
2020

Method of Exclusion

• Threat of Violence
• Private Bad Behavior

Main Ethnic Group(s)

• Unknown

Group(s) Excluded

• Black

Comments

Several long time residents tell of a sign reading
“Nigger, Don’t Let The Sun Set On You in Oildale”,
which was removed in the late 1950s or early 1960s.
A former high school teacher in Oildale heard that the
sign stood until the 1970s. This same teacher had a
black male student who chose to live with family
members in another state rather than live in Oildale,
and a black female student who had no friends in the
local high school. The teacher has noticed an “in bred
culture of racism”.

Another resident reports that until 1998, “nigger
don’t let the sun go down on you here” was
spraypainted on the back of a billboard.

“I remember my grandfather not being able to
find work as a black college educated man, my
mother’s stories of signs re: not serving blacks, jews,
dogs.”
-posted 2005

“Several of the red neck type patients told me to
steer clear of that town. They told me of a cross
burning on… a black man’s lawn. He apparently was
married to an Asian. I was also told that the sundown
law still applied. It was rumoured that the sign,
warning blacks, was still standing but boldly I drove
into the town on didn’t see anything like that… I
always felt afraid to venture too far off the 5 freeway
in the entire Bakersfield area.”
-woman who worked at a CA clinic in 1994