Sundown town

A sundown town is a town that is or was purposely all-white. The term is widely used in the United States in areas from Ohio to Oregon and well into the South. The term came from signs that were allegedly posted stating that people of color had to leave the town by sundown. The minority people could not visit after sunset or spend the night in the town (even as a paying hotel customer). Such towns are also sometimes called “sunset towns” or “gray towns”.^[1]

1. ↑ Gordon D. Morgan, Black Hillbillies of the Arkansas Ozarks (Fayetteville: U of AR Dept. of Sociology, 1973 typescript), 60.