This one legal victory did not stop towns from developing into sundown towns. Ultimately, the court decided that the laws passed in Louisville were unconstitutional, thus setting the legal precedent that similar laws could not exist or be passed in the future.
This city ordinance reached public attention when it was challenged in the U.S. One example is Louisville, Kentucky, whose mayor proposed a law in 1911 that would restrict black people from owning property in certain parts of the city. New laws were enacted in the 20th century. Similar bans on all black migration were passed in Michigan, Ohio, and Iowa. Those who were caught in the state and unable to pay the fine were punished by being re-enslaved and sold at auction. In 1853, all blacks were banned from entering the state of Indiana. Outside Oregon, other places looked to laws and legislation to restrict black people from residing within cities, towns, and states. This law in Oregon was the foreshadowing of future laws restricting where minorities could live, not only in Oregon but other jurisdictions. However, additional laws aimed at African Americans entering Oregon were ratified in 18, the last of which was not repealed until 1926.
No persons were ever lashed under the law it was quickly amended to replace lashing with forced labor, and eventually repealed the following year after a change in the makeup of the legislature. Those who failed to leave could expect to receive lashings under a law known as the "Peter Burnett Lash Law", named for Provisional Supreme Judge Peter Burnett. In 1844, Oregon, which had banned slavery, banned African Americans from the territory altogether. Kraemer decision-many hundreds of towns continue to effectively exclude black people and other minorities in the twenty-first century. Though widely believed to be a thing of the past-racially restrictive covenants were struck down by the Supreme Court in its 1948 Shelley v. This intimidation could occur in a number of ways, including harassment by law enforcement officers. In others, the policy was enforced through intimidation. In most cases, the exclusion was official town policy or was promulgated by the community's real estate agents via exclusionary covenants governing who could buy or rent property. įollowing the end of the Reconstruction era, thousands of towns and counties across the United States became sundown localities, as part of the imposition of Jim Crow laws and other segregationist practices. Notices emphasizing and re-affirming the curfew were published in The New Hampshire Gazette in 17. Whereas great disorders, insolencies and burglaries are oft times raised and committed in the night time by Indian, Negro, and Molatto Servants and Slaves to the Disquiet and hurt of her Majesty's subjects, No Indian, Negro, or Molatto is to be from Home after 9 o'clock. The general court and legislative assembly of New Hampshire passed "An Act To Prevent Disorders In The Night" in 1714: The earliest legal restrictions on the nighttime activities and movements of African Americans and other ethnic minorities date back to the colonial era. Census records showing an absence of black people or sharp drop in the black population between two censuses. Historically, towns have been confirmed as sundown towns by newspaper articles, county histories, and Works Progress Administration files, corroborated by tax or U.S. ĭiscriminatory policies and actions distinguish sundown towns from towns that have no black residents for demographic reasons. The practice was not restricted to the southern states, with New Jersey and other northern states being described as equally inhospitable to black travelers until at least the early 1960s. Įntire sundown counties and sundown suburbs were also created by the same process. The term came from signs posted that " colored people" had to leave town by sundown. Sundown towns, also known as sunset towns, gray towns, or sundowner towns, are all- white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States that practice a form of racial segregation by excluding non-whites via some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation or violence.