From Maine to California, thousands of communities kept out African Americans (or sometimes Chinese Americans, Jewish Americans, etc.) by force, law, or custom. These communities are sometimes called "sundown towns" because some of them posted signs at their city limits reading, typically, "Nigger, Don't Let The Sun Go Down On You In ___."
Some towns are still all white on purpose. Their chilling stories have been joined more recently by the many elite (and some not so elite) suburbs like Grosse Pointe, MI, or Edina, MN, that have excluded nonwhites by "kinder gentler means." When I began this research, I expected to find about 10 sundown towns in Illinois (my home state) and perhaps 50 across the country. Instead, I have found more than 440 in Illinois and thousands across the United States. This is their story; it is the first book ever written on the topic.
Population Files for Towns in Selected StatesHere I share Excel files of town populations by race for selected states. Some are much more complete than others. If you develop such a file for a state not included here, or a more comprehensive file for a state that is included here, kindly email it to me and I'll post it below for other researchers to use. Thank you. My email address is jloewen@uvm.edu.
Ohio Oregon Michigan (Detroit Metro Area) Michigan (outside Detroit) Iowa Illinois
Excerpts from
The Importance of Sundown Towns (PDF)"Is it true that 'Anna' stands for 'Ain't No Nigger Allowed'?" I asked at the convenience store in Anna, Illinois, where I had stopped to buy coffee.
"Yes," the clerk replied. "That's sad, isn't it," she added, distancing herself from the policy. And she went on to assure me, "That all happened a long time ago."
"I understand {racial exclusion} is still going on?", I asked.
"Yes," she replied. "That's sad."
—conversation with clerk, Anna, Illinois, October 2001
ANNA is a town of about 7,000 people, including adjoining Jonesboro.
The twin towns lie about 35 miles north of Cairo, in southern Illinois. In 1909, in the aftermath of a horrific nearby “spectacle lynching,” Anna and Jonesboro expelled their African Americans. Both cities have been all-white ever since. Nearly a century later, “Anna” is still considered by its residents and by citizens of nearby towns to mean “ Ain’t No Niggers Allowed,” the acronym the convenience store clerk confirmed in 2001.
It is common knowledge that African Americans are not allowed to live in Anna, except for residents of the state mental hospital and transients at its two motels. African Americans who find themselves in Anna and Jonesboro after dark —the majority black basketball team from Cairo, for example— have sometimes been treated badly by residents of the towns, and by fans and students of Anna-Jonesboro High School.
Towns such as Anna and Jonesboro are often called “sundown towns,” owing to the signs that many of them formerly sported at their corporate limits —signs that usually said “Nigger, Don’t Let the Sun Go Do Down on You in ____”. Anna-Jonesboro had such signs on High Highway 127 as recently as the 1970s. These communities were also known as “sunset towns” or, in the Ozarks, “gray towns.”
In the East, although many communities excluded African Americans, the term “sundown town” itself was rarely used. Residents of all-white suburbs also usually avoided the term, though not the policy.
Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. Loewen 
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