Basic Information
- Type of Place
- Independent City or Town
- Metro Area
- Politics c. 1860?
- Don’t Know
- Unions, Organized Labor?
- Don’t Know
Sundown Town Status
- Sundown Town in the Past?
- Surely
- Was there an ordinance?
- Don't Know
- Sign?
- Perhaps, Some Oral Evidence
- Year of Greatest Interest
- Still Sundown?
- Don’t Know
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
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| 1930 | ||||||||
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| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 309 | 0 | ||||||
| 2000 | ||||||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Threat of Violence
- Violence Towards Newcomers
- Private Bad Behavior
- Reputation
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
All around Mize are areas with considerable black populations.
“Sullivan’s Hollow (near Magee, MS) was notorious with a sign like ‘Niggers, don’t let the sun go down on your ass in Sullivan’s Hollow.” (MS native, 2005)
“Mize, Mississippi, nicknamed the “No-Nigger” capital of Smith County, is located on the Gulf and Ship Island Railroad. The population in 1930 was 439.” (“Mize, Smith County,” WPA file at MS Dept. of Archives and History.)
“In all of the history of the town there has never been a Negro in Mize. There is no law to keep them out, but fear of the rather forbidding Sullivan Clan, who came here from Island [sic] and settled on a homestead now known as ‘Sullivan’s Hollow,’ has accomplished this. Farmers in Mize are unable to get colored hands; and housewives cannot get colored maids.” “Mize, Smith County,” WPA file at MS Dept. of Archives and History.
“In 1963 in the governor’s race in MS, legends about the Hollow were used to make a telling political point. Among the candidates was Charles Sullivan, a Clarksdale attorney whose forebears came out of the Hollow. He assured his listeners that a few days in Sullivan’s Hollow would do a world of good for Bobby Kennedy and Chief Justice Earl Warren. They knew exactly what he implied.” (Ann Hammons, Wild Bill Sullivan (Jackson: UP of MS, 1980), 52-56).
“It is generally agreed that very few blacks were welcome in the Hollow. Most of the ones who lived there in the latter nineteenth century were descendants of family slaves. Once Neece and Bill [Sullivan] caught a black man, tied a bundle of bobwire to his back, and made him get down on all fours and crawl a mile, before telling him to leave the Hollow.” (Ann Hammons, Wild Bill Sullivan (Jackson: UP of MS, 1980), 52-56).