Texas
Basic Information
- Type of Place
- County
- Metro Area
- Panhandle
- 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?
- Don’t Know
- Year of Greatest Interest
- Still Sundown?
- Probably Not, Although Still Very Few Black People
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | 0 | |||||||
| 1880 | 35 | |||||||
| 1890 | 778 | 16 | ||||||
| 1900 | 636 | 14 | ||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | 7397 | 0 | ||||||
| 1930 | 15555 | 316 | ||||||
| 1940 | 12411 | 180 | ||||||
| 1950 | ||||||||
| 1960 | 7947 | 294 | ||||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | ||||||||
| 2000 | 5284 | 4641 | 147 | 33 | 41 | 664 | 422 | 49 |
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Violent Expulsion
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
“Until recently [1926], Shamrock was an all-white
town and Wheeler County an all-white town county.
As one man put it, Negroes were not even permitted
‘to stick their heads out of the train coaches.’ Negroes
first came into Shamrock about 1926, when an out-
of-town construction company paved the streets.”
Then cotton came in, “and Negroes were brought in to
pick the cotton. Most of them left when their work
was over, but some remained.” Incited by Jesse Lee
Washington’s crimes in the summer of 1930
(Washington was nearly lynched), a considerable
element of the white people insisted upon running all
the Negroes out of this “white man’s country.”
-from a 1933 book