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?
- We Have Data on How it Changed
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | ||||||||
| 1930 | 1799 | 3 | ||||||
| 1940 | 1641 | 1636 | 5 | 0 | ||||
| 1950 | 1810 | 1 | ||||||
| 1960 | 4540 | 3 | ||||||
| 1970 | 2257 | 2246 | 1 | 10 | 3 | |||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 2630 | 1 | ||||||
| 2000 | 3028 | 2784 | 18 | 5 | 11 | 428 | 210 | 3 |
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Violent ExpulsionReputation
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
“According to several oral history subjects I
interviewed in the 1980s and 1990s, East Texas’
Grand Saline (Van Zandt County) was not all black in
the late nineteenth century but did have a sizable
black population. Sometime during or after
Reconstruction (I was unable to do better than that)
whites attacked the black residents in a city wide
pogrom, killing all who were unable to escape.
According to one interviewee, the mass killings were
followed by mutilation of the corpses for public
display. Thereafter it became a notorious ‘sundown’
town; I don’t think any signs were necessary. That
reputation continued well into the late twentieth
century. I’m not sure of its current population, but a
couple of 1980s interviewees mentioned its all white
status with considerable pride.”
-posted to the web, 2006
Andrew Puller, former slave and Beaumont resident,
interviewed some years ago, reported that in Grand
Saline “dey had a big sign dere wid ‘Nigger, don’t let
de sun go down on you here’ on it.”
Nearby TX Resident.
“we used to play them in sports. They were a very well known as a ‘sundown’ town to me as a child. Our coaches used to threaten to drop the black kids off in Grand Saline (as a sick joke) for misbehaving on the school bus to and from games. I do believe that they had a sign at their city limits stating “don’t let the sun go down on you, nigger” — or something like that.
A nearby TX resident remembers a sign in Grand Saline and had an African American friend who avoided the town.
A resident has pointed out that as of June 2014 there are 5 black families living in Grand Saline and the sign has been removed.