Sundown Towns and Racial Exclusion: The Southern White Diaspora and the “Great Retreat”

Abstract

This paper studies the rise of sundown towns--places where Blacks and other minorities were excluded after dark--outside the South after 1890. We provide a new dataset on the timing of sundown town establishment using full count census records. Using a shift-share instrumental variables approach, we show that the presence of Southern Whites is causally related to the appearance of sundown towns, with lynchings and the establishment of KKK chapters as plausible mechanisms for racial exclusion.