A national data set of historical US sundown towns for quantitative analysis

We present a new national data set of historical sundown towns in the United States linked to contemporary spatial information - i.e., the Historical Sundown Towns Linked to US Census Geographies database. Sundown towns are places that once enacted legal or conventional practices meant to restrict the movement or residency of Black people and other people of color within their borders. Our data are based upon rich prior research by historians identifying where these racial restrictions on movement were practiced across the nation. We provide spatial information on these sundown towns, facilitating their linkage to contemporary and historical Census data from 1940 to 2020. These data present an important resource for scientists conducting quantitative studies of the durable legacies of historical racism, enabling granular analyses of the long-term consequences of an understudied form of historical racial control.