An expected confirmation

In my previous post, I noted that although repeating centuries with fifteen primes are known (although I cannot discover their identity at present) I was sure that they would not occur as early as the 55^th century with fifteen primes. I discussed this in the context of a repeat of fifteen of seventeen primes from the century from 1,400 to 1,499 in the 55^th century with seventeen primes (from 1,888,314,999,580,100 to 1,888,314,999,580,199). For both these centuries primes form by adding all numbers within the set {23, 27, 29, 33, 47, 51, 53, 59, 71, 81, 83, 87, 89, 93, 99}.

Tonight I have actually computed the prime patterns for all centuries with fifteen primes less than one billion. There are 58 centuries smaller than one billion with fifteen primes, and fifteen is the largest number of primes in any century within the “eight-digit gap”, which extends from slightly below three million to 839,296,299. (This “eight-digit gap” is partly predictable from heuristics. Around this digit count the rate at which the probability of a century containing more the fifteen primes decreases equals the inverse of the rate at which the number of centuries increases, although the lowest theoretical probabilities of the existence of any century with sixteen or seventeen primes actually occur for seven digits).

As I strongly expected, none of the first fifty-eight centuries with fifteen primes have the same pattern. In fact, of the 1,653 possible pairs from these first fifty-eight centuries with fifteen primes, no pair forms common primes by adding a set larger than twelve numbers, and only four have this number of common primes.

It is too cumbersome and impractical to list the patterns of all 58 centuries; however, I will list the number of common primes for each pair:

# same primes	# centuries to 1 billion
0	0
1	15
2	66
3	147
4	282
5	260
6	190
7	196
8	205
9	170
10	96
11	22
12	4
13	0
14	0
15	0

The four pairs of centuries with twelve common primes are, in order of smallest larger century:

1. 6,300 to 6,399 and 2,967,300 to 2,967,399 with common primes formed by adding {17, 23, 29, 37, 43, 53, 59, 61, 73, 79, 89, 97}
2. 46,497,700 to 46,497,799 and 593,131,900 to 593,131,999 with common primes formed by adding {7, 9, 19, 27, 33, 39, 51, 61, 67, 91, 93, 97}
3. 516,257,800 to 516,257,899 and 738,740,200 to 738,740,299 with common primes formed by adding {1, 3, 9, 13, 21, 51, 57, 69, 79, 81, 91, 93}
4. 2,600 to 2,699 and 925,594,400 to 925,594,499 with common primes formed by adding {9, 33, 47, 57, 59, 63, 71, 77, 87, 89, 93, 99}
• both these last two are part of extremely prime-rich sequences that overlap two centuries:
• the century from 2,650 to 2,750 contains eighteen primes
• the century between 925,594,420 and 925,594,520 contains seventeen primes
• in fact all these seventeen primes are between 925,594,429 and 925,594,513 (85 numbers)
• yet, there is no case of so many as seventeen primes between consecutive multiples of 100 amongst nine- or even ten-digit numbers

Overall, there is nothing amongst the fifteen-prime centuries less than one billion to compare with the similarity of the prime patterns of the centuries beginning with 1,400 and 1,888,314,999,580,100. This is what I expected. Even taking into account that there are more than four times as many possible prime patterns for a fifteen-prime as for a seventeen-prime century, I had no expectations of something closer to a repeating century than the four cases mentioned above.

Comparing the prime-rich centuries: Part II

In my previous post, I compared the first few seventeen- and eighteen-prime centuries to see what their patterns were like.

Most of the smallest seventeen- and eighteen-prime centuries, as noted in that post, are of the form 100k to 100k+99 where k is a number of the form 3n+1. This is not unexpected. A century from 300n+100 to 300n+199 contains 28 numbers not divisible by 2, 3, or 5, whereas a century from 300n to 300n+99 or from 300n+200 to 300n+299 contains only 26 numbers not divisible by 2, 3, or 5. (Divisibility by 7, however, means no century can contain so many as 26 prime numbers: indeed, the maximum number of primes any century after the first can theoretically contain is 23, and no century larger than the second is known to contain more than 20 primes).

As noted in the previous post about prime-rich centuries, the second seventeen- and the second eighteen-prime centuries have k of the form 3n+2. The next seventeen-prime century with k of the form 3n+2 or 3n is the sixteenth overall and the first seventeen-prime century after than the smallest eighteen-prime one. This century — from 190,818,931,155,800 to 190,818,931,155,899 — is also the first century after 1,400 to 1,499 with a single-digit count of composite numbers not divisible by 2, 3, or 5.

Below the second eighteen-prime century from 2,335,286,971,401,800 to 2,335,286,971,401,899 (actually alongside the prime number 2,335,286,971,401,799 there are nineteen primes in 101 numbers) there are:

• five centuries with seventeen primes and k of the form 3n+2
• six centuries with seventeen primes and k of the form 3n

I will tabulate these twelve centuries as two tables of six centuries each, and compare their prime patterns as I did for the centuries with k of the form 3n+1.

First Five Seventeen-Prime Centuries and First Eighteen-Prime Century with k of form 3n+2

14	1908189311558	6157376214122	18883149995801	22930638581651	23352869714018
	190,818,931,155,803	615,737,621,412,203	1,888,314,999,580,103	2,293,063,858,165,103	2,335,286,971,401,803
1,409		615,737,621,412,209		2,293,063,858,165,109	2,335,286,971,401,809
		615,737,621,412,211		2,293,063,858,165,111
	190,818,931,155,817	615,737,621,412,217		2,293,063,858,165,117
	190,818,931,155,821			2,293,063,858,165,121	2,335,286,971,401,821
1,423	190,818,931,155,823	615,737,621,412,223	1,888,314,999,580,123	2,293,063,858,165,123	2,335,286,971,401,823
1,427		615,737,621,412,227	1,888,314,999,580,127		2,335,286,971,401,827
1,429		615,737,621,412,229	1,888,314,999,580,129		2,335,286,971,401,829
1,433	190,818,931,155,833	615,737,621,412,233	1,888,314,999,580,133	2,293,063,858,165,133
1,439		615,737,621,412,239		2,293,063,858,165,139
	190,818,931,155,841			2,293,063,858,165,141	2,335,286,971,401,841
1,447		615,737,621,412,247	1,888,314,999,580,147	2,293,063,858,165,147	2,335,286,971,401,847
1,451	190,818,931,155,851		1,888,314,999,580,151		2,335,286,971,401,851
1,453		615,737,621,412,253	1,888,314,999,580,153	2,293,063,858,165,153
	190,818,931,155,857
1,459	190,818,931,155,859		1,888,314,999,580,159	2,293,063,858,165,159	2,335,286,971,401,859
	190,818,931,155,863				2,335,286,971,401,863
	190,818,931,155,869	615,737,621,412,269	1,888,314,999,580,169	2,293,063,858,165,169	2,335,286,971,401,869
1,471	190,818,931,155,871	615,737,621,412,271	1,888,314,999,580,171		2,335,286,971,401,871
				2,293,063,858,165,177	2,335,286,971,401,877
1,481		615,737,621,412,281	1,888,314,999,580,181	2,293,063,858,165,181
1,483	190,818,931,155,883	615,737,621,412,283	1,888,314,999,580,183		2,335,286,971,401,883
1,487	190,818,931,155,887		1,888,314,999,580,187	2,293,063,858,165,187	2,335,286,971,401,887
1,489	190,818,931,155,889	615,737,621,412,289	1,888,314,999,580,189	2,293,063,858,165,189	2,335,286,971,401,889
1,493	190,818,931,155,893		1,888,314,999,580,193
1,499	190,818,931,155,899	615,737,621,412,299	1,888,314,999,580,199		2,335,286,971,401,899

Here, there seems more variation in the patterns than for the more numerous seventeen-prime centuries of the form 3n+1. Nevertheless, there is the remarkable century from 1,888,314,999,580,100 to 1,888,314,999,580,199 that has fifteen primes with identical last two digits to primes between 1,400 and 1,499! Given that there are 2,829,786 possible prime patterns for a century with seventeen primes, and that no repeating patterns with 17 primes are yet known, this is extraordinary since the larger century is merely the fifty-fifth containing seventeen prime numbers. At least one repeating century with fifteen primes is known, although I remain unaware of its identity, and it certainly does not occur as early as the 55^th century with 15 primes [856,019,600 to 856,019,699].

First Six Seventeen-Prime Centuries with k of form 3n

7658205745776	8078877131667	10137710652198	13862924841999	17176990713081	19441702516473
765,820,574,577,601	807,887,713,166,701		1,386,292,484,199,901
765,820,574,577,607	807,887,713,166,707	1,013,771,065,219,807	1,386,292,484,199,907		1,944,170,251,647,307
	807,887,713,166,711	1,013,771,065,219,811	1,386,292,484,199,911	1,717,699,071,308,111	1,944,170,251,647,311
765,820,574,577,613	807,887,713,166,713	1,013,771,065,219,813	1,386,292,484,199,913	1,717,699,071,308,113	1,944,170,251,647,313
		1,013,771,065,219,817			1,944,170,251,647,317
	807,887,713,166,719	1,013,771,065,219,819	1,386,292,484,199,919	1,717,699,071,308,119
765,820,574,577,623		1,013,771,065,219,823	1,386,292,484,199,923	1,717,699,071,308,123
765,820,574,577,629			1,386,292,484,199,929		1,944,170,251,647,329
	807,887,713,166,731	1,013,771,065,219,831		1,717,699,071,308,131
765,820,574,577,637		1,013,771,065,219,837	1,386,292,484,199,937	1,717,699,071,308,137
	807,887,713,166,741	1,013,771,065,219,841	1,386,292,484,199,941	1,717,699,071,308,141	1,944,170,251,647,341
			1,386,292,484,199,943		1,944,170,251,647,343
765,820,574,577,647				1,717,699,071,308,147	1,944,170,251,647,347
765,820,574,577,649	807,887,713,166,749	1,013,771,065,219,849		1,717,699,071,308,149
	807,887,713,166,753	1,013,771,065,219,853		1,717,699,071,308,153	1,944,170,251,647,353
765,820,574,577,659	807,887,713,166,759	1,013,771,065,219,859			1,944,170,251,647,359
765,820,574,577,661				1,717,699,071,308,161	1,944,170,251,647,361
	807,887,713,166,767		1,386,292,484,199,967	1,717,699,071,308,167	1,944,170,251,647,367
765,820,574,577,671	807,887,713,166,771		1,386,292,484,199,971
765,820,574,577,673		1,013,771,065,219,873		1,717,699,071,308,173	1,944,170,251,647,373
765,820,574,577,677	807,887,713,166,777	1,013,771,065,219,877	1,386,292,484,199,977	1,717,699,071,308,177
765,820,574,577,679		1,013,771,065,219,879	1,386,292,484,199,979	1,717,699,071,308,179
765,820,574,577,683	807,887,713,166,783		1,386,292,484,199,983	1,717,699,071,308,183	1,944,170,251,647,383
	807,887,713,166,789	1,013,771,065,219,889	1,386,292,484,199,989		1,944,170,251,647,389
765,820,574,577,691	807,887,713,166,791		1,386,292,484,199,991	1,717,699,071,308,191	1,944,170,251,647,391
765,820,574,577,697	807,887,713,166,797	1,013,771,065,219,897			1,944,170,251,647,397

This list seems, on the whole, more random than either list previously considered. No pair of these six centuries has more than thirteen common primes (807,887,713,166,700 and 1,013,771,065,219,800), which does not seem surprising. There is:

• one pair of last two digits (k13) that is prime for all six
• the same as for the first ten centuries with eighteen primes and ten composites not divisible by 2, 3, or 5
• one pair of last two digits (k43) with only two primes
• the minimum in the centuries mentioned in the preceding point is three

Updating Löwen’s Table 1

Ever since I first read Table 1 of Sundown Towns (pages 55 and 56 of the book), I was curious about two things:

1. how many of the counties listed as having few or no African–Americans were the very counties that had so consistently voted Republican since the Civil War?
2. what have the trends been since 1930?

Löwen did give some discussion of what had happened since 1930 — an increase up to around 1970 or even 1980, and then a major decrease in counties without blacks. However, he did not tabulate the changes since 1930.

Since the 1970 census (and possibly since the 1960, although I have never found the relevant data) genuine black populations have been able to be determined via the counting of black households, so as to exclude:

1. prison inmates
2. residents at military bases
3. live-in servants in white households

Many rural sundown counties, especially since the 1970s, have had large black populations of prison inmates counted in their census populations.

To update Table 1 of Sundown Towns to more modern censuses, I have chosen to maintain Löwen’s 40-year gap between censuses. Data for the 1970 and 2010 census allow a comparison by householders rather than total black residents including prison inmates. Thus, I have changed the criterion from ten blacks to five black households for the 1970 and 2010 census. A mistake in compiling associated maps caused me to slightly modify the original Table 1 for the 1890 and 1930 censuses to include counties with exactly ten black residents. I have included Tennessee for this updated table because:

1. Tennessee had large areas that opposed secession — larger, in fact, than Texas and Arkansas
• the eastern half of Tennessee, indeed, provided far more recruits for the Union Army than Texas or Arkansas, and the Confederate government had constant trouble controlling it
2. like Texas and Arkansas but unlike the other eight states of the Confederacy, Tennessee never had either literacy tests or cumulative poll taxes as a requirement for voting
3. Tennessee during Jim Crow was akin to the Border States in being divided according to Civil War loyalties, rather than overwhelmingly Democratic everywhere or almost everywhere
4. today, unlike the eight core states of the plantation South, Tennessee’s largest ancestry is not African–American

On pages 467 and 468 of Sundown Towns, it is noted that several states included in Table 1 contained substantial areas belonging to the plantation South. Actually, what is said of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri could equally well be said of Delaware and Oklahoma, whose most southern or southeastern regions are undoubtedly plantation South. [In fact, if criterion 4) above defined the plantation South, that region would include Maryland and Delaware as well as the eight core southeastern coastal states.] Among the seventeen states where de jure segregation was practised before Brown, West Virginia alone contained no plantation South area.

States that support Löwen’s conclusions are shaded red and those which do so strongly are shaded dark red.

Contiguous US Outside Plantation South — Counties with No or Few African Americans:

Total	118	431	235	707	570	861	62	382
State	Census
	1890		1930		1970		2010
	0 blacks	≤10 blacks	0 blacks	≤10 blacks	0 black households	≤5 black households	0 black households	≤5 black households
Arizona	0	2	1	1	0	0	0	0
Arkansas	0	1	3	9	13	16	0	4
California	0	4	0	8	2	7	0	1
Colorado	5	19	8	28	21	37	3	8
Connecticut	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Delaware	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Idaho	1	10	14	33	25	32	2	18
Illinois	0	8	6	18	21	37	0	9
Indiana	1	15	6	23	14	27	1	4
Iowa	13	29	12	39	40	61	0	19
Kansas	6	20	6	23	26	44	5	34
Kentucky	0	0	0	4	8	18	0	13
Maine	0	2	0	5	1	7	0	0
Maryland	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	0
Massachusetts	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Michigan	4	24	7	26	20	31	0	10
Minnesota	22	57	16	62	38	61	1	12
Missouri	0	8	12	28	32	47	2	16
Montana	0	2	11	41	36	45	10	29
Nebraska	9	42	28	64	56	68	9	47
Nevada	1	6	1	8	4	6	0	2
New Hampshire	0	0	0	2	0	1	0	0
New Jersey	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
New Mexico	0	1	3	12	5	8	1	2
New York	0	1	0	1	0	2	0	1
North Dakota	13	26	20	43	43	49	7	34
Ohio	0	1	1	2	2	9	0	1
Oklahoma	1	3	4	11	9	14	0	6
Oregon	1	17	4	25	9	11	1	4
Pennsylvania	0	3	1	4	1	8	0	3
Rhode Island	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
South Dakota	19	37	23	52	42	50	14	48
Tennessee	0	0	0	2	7	11	0	7
Texas	3	21	8	29	22	37	1	15
Utah	5	17	15	22	16	20	4	11
Vermont	0	3	1	4	2	5	0	1
Washington	5	16	6	20	7	15	1	3
West Virginia	1	3	1	4	11	16	0	10
Wisconsin	8	28	16	43	24	45	0	7
Wyoming	0	5	1	11	12	15	0	3

Conclusions:

By and large, the table above covering the contiguous US outside the plantation South verifies Löwen’s expectations. The number of counties with few or no black households in 1970 is greater than in 1930, but the number had fallen substantially by 2010. Notably, the number of counties (excluding those with populations under 1,000) absolutely without black households in 2010 is about one-ninth the 1970 number. Most of these lie in the High Plains, which never had any black residents even before sundown exclusion became general in rural areas outside the plantation South. Research in the High Plains is undoubtedly almost impossible because most areas are so distant from towns which ever allowed or had black residents. This is obliquely noted on page 467.

The number or counties with five or fewer black households in 2010 was less than half as many as in 1970.

Apart from heavily urbanised northeastern states where local governments are based upon smaller units than the census-defined county, and Arizona, every state follows this basic pattern. Even in the lower Northeast and Arizona, the pattern is not actually deviated from. Indeed, Arizona and New Jersey share with the nonplantation South a pattern of increasing exclusion northwestwards — that is, further from the plantation South. As Löwen noted, the Midwest, Plains and nonplantation South contain those states with the most striking representation of this pattern.

Supreme Court justices and Sundown Towns

One thing I thought of doing as soon as I read about the Presidential candidates who grew up in sundown towns was to try to see how many Supreme Court justices came from sundown towns. I had checked and suspected some a few years ago, but had never done any sort of compilation until now. In Sundown Towns Löwen does not discuss how many Supreme Court Justices grew up in sundown towns, but I have thought it interesting to check. For the check, I have included all non-Hispanic White Court nominees, including unsuccessful nominations, from the presidency of William McKinley to the present.

Since it is too time-consuming to search for and look at all the sources on the towns Court nominations have grown up in, and sources plainly do not exist for many towns without black households, I have focused exclusively upon what can be deduced from census data and basic Wikipedia biographical information. The sundown status of localities in the table may not be confirmable.

First Name	Surname	Status of Hometown	Comments
Edward Douglass	White	Plantation South	Grew up in Thibodaux, Acadiana, Louisiana
Joseph	McKenna	Not Sundown	Grew up in the large city of Philadelphia
Oliver Wendell	Holmes	Not Sundown	Grew up in central Boston
William Rufus	Day	Not Sundown	Grew up in Ravenna, Ohio, seat of Portage County, which had 118 black households in 1970
William Henry	Moody	Sundown	Grew up in Newbury, Massachusetts, which had no black households at all in 1970.
Horace Harmon	Lurton	Not Sundown	Grew up in Newport, Kentucky, which had over 1,000 black households in 1970.
Charles Evans	Hughes	Not Sundown	See page 459 of Sundown Towns
Willis	van Devanter	Not Sundown	Grew up in Marion, Indiana, which had 1,028 black households in 1970.
Joseph Rucker	Lamar	Plantation South	Grew up in Ruckersville, upcountry Georgia
Mahlon R.	Pitney IV	Not Sundown	Grew up in Morristown, New Jersey, which had 1,127 black households in 1970.
James Clark	McReynolds	Plantation South	Grew up in Western Kentucky and the son of a Confederate veteran.
Louis Dembitz	Brandeis	Not Sundown	Grew up in central Louisville, Kentucky.
John Hessin	Clarke	Probably Not Sundown	Grew up in New Lisbon, Ohio, which had a small though consistent black population
William Howard	Taft	Not Sundown	See page 459 of Sundown Towns
George	Sutherland	Probably Sundown	Born in the UK but moved to Springville, Utah, which had no blacks.
Pierce	Butler	Probably Sundown	Grew up in Northfield, Minnesota, which had fewer than ten blacks in most twentieth-century censuses
Edward Terry	Sanford	Not Sundown	Grew up in central Knoxville, Tennessee
Harlan Fiske	Stone	Not Sundown	Grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, which had 130 blacks in 1930.
John Johnston	Parker	Plantation South	Grew up in Monroe, North Carolina, also hometown of Jesse Helms
Owen Josephus	Roberts	Not Sundown	Grew up in the large city of Philadelphia
Benjamin Nathan	Cardozo	Not Sundown	Grew up in New York City
Hugo Lafayette	Black	Plantation South	Grew up in Clay County, Alabama
Stanley Foreman	Reed	Plantation South	Grew up in Maysville, Bluegrass Kentucky, with over 1,000 blacks in many households and a historic tobacco industry
Felix	Frankfurter	Not Sundown	Born in Austria but grew up in New York City
William Orville	Douglas	Not Sundown	Grew up in Yakima, Washington, with the only stable black community east of the Cascades
William Francis	Murphy	Sundown	Grew up in Sand Beach, in the major sundown region of The Thumb
James Francis	Byrnes	Plantation South
Robert Houghwout	Jackson	Probably Sundown	Grew up in Frewsburg, New York, with never more than a handful of blacks in any twentieth-century census.
Wiley Blount	Rutledge	Sundown	Grew up in Cloverport, Kentucky, with no black households despite over fifty in surrounding census districts and 161 in largely Unionist Breckinridge County in 2010
Harold Hitz	Burton	Not Sundown	Grew up in central Boston
Frederick Moore	Vinson	Probably Sundown	Grew up in Louisa, Kentucky, the seat of Lawrence County with never more than a handful of black households
Thomas Campbell	Clark	Not Sundown	Grew up in central Dallas, Texas
Sherman	Minton	Sundown	Grew up in Georgetown, Indiana, with virtually no blacks in any census
Earl	Warren	Not Sundown	Grew up in Los Angeles and Bakersfield, California
John Marshall	Harlan II	Not Sundown	Grew up in central Chicago
William Joseph	Brennan junior	Not Sundown	Grew up in central Newark
Charles Evans	Whittaker	Not Sundown	Grew up in Troy, Kansas, seat of always-Republican Doniphan County noted here, and an unusual rural town as it always had a small black population.
Potter	Stewart	Not Sundown	Grew up in the small city of Jackson, Michigan, which had over 1,000 black households in 1970.
Byron Raymond	White	Sundown	Grew up in Wellington, Colorado, which had virtually no blacks ay any point in the twentieth century
Arthur Joseph	Goldberg	Not Sundown	Grew up in central Chicago.
Abraham “Abe”	Fortas	Plantation South	Grew up in the Orthdox Jewish community of plantation South Memphis, Tennessee
Clement	Haynesworth	Plantation South
George Harold	Carswell	Plantation South
Harry	Blackmun	Sundown	Grew up in Nashville, Illinois, documented in Sundown Towns without noting Blackmun having grown up there
Warren Earl	Burger	Not Sundown	Grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota
Lewis Franklin	Powell junior	Plantation South	Grew up in Suffolk, Virginia, near the Black Belt
William Hubbs	Rehnquist	Sundown	Grew up in the sundown suburb of Shorewood, Wisconsin
John Paul	Stevens	Sundown	Grew up in the sundown suburb of Hyde Park, which desegregated in later years after Stevens left
Sandra Day	O‘Connor	Not Sundown	Grew up both in El Paso, with a large black community, and the sundown town of Duncan, Arizona
		Sundown
Antonin Gregory	Scalia	Not Sundown	Grew up in Trenton, New Jersey
Robert Heron	Bork	Probably Not Sundown	Born in Pittsburgh city but grew up in Lakeville, Salisbury Township, Connecticut. Salisbury had at least 91 blacks in households in 1970, and had 23 black households in 2010
Anthony McLeod	Kennedy	Not Sundown	Grew up in central Sacramento, California
David Hackett	Souter	Not Sundown	Grew up in Melrose, Massachusetts, which always had a small black community
Ruth Bader	Ginsburg	Not Sundown	Grew up in New York City
Stephen Gerald	Breyer	Not Sundown	Grew up in San Francisco
Samuel Anthony	Alito	Not Sundown	Grew up in Trenton, New Jersey
John Glover	Roberts	Probably Sundown	Grew up in Hamburg, New York, with only two black households in 1970.
Elena	Kagan	Not Sundown	Grew up in Manhattan
Merrick	Garland	Not Sundown	Grew up in Chicago
Neil McGill	Gorsuch	Not Sundown	Grew up in central Denver
Brett Michael	Kavanaugh	Sundown	Grew up in the sundown suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, which would desegregate soon after his birth
Amy Coney	Barrett	Plantation South	Grew up in New Orleans

Results:

Based upon what information can be gathered via census data:

• Of non-Hispanic White Supreme Court nominations since William McKinley,
• eleven came from the plantation South where black labour is too critical for them to be driven out
• Reed is marginal as he grew up in a county adjacent to Appalachian Unionist Lewis County
• fourteen came from probable or almost certain sundown towns
• Blackmun is absolutely definite as his birth town is mentioned in Löwen’s book, and several others are close
• thirty-five came from places outside the plantation South where blacks could live
• Clarke and Bork probably, not definitely, fall into this category

Vis-à-vis presidential candidates, relatively fewer Supreme Court nominations appear to have come from sundown towns, although confirmation is difficult. Page 155 of Sundown Towns provides a possible explanation for why this might be so, given that many Justices were and are descended from Ashkenazi Jews. Another possible reason is the larger proportion of Justices than presidential candidates growing up in the plantation South. If we re-classify Al Gore, given that he grew up in an area adjacent to counties that expelled their black populations, only three of thirty-two candidates covered in Sundown Towns grew up in the plantation South — 9.375 percent, vis-à-vis more than eighteen percent of Supreme Court nominees in the same timespan. A third possible explanation is that relatively many Supreme Court nominees came from large central cities, although this is certainly linked to my first point.

Addendum to “Sundown versus consistent GOP by county”

In my previous article “Sundown versus consistent GOP by county”, I noted my intention to discuss a number of counties in the northwest of West Virginia that were discussed barely or not at all by the late James Löwen in his Sundown Towns. Three of these, Ritchie County, Doddridge County, and Tyler County, I noted as among the most consistently partisan counties and as typical of fiercely Unionist counties in antebellum slave states (in effect, slave state counties without slaves).

Upon studying census data for the region surrounding these three counties, I noticed an almost continuous sundown area surrounding these three rock-ribbed Unionist GOP strongholds. The apparent sundown area extended as far east as heavily secessionist Webster County, which was only once won by a Republican before 2012, and also includes two counties in neighbouring Ohio.

Map of West Virginia and neighbouring areas with labelled counties showing the continuous sundown area around Ritchie, Tyler and Doddridge Counties. Dark red are likely or known sundown counties, red are highly possible sundown counties, and gold are counties that have had a population over 75,000 in at least one census.

County	State	Census
		Total black population									Number of black households
		1880	1890	1900	1910	1920	1930	1940	1950	1960	1970	1980	1990	2000	2010
Monroe	Ohio	80	102	84	90	62	37	45	21	7	2	2	3	9	19
Noble	Ohio	94	37	37	44	24	28	24	9	3	1	0	4	6	4
Wetzel	West Virginia	22	36	439	57	89	53	29	33	5	0	3	6	3	5
Pleasants	West Virginia	26	9	6	9	7	0	0	3	8	0	8	0	2	5
Tyler	West Virginia	6	2	94	115	52	35	27	20	12	1	4	0	0	1
Ritchie	West Virginia	64	36	26	26	13	7	9	5	1	0	0	2	7	8
Doddridge	West Virginia	54	131	25	8	1	20	5	2	1	0	0	0	0	2
Wirt	West Virginia	13	24	64	40	35	25	38	20	13	0	0	2	4	4
Jackson	West Virginia	103	87	115	26	12	4	1	3	6	0	5	9	8	24
Roane	West Virginia	39	29	32	18	12	14	3	23	17	0	0	0	12	9
Calhoun	West Virginia	74	81	83	80	36	12	7	10	12	0	0	0	1	2
Gilmer	West Virginia	47	50	36	17	38	21	2	24	1	1	0	5	12	28
Clay	West Virginia	0	0	18	5	147	170	201	58	66	0	0	0	1	2
Braxton	West Virginia	104	134	187	221	273	188	160	111	119	22	28	29	28	27
Lewis	West Virginia	323	261	178	239	291	122	93	62	95	19	17	8	8	13
Webster	West Virginia	2	11	12	8	0	9	1	4	1	0	0	0	0	2
Nicholas	West Virginia	58	21	19	48	68	65	24	32	6	0	4	1	2	10

Of the counties shown above, there is some discussion of Pleasants County here, but the fact that census data for surrounding counties indicates they were probably sundown is not noted. New Martinsville, the seat of Wetzel County, is also discussed here, but that Wetzel County was probably sundown throughout is never noted. It is worthwhile to note that in the 1860 census, the last before slavery was abolished, Ritchie County had no free blacks at all. The table above suggests that most of the counties in this sundown area got rid of their black populations in the 1900s, with this date being most apparent for Doddridge County, and not improbable for Wetzel, Ritchie, Roane and Jackson Counties. Some other counties — such as Calhoun and Gilmer — may have got rid of their black populations around the Depression era. (Tucker County, an isolated probable sundown county on the map, appears to have got rid of its African Americans only after Brown v. Board of Education. The same is true of Highland County, and possibly of Nicholas and Wirt).

In order to establish this as a distinct area of sundown or probably sundown counties, I have compiled census data for surrounding counties that have never had a population of 75,000 or greater in any census. (As I noted earlier, this cutoff may in fact be too large). Upshur County’s figures were already shown in the previous post, but Upshur is unlikely to have been a sundown county.

County	State	Census
		Total black population									Number of black households
		1880	1890	1900	1910	1920	1930	1940	1950	1960	1970	1980	1990	2000	2010
Greene	Pennsylvania	503	445	313	389	300	516	417	450	360	98	95	77	61	81
Marshall	West Virginia	223	236	499	575	502	882	881	323	360	36	45	41	41	50
Guernsey	Ohio	586	496	472	489	456	571	596	622	688	166	196	233	235	208
Morgan	Ohio	193	160	131	147	233	275	377	361	500	122	162	209	204	184
Washington	Ohio	1,243	1,412	1,597	1,378	1,165	1,185	1,143	865	843	205	299	291	244	265
Meigs	Ohio	1,798	1,405	969	690	631	596	507	415	339	72	109	65	68	93
Mason	West Virginia	859	759	537	349	227	692	670	755	529	58	37	32	44	45
Putnam	West Virginia	355	237	378	435	397	124	145	12	13	27	18	41	99	173
Greenbrier	West Virginia	1,981	1,993	1,829	1,779	1,726	2,329	2,430	2,014	1,879	483	516	508	487	445
Pocahontas	West Virginia	334	353	625	445	558	638	646	628	373	56	30	30	21	12
Randolph	West Virginia	112	262	519	376	431	342	391	385	260	61	51	38	41	44
Upshur	West Virginia	201	256	221	226	196	201	155	92	71	19	20	29	22	27

Whilst most of these figures do suggest a definite boundary of the sundown area, it might be noted that most of Randolph County was probably sundown and may still be, although the county seat of Elkins and unincorporated parts of its associated district have always had at least thirty black households. Six of Randolph’s nine districts had no black household in 2010. Guernsey County shows a somewhat similar pattern: almost all the black households were and are in county seat Cambridge and the surrounding township. Mason County and Point Pleasant are similar though less extreme, as thirteen of 45 black households in the county lied outside its district. (That boundaries of large sundown areas do not correspond with county lines is the rule rather than the exception). Whether the apparently sundown part of Randolph became so before 1940 as the group of counties tabled above did, or with Brown v. Board as Tucker County apparently did, it is difficult to check with census data.