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 Orthodox 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.