Sundown Towns · Jim Crow · Kentucky · Ethnic Cleansing

The Corbin Expulsion: Driven Out in a Single Night

On the night of October 31–November 1, 1919, white railroad workers and local residents in Corbin, Kentucky attacked their Black coworkers and neighbors, drove every Black resident from the town at gunpoint, and burned the Black section of the community. The local newspaper celebrated the expulsion. No one was prosecuted. Corbin became and remained a sundown town for decades. What happened in Corbin happened in hundreds of American towns — North and South — across the early twentieth century.

DateOctober 31–November 1, 1919
LocationCorbin, Whitley County, Kentucky
ContextLabor competition, Red Summer 1919
StatusLive
The argument

The Corbin Expulsion is an instance of a pattern that James Loewen documented in his book Sundown Towns: the systematic, often violent expulsion of Black residents from hundreds of American towns and counties between roughly 1890 and 1940 — and the informal enforcement of Black exclusion that continued long after. This pattern was not unique to the South. Corbin is in Kentucky. Similar expulsions occurred in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and across the Midwest and West. The Great Migration brought Black workers north, and white workers and communities responded in dozens of cities and towns with organized violence designed to keep entire geographies racially exclusive. Corbin is one data point in a nationwide campaign of ethnic cleansing that shaped American residential patterns — and thus wealth, school funding, and political power — for generations.

Era 1
Corbin, Kentucky and the 1919 Context
1
1919 — Red Summer and Labor Competition

1919 Is the Year of Red Summer: 26 Cities Experience Anti-Black Massacres and Riots. Black Workers Moving North Are Seen as Labor Competition. Corbin's Black Railroad Workers Are Targeted by White Coworkers Who Want Their Jobs.

Corbin, Kentucky, was a railroad town — home to a large L&N (Louisville and Nashville) Railroad maintenance facility. Black workers had come to Corbin to work on the railroad, part of the broader Great Migration movement that was bringing hundreds of thousands of Black workers out of the Deep South and into industrial employment. In 1919, they lived in a distinct section of the town, attended their own church, and worked alongside white coworkers who resented their presence.

The summer and fall of 1919 — "Red Summer" — saw the worst wave of anti-Black violence in American history since Reconstruction. In 26 cities from Chicago to Omaha to Elaine, Arkansas, white mobs attacked Black neighborhoods, often targeting communities and workers who had recently arrived as part of the Great Migration. The pattern was consistent: Black workers who competed for industrial jobs or who had achieved any degree of economic stability were framed as threats to white workers, and violence was used to force them out.

200+Black residents expelled from Corbin in a single night
26Cities that experienced anti-Black massacres or major violence in Red Summer 1919
100sAmerican towns that expelled Black residents between 1890–1940, documented by historian James Loewen
2
October 31–November 1, 1919 — The Expulsion

White Workers Attack the Black Railroad Camp. Residents Are Dragged From Homes at Gunpoint and Put on Trains Out of Town. The Black Section of Corbin Is Burned. The Local Newspaper Reports It as a Community Achievement.

On the night of October 31, 1919, a mob of white workers and local residents attacked the railroad camp housing Black workers and their families. Those inside were given an ultimatum: leave or be killed. Residents were dragged from their homes at gunpoint and marched to the railroad depot, where they were put on freight trains and told not to return. The Black section of town was burned. The operation was organized and efficient — it accomplished in a single night what took the Tulsa massacre two days the following year.

The Corbin newspaper covered the expulsion approvingly, framing it as a community decision to "clean up" the town. The Louisville Courier-Journal reported the incident but no state or federal investigation followed. No one was arrested. No one was prosecuted.

"Every negro in Corbin was either driven out of town or placed on outgoing trains Tuesday night by a mob of several hundred white men."

— Louisville Courier-Journal, November 1919, reporting the Corbin expulsion

Era 2
Sundown Town and Long Reckoning
3
1919–Present — The Sundown Town Pattern

Corbin Became a Sundown Town — Where Black People Knew They Were Not Safe After Dark. The Pattern Was Not Limited to the South: Hundreds of Towns Across the Midwest, West, and Northeast Enforced Similar Exclusions Through Violence, Law, and Custom.

After 1919, Corbin enforced its status as a sundown town through informal means — reputation, threat, and the knowledge among Black travelers that the town was unsafe. "Sundown town" referred to communities where Black residents were expected to be out of town by nightfall, enforced by signs, police harassment, or violence. James Loewen's research identified over 3,000 confirmed or likely sundown towns across the United States — concentrated not in the Deep South, where Jim Crow segregation was formalized by law, but in the North, Midwest, and West, where exclusion was maintained informally.

The sundown town pattern
  • Anna, Illinois: expelled its Black residents in 1909 — "Anna" was said to stand for "Ain't No N*****s Allowed." Remained nearly all-white through the 20th century.
  • Forsyth County, Georgia: expelled all Black residents in 1912 following a rape accusation and lynching. Remained all-white until a civil rights march in 1987 was attacked by white residents.
  • Harrison, Arkansas: expulsion in 1905 and 1909. A KKK billboard at city limits remained until 2015.
  • Hundreds of Indiana towns maintained formal or informal exclusion policies — Indiana had more KKK members per capita than any Southern state in the 1920s.

Corbin held a public reckoning event in 2019 — 100 years after the expulsion — where local residents, historians, and descendants of those expelled gathered to acknowledge the history. It was organized primarily by local white community members who had learned about the expulsion and felt it needed to be confronted. The event was not universally welcomed. No reparations were made. The descendants of those expelled have never returned as a community.

The chain of causation

Great Migration — Black workers come north for railroad jobs
1910–1919
→
Red Summer 1919 — 26 cities, anti-Black violence nationwide
1919
→
White mob expels all Black residents from Corbin in one night
Oct 31, 1919
→
No prosecution — newspaper celebrates — Corbin becomes sundown town
1919–1980s
→
Public reckoning event — 100-year anniversary — no reparations
2019

Corbin was one of hundreds. The sundown town was a national institution.

James Loewen identified over 3,000 American sundown towns. Corbin is one. The pattern — organized expulsion, local celebration, no prosecution, decades of enforced exclusion — shaped the racial geography of American cities, suburbs, and towns in ways that are still measurable in housing data, school funding, and wealth today.

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