History on the sundown signs of Vidor, Texas.

As for the sundown town signs…
In the middle of the town of Vidor at the intersection of I-10 & Main Street and the outskirts of the city limits in all directions, there were signs from the 1930s that read, One read, "Niggers read this and run. If you can't read, run anyway." and another that simply said "Nigger don't let the sun set on you in Vidor." . Vidor was known for these two prominent hand-painted signs on the outskirts of town. The sundown signs were taken down in the late 1980s. This is what had made Vidor a sundown town. Some citizens say that those signs still exist on the less traveled country roads to and from Vidor. There have been rumors of that.

The reason for that is because of a local tale that a black men had raped a white woman in the middle of the night at midnight. The women had screamed loudly and had gotten the local KKK's attention. So the local KKK had formed a local search party to find the black rapists. The KKK had hung two black men before they got the right one. The fourth one got away. There were 3 nooses from a tree at a fishing hole nearby and nooses hanging from a sign in the middle of Vidor. It was at that point that the WCK and other KKK members had decided they did not want black citizens living in the city of Vidor. White Camellia Knights did lynch black people back in those days. By this point, it was clear that Charles Sheridan Vidor and the local White Camellia Knights (KKK) did not want black citizens living in Vidor.