The community was unofficially a Sundown town, a term used across the South for towns where race-based restrictions discouraged Black people from being out after dark. When night fell in Robertsdale, Black residents retreated to their homes in the neighboring towns of Loxley and Silver Hill. In 1969, the local school began busing Black students from those areas into Robertsdale. Some locals resisted integration. The family of one of the first Black students to integrate the high school opened their mailbox to find a pipe bomb inside.
