Dedham

Basic Information

Type of Place

Suburb

Metro Area

Politics c. 1860?

Unions, Organized Labor?

Sundown Town Status

Sundown Town in the Past?

Probable

Was there an ordinance?

Don't Know

Sign?

Don’t Know

Year of Greatest Interest

Still Sundown?

Don’t Know

Census Information

The available census data from 1860 to the present

	Total	White	Black	Asian	Native	Hispanic	Other	BHshld
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900	7457	7380	65
1910
1920	10792		39
1930	15136		30
1940	15508		28
1950
1960
1970	26,938		54
1980
1990	23782		196
2000
2010
2020

Method of Exclusion

• Unknown

Main Ethnic Group(s)

• Unknown

Group(s) Excluded

• Black

Comments

Dedham’s 1930 and 1940 black population were
moslty live-in domestic workers. In 1930, only one of
the black residents was under the age of 15 (a boy
under five), and in 1940, no black Dedhamites were
under the age of 15. Teenage domestic servants were
quite common in this era, so Dedham’s older black
teenagers (those 15-19) were mostly likely domestic
workers.

“I grew up in a sundown town – Dedham,
Massachusetts. What is extraordinary about Dedham is
that it borders the Boston neighborhoods of Hyde Park
and Readville, yet is virtually 100 percent white. As
kids, we always heard that it was that way on purpose.
My grandfather was a contractor there, he built a
subdivision of about 300 homes [in the 1960s]. He
remembered being approached just once by a black
man interested in buying one of his houses but
wondering whether it would be OK for him to do so.
He said he told the man that he would sell to anyone
who had the money to buy. The guy never came
back…
“I don’t live in Dedham anymore… A friend ran into a
hardcore Dedhamite at a bar one night a couple of
years back. He hadn’t seen the guy in years. And the
first words out of the guy’s mouth were: ‘Dedham is a
great town. Ten minutes from Boston and no niggers.’
So it continues.”
-posted to the web, 2002