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
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | 6330 | 6305 | 25 | |||||
| 1870 | 7342 | 7295 | 44 | 3 | ||||
| 1880 | 6233 | 6169 | 64 | |||||
| 1890 | 7123 | |||||||
| 1900 | 7457 | 7380 | 65 | 10 | 2 | |||
| 1910 | 9284 | 9227 | 54 | 3 | ||||
| 1920 | 10792 | 10744 | 39 | 9 | ||||
| 1930 | 15136 | 15088 | 30 | 18 | ||||
| 1940 | 15508 | 15479 | 28 | 1 | ||||
| 1950 | 18487 | |||||||
| 1960 | 23869 | 23840 | 23 | 6 | ||||
| 1970 | 26938 | 26845 | 54 | 25 | 4 | 10 | ||
| 1980 | 25298 | |||||||
| 1990 | 23782 | 23234 | 196 | 263 | 27 | 62 | ||
| 2000 | 23464 | |||||||
| 2010 | 24729 | |||||||
| 2020 | 25364 | 21568 | 1974 | 1257 | 90 | 2125 | 2068 |
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