Brookline

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

The available census data from 1860 to the present

	Total	White	Black	Asian	Native	Hispanic	Other	BHshld
1860	5164	5561	3
1870	6650	6626	23	1
1880	8057	8040	17
1890	12103
1900	19935	19753	161	21
1910	27792	27547	221
1920	37748	37360	349				39
1930	47490	47147	299	35	1		8
1940	49786	49450	279	49	3		5
1950	57589
1960	54044	53485	178	326	15		40
1970	58886	57009	498				1379
1980	55062	50701	1060	2662	32		607
1990	54718	47839	1696	4585	79		519
2000	57107
2010	58732
2020	63191	47231	2931	13927	551	4272	4258

Method of Exclusion

• Unknown

Main Ethnic Group(s)

• Unknown

Group(s) Excluded

• Black

Comments

While Brookline appears to have had a black
population, they were overwhelmingly female, and
there are almost no children, indicating that the black
population was actually live-in domestic workers :

• 223/299 of the Black residents in 1930 were women
• 207/279 of the Black residents in 1940 were women
• 131/178 of the Black residents in 1950 were women

The 1855 Ivory Bean House Deed, is claimed by many to be the first racial covenant in the U.S. The deed stated that no structure could be erected on the property ‘for occupation by any negro or negroes nor by any native or natives of Ireland. This provision applied to all future transfers of ownership, not just the initial purchasers. it marks the first recorded instance of a racially discriminatory covenant in a property deed in the history of the United States (Elton, 2020). It later prohibited the construction of three-story wooden dwellings, a typical New England housing type often inhabited by impoverished immigrants and voted to scale back apartment density in 1973 (Ebbert, 2023).