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 | 1198 | 1198 | ||||||
| 1870 | 1513 | |||||||
| 1880 | 1615 | |||||||
| 1890 | 2098 | |||||||
| 1900 | 3929 | 3922 | 4 | 3 | ||||
| 1910 | 5542 | 5524 | 15 | |||||
| 1920 | 10749 | 10717 | 28 | 4 | ||||
| 1930 | 21748 | 21727 | 16 | 6 | ||||
| 1940 | 26867 | 26815 | 51 | 1 | ||||
| 1950 | 27381 | |||||||
| 1960 | 28715 | 28640 | 27 | 44 | 1 | 3 | ||
| 1970 | 28285 | 27966 | 62 | 190 | 11 | 56 | ||
| 1980 | 26100 | |||||||
| 1990 | 24720 | 23615 | 206 | 819 | 24 | 56 | ||
| 2000 | 24194 | 266 | 87 | |||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 | 21174 | 814 | 5770 | 220 | 1273 | 1515 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
Although Belmont appears to have a black population before 1990, they are overwhelmingly female, indicating that these are live-in domestic workers. In 1920, 24 of Belmont’s 28 blacks were women; 15 of 16 in 1930, and 46 of 51 in 1940. Belmont has since broken somewhat.
In August, 2003, a white landlord in Belton agreed to pay a black woman $50,000 in damages. The landlord had refused to rent the woman a single-family home after he had found out her race. Newspaper articles about the case and settlement from around the Boston metro noted that this was probably not an isolated
incident.
Email from 9/2014:
“A lot of the Irish form south Boston moved to Belmont when they “moved up” and just like they didn’t want blacks in “Southie” they definitely didn’t want them in Belmont.”