Edmund Dinis Portuguese-American Political, Legal and Public Service collection

Edmund Dinis was born on October 4th, 1924 in St. Michaels, Azores to Jacinto Dinis and Maria Dinis. In 1929, at the age of 5, he immigrated to New Bedford, Massachusetts. He was well-known as a former Bristol-County District Attorney and the owner of the WJFD radio station- 97.3 FM. A graduate of New Bedford High School, he went on to attend the University of Chicago to study law. He served for a short time in the military during World War II as a French interpreter, in the 100th infantry division. Afterward, Dinis went on to continue his studies at the Harvard University Graduate School and then after at the Suffolk University Law School, where he obtained his law degree in 1950. Mr. Dinis was very politically active in the south coast region of Massachusetts, serving on the House of Representatives in 1948, the State Senate in 1953, and the New Bedford City Council in 1975. In 1959 he was elected district attorney for the Southern District of Massachusetts. Mr. Dinis is perhaps most well-known as the former prosecutor in Senator Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick Case. Mr. Edmund Dinis left office in 1970, and went on to pursue other projects such as the establishment of the Dighton Rock memorial, Peter Francisco Day and the memorial for Portuguese navigator Estevan Gomez in Bangor, Maine. Mr. Edmund Dinis passed away on March 14, 2010 in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.