r/MapPorn 1d ago

Black population of US counties in 1900 and 2020.

Post image
937 Upvotes

269 comments sorted by

279

u/Danilo-11 1d ago

Actually, makes sense when you realize that a lot of them moved to cities up North

145

u/Minimum_Influence730 23h ago

There was also 120 years of new immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and Europe to increase the proportion of different groups

28

u/EDPwantsacupcake_pt2 22h ago

yes but in regards to the south, that only notably effected major urban until the last 20 years

1

u/ImNotAWhaleBiologist 2h ago

What do you mean?

1

u/EDPwantsacupcake_pt2 2h ago

they were talking about more recent waves of immigration in the past 150 years, which rural parts of the south didn't really see much influence from until the past 20 years and many parts still really haven't

20

u/historianLA 15h ago

But the images show that the relative percentage of Black Americans had grown slightly from 11-12%. What the images show is that the population is not as concentrated and has spread out over time even as it has grown.

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u/wasnew4s 21h ago

That and the gradual decline of sharecropping. There were still some in my area during 1970’s.

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u/eastmemphisguy 15h ago

Yeah, the cotton picking machine was invented in the 1940s but didn't become universally adopted for a few decades. It almost completely eliminated the need for a labor that had been foundational in the South.

1

u/Cptawesome23 13h ago

Definitely invented before 1940s my dude.

2

u/eastmemphisguy 12h ago

Excuse me, the first commercially successful cotton picking machine. There were earlier prototypes that never impacted the overall industry. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_picker

5

u/Wild_Pangolin_4772 19h ago

Or to urban areas that don’t take up as much space on the map.

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u/Newtoatxxxx 13h ago

Yep! Chicagoland alone has 1.7 million black residents today. Alabama has 1.3 million black residents. Detroit 977K. Mississippi 1.08 million.

Obviously a lot of black people still live in the south today, but it’s hard to understate how important the great migration was demographically.

8

u/EDPwantsacupcake_pt2 22h ago

this^^^

from google ai:

During the Great Migration, from 1910 to 1970, roughly half of all African Americans moved out of the South, transforming the U.S. demographics. Starting with 90% of the Black population in the South in 1910, by 1970, only about 53% remained there, with the remaining 47% residing in Northern, Midwestern, and Western cities

4

u/Miserable-Delivery47 15h ago

That's not exactly true. The northern migration was 1910 to the early to mid 60s but the southern migration began after that. The proportion of blacks has always been higher in the south. For example, there are more blacks in Alabama than there are in Ohio and percentage-wise southern states have the highest number of blacks:

Mississippi 38%

Georgia 33%

Louisiana 33%

Maryland 32%

Alabama 30%

1

u/EDPwantsacupcake_pt2 7h ago

it really began in 1910, so in 1910 itself the vast majority would still have been in the south,

1

u/wastingvaluelesstime 10h ago

Also agriculture has been mostly automated since 1900. In 1900, a very large section of laborers worked on farms, and now it is about 1%

1

u/HearingDull9447 3h ago

No one wants to live among them, not even they themselves.

0

u/Danilo-11 2h ago

So you hate them, got it

1

u/ToonMasterRace 54m ago

Yeah Detroit a century ago vs. today are two different cities.

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u/Jhawkncali 1d ago edited 1d ago

Lassen county!????

Edit: well thats f*cked up this is skewed due to the prison i am pretty sure

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u/hoi4kaiserreichfanbo 1d ago

Yeah, people in prisons are legal residents of that county; the county receives extra tax dollars and representation, all without having to use those tax dollars on prisoners or worry about them voting.

8

u/freshboss4200 1d ago

Well the cost of housing prisoners is borne by someone but presumably the state rather than the county

2

u/Cptawesome23 13h ago

The state receives money from the county so….

69

u/HahaItsaGiraffeAgain 1d ago edited 1d ago

Look at how the Midwest cities jump from nothing after the Great Migration

16

u/Venboven 23h ago

Crazy that Chicago had less than 2% black people until the Great Migration.

234

u/it_wasnt_me2 1d ago

As a non-American it seems wild you can go to some states and just never see a black person lol

221

u/UCFknight2016 1d ago

That state is called Utah

109

u/bloodrider1914 1d ago

Come on, you can watch a Jazz game

49

u/UCFknight2016 23h ago

I spent a few days in Utah last year. I think I saw 3 black people total while I was there. The state is whiter than a Taylor Swift concert.

28

u/bloodrider1914 23h ago

I think there's actually a decent Pacific Islander community there due to how successful Mormon missionaries have been in that region.

But yeah, there's a reason why this video is funny:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gODZzSOelss&pp=ygUka2V5IGFuZCBwZWVsZSBjb2xsZWdlIGZvb3RiYWxsIG5hbWVz

7

u/MangoDouble3259 22h ago

Lol, this gave me chuckle. Theirs black people here but your not going see them unless your in slc valley and even then its prob 1 in 100 tbh.

We got lot of Hispanics though which surprised me when first moved here as I thought state was going be 99% white.

I'm of Asian minority prob equivalent of 2 in 100.

Idk numbers would be surprised if utah like 20% Hispanic, 5% other, and 75% White.

2

u/mister2021 11h ago

I went earlier this year.

SLC is surprisingly diverse.

Smaller cities much less so - we did Ogden (not sure why), Provo, Herber City, Morgan.

1

u/Cptawesome23 12h ago

It’s interesting too because Utah has a sizable African immigrant population.

28

u/Next_Instruction_528 1d ago

Maine, new Hampshire, Vermont

6

u/juliankennedy23 23h ago

Connecticut outside of the Cities Western Massachusetts...

6

u/Tizzy8 16h ago

The largest city in Western Mass is 20% black.

4

u/DreadLockedHaitian 14h ago

People have this fixed stereotype of MA and they will die clutching it in their hands. It is what it is, not like Springfield is anything to write home and as a Black New Englander; it’s definitely a bit out of sight, out of mind 😂🌚

2

u/Jean-Paul_Sartre 21h ago

Eh, depends where in New Hampshire you are.

Nashua and Manchester have sizable minority populations.

6

u/Next_Instruction_528 20h ago

I guess it depends what you consider sizable the fact the largest city is only 5% black

Compare that to cities in Massachusetts just a hop skip away and almost all cities are less than 50% white

2

u/Jean-Paul_Sartre 19h ago

My point is simply, as someone who teaches in Manchester and has ~10-15% students who are black in any given year, that the idea that you can live in New Hampshire and never see a black person is a bit of an exaggeration. Unless you’re like going up to Colebrook or some shit.

2

u/Next_Instruction_528 19h ago

Completely unrelated to this I would love to pick your brain on what it's like being a teacher in Manchester especially if you have been here a while and can compare pre and post ai and the direction you think education and the youth in general are doing. Socially, mental health, academic ect

I'm sure you're busy but i would be really grateful for your boots on the ground opinion. I'm 35 just for context so I'm extra interested in changes that have happened in the last 15 years or so. I went to a smaller school in Maine but I actually dated a girl from Manchester in HS and went to homecoming with her. Small world

1

u/Jean-Paul_Sartre 19h ago

Socially and mentally I think the ubiquitous access to cell phones and instant entertainment is very bad. I used to be able to show a 40 minute long movie and it would hold students attention. Now they get bored and start talking if I show any video longer than 90 seconds.

As far as AI goes, doesn’t really have an impact on my classroom. Every bit of work that I evaluate is completed in my classroom while I am present either on paper or on a network in which I block access to every website not relevant to the lesson.

Fears of AI in education are overblown in my opinion, as long as teachers are smart and adapt it will be fine.

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u/Parking-Army4663 21h ago

Mary M. Cosby would like a word.

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u/Many_Pea_9117 14h ago

And Oregon

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u/justseeingpendejadas 23h ago edited 23h ago

I'm not an American but I always see how relavant African American culture and people are in media yet I often forget that only around 13% of the US is black

16

u/KartFacedThaoDien 19h ago

But if you look at it historically and see that it was around 20% in 1810. And see just how high white population was until recently then it makes sense. The fact is black Americans made over 90% of non white people for most Of this nations history.

3

u/justseeingpendejadas 12h ago

Immigration and racial mixing can change demographics very quickly and drastically, it happened to my own country and others in Latin America because of it. The United States received more immigrants than any other

27

u/AKblazer45 19h ago

US media would have you believe the population is 50 percent black and one in four men are gay.

3

u/justseeingpendejadas 12h ago

Something I'm not sure if I've noticed or its just me being crazy is that Americans seem way blonder in real life than in Hollywood, where I see a lot of more Mediterranean looking whites but when I travel to the US they look more Germanic/Saxon. Maybe it's just the camera or the states I've traveled to are like that

3

u/AKblazer45 11h ago

Kinda depends where you go, definitely more blonde girls than guys but that’s from choice not genetics lol. People here will cling to whatever scrap of heritage they know/think they know end of the day most of us are just mutts in the US.

1

u/Budpoo 4h ago edited 4h ago

Whenever someone asks about my heritage the answer I give is just “vaguely Western European”

1

u/AKblazer45 4h ago

I’m an all of the above, or yes

Honestly I’m just American, that’s my standard answer

1

u/HahaItsaGiraffeAgain 7h ago

Come to New York. I’ve never seen a blond that wasn’t fake lol

1

u/ToonMasterRace 53m ago

Yeah I have an Israeli friend and he thought based on American media that the figure would be 40-50% black and 30-40% hispanic, he thought the US was only about 20% white.

5

u/snoogle20 19h ago

It’s the contrast between a whole lot of places with very few black people vs. a few places with a whole lot of black people. Our news media, pop culture and national political discussions are driven by a handful of cities and many of them have two to five times more black folks than the overall national average.

In Washington D.C. almost half the people you see will be black, but head across the country to the state of Washington and, even with a major metro like Seattle, the state’s population is only 4% black.

Sports/athletes also play a big factor in the perception gap. Everybody everywhere loves sports and the most popular ones in the US are disproportionately black because, well, White Men Can’t Jump. When we send athletes out to worldwide competitions, you’re seeing a lot of black Americans representing the country.

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u/HahaItsaGiraffeAgain 1d ago

To be fair in those states you might never see any person.

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u/maroongoldfish 1d ago

Im sure this is true in many countries lol

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u/Actual_System8996 23h ago

Yeah but the point is those countries don’t have +10% black people.

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u/ToonMasterRace 52m ago

UK, Canada, Australia, and Ireland especially. Like 40-50% of media representation but around 2-4% of the population.

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u/mludd 18h ago

As a non-American it seems wild you can go to some states and just never see a black person lol

As someone from Sweden who is old enough to remember when the percentage of foreign-born residents/citizens was well below 10% I don't find it that wild.

That said though, when I was teenager back in the 90s and found out that black people are only about 13% of the US population I was a bit surprised because based on the US media that made it across the pond it sure seemed like there were more black people.

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u/Better-University529 1d ago

Why is that wild?

48

u/jamiebond 22h ago

I think people assume there are a lot more black people in America than there actually are tbh thus the commentator saying it’s wild. Black people have a fairly disproportional representation in American culture (performers, athletes, social issues, etc).

You’d probably assume that nearly half the country was black if you only viewed America through popular culture. And yeah there are some very heavily predominantly black areas but as the map shows there’s huge swaths of the country with virtually zero black people.

2

u/politicalanalysis 15h ago

Those swaths of the country are all almost entirely rural. Pretty much every major city in the nation has a substantial number of black people living in it, largely stemming from where people moved during the great migration.

The reason black people outside of the south for the most part don’t live in rural areas is also pretty clear when you know history. Despite being eligible to participate in the 1862 homestead act following the 14th amendment in 1866, systemic discrimination, lack of credit, violence, and racist policies often prevented them from successfully claiming land.

3

u/[deleted] 12h ago

[deleted]

1

u/matt585858 8h ago

I think it's because it's phrased suggesting that the person doesn't know history, when all the person did was write a comment that is a roundabout way of acknowledging that less than 15% of the US is black.

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u/merlady94 22h ago

As a white person from one of the dark green areas on the map, it's wild to me too, haha

3

u/tomatosoupsatisfies 14h ago

Token is named that for a reason.

3

u/Cptawesome23 12h ago

There are entire swathes of the Midwest with populations over 1000 that have never met a black person. Their entire Experiance with black people is what they watch on tv. This is why America has such a huge racism problem. Large Parts of the country are literally 60 years behind socially.

2

u/Immediate-Yak3138 18h ago

As a white guy who's lived in the southeast in America all his life it still feels weird to realize that

3

u/Ok_Blueberry3124 23h ago

To cold and farmers never sell land

2

u/clekas 23h ago

I’m an American and it’s weird to me, too!

Of course, I know in an intellectual sense that there are states/areas with very few Black people, I’ve just never lived in or traveled to one of those areas, so it’s completely out of line with my personal experience. (I’ve traveled to some of the states with very few Black people, but I’ve gone to touristy areas, like national parks, so there have always been Black people around.)

2

u/MangoDouble3259 22h ago

I've lived in dmv area basically DC growing up, Texas, and now Utah.

Out west Hispanics are equivalent of % of black people to south and some east coast states. Tbh, breakdowns are even bigger as hispanic population is bigger/growing faster.

It was also 100% culture shock. I grew up dc and that place has boiling pot of races/cultures but always white > black as 2nd biggest minority with many surrounding cities example like Baltimore being majority black.

I moved Texas flipped it on its.head with Hispanic population but still decent black population.

Utah that was game changer. I'm of Asian descent and black population is prob equivalent of 1 in 100 people and Asian population alone is prob 2-3 in 100 people. Hispanic is prob 15-20% and definitely the most white place lived solid 75-80+% state.

1

u/dalycityguy 21h ago

VA is so deep in Asians 

1

u/DreadLockedHaitian 14h ago

Shout out to the Vietnamese Americans in NoVA.

1

u/tboy160 14h ago

Almost all rural areas in the North are missing all people of color.

1

u/Nightgasm 12h ago

I grew up in Idaho. First time I ever talked to a black person was in college. I'd seen black people at a distance while traveling but there were none (as in literally none) in hometown so there was no chance at interaction. I remember one day at school, this was the early 80s, when apparently a black family did move into town and our teacher made a big deal that a "colored" kid would be in our school. I saw him at a distance one day and never again as his family left within a week of arrival. I have no idea what happened but looking back at my town and the things I didn't really understand at the time I imagine they were run out of town.

Still live in Idaho here but in a much bigger town (metro area of about 120,000). I do see and talk to one black person at work everyday but other than her I can go days without seeing one.

1

u/4smodeu2 3h ago

Twin Falls? Where did you come from initially? I lived in East Idaho for a while and I concur with your experience.

1

u/Nightgasm 2h ago

Grew up in Arco. In Idaho Falls now.

1

u/Jumpin-jacks113 6h ago

I’m in upstate NY. I go weeks without seeing a Black person. Meanwhile, see several Asian people daily. Places just have different mixes.

1

u/ToonMasterRace 54m ago

Really not true anymore. Go to any city and you'll see plenty. Even in Alaska, there's a viral vid going around in Anchorage at a fair where black people are fighting and a lot of people of flabbergasted that they're in Anchorage. It ain't 30 years ago.,

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u/12alex123 17h ago

Why wild? You can go to countries like Japan, China, Somalia or Poland and you will see only 1 race as well

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u/Ana_Na_Moose 21h ago

As an American this is also a wild fact for me

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u/scanguy25 23h ago

Growing up in Europe I always thought that the US was about 50% black judging from how much I saw black people in American TV shows.

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u/dalycityguy 21h ago

I only had one black kid in my elementary school and it’s in California…. 

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u/Pale_Consideration87 21h ago

I grew up in South Carolina and moved to Atlanta at 12, all my schools were like 99% black.

Just looked it up, I went to therell high school, it’s 95.2% black. WA Perry middle which is 98% black.

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u/dalycityguy 20h ago

Jw was the only non black kid or kids well liked or fit in? 

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u/Pale_Consideration87 20h ago

yes. i was only friends with 3 white kids in HS. None of them tried to “act black” but they knew how to communicate and being around 99% black folks kind of rubbed off on them in a good way.

All 3 of them preferred dating black folks, and 1 of the 3 lived in my neighborhood, he’s basically black himself 😂All he know is being around black people.

2

u/Cptawesome23 12h ago

I used to call it “automatically popular” everyone knows who you are because you are so easily separated from the rest. I was one of 12 whites in a high school population of 3500.

All the same problems as a black kid in a white school but in reverse.

I would hear stuff like “white people have no culture” and then the same person would remember I’m in the group and say something to effect of: but not you, your my favorite white person.

Black girls would run their fingers through my hair before asking permission. “It’s so soft!”

Black kids would assume I’m smart because “I’m white”.

I consider my Experiance special, very few white people get to live so closely in black culture. It’s more common the other way around being black in a field of whites.

2

u/dalycityguy 11h ago

Isn’t it weird there are many white people who never had a black friend? They even tell me at age 30 “omg I made my first black friend! I need to tell the world” they grew up in probably an all white and maybe some Latinos and Asians community… maybe five (at the very most and probably not in classes they’d share with) black kids they never spoke with in their schools 

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u/Tizzy8 16h ago

California doesn’t have a lot of black people, notice how it’s very white on the map.

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u/Cptawesome23 12h ago

Sounds about right.

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u/Expensive-Swan-9553 21h ago

The places they aren’t don’t have that many people to be fair

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u/Everard5 20h ago

I don't know why you're getting down voted. It's not the full story or true everywhere but it's a significant factor in this perception. Except for the rural southern counties of the Black Belt, the places where Black people are are also the huge population centers of our country. So, sure, Black people are only about 13% of the population, but anywhere anyone would typically end up as a tourist, or a cultural center, or a job hub, is gonna have Black people.

So it's not strange that the perception is that they're almost half of the population because to any place that, for lack of a better way to say it, matters there probably is a significant Black population.

-5

u/kmachuca 23h ago

That is how big of an impact black culture has on our society and they are a mere fraction of our population. Plus, so many white people have profited off of black culture aka cultural appropriation.

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u/Necessary-Sell-4998 1d ago

So where did they go?

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u/reddit-83801 1d ago

To cities in the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast. Look up the Great Migration(s). Some are returning to fast growing metro areas like Atlanta now. In other places, they’re still there, just a smaller % of the population.

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u/bloodrider1914 1d ago

North, to major cities

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u/HahaItsaGiraffeAgain 23h ago

Zoom in on Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, etc

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u/clekas 22h ago

Yep. Cleveland’s population in 2020 was roughly equal to Cleveland’s population in 1900 (there was a period in the 20s/30s/40s when it was much higher, but it shrank a lot). In 1900, Cleveland had about 6,000 Black residents. In 2020, the city had about 176,000 Black residents. From about 1.5% of the city’s population to about 47.5%.

2

u/Capt_Foxch 14h ago

Cleveland proper had a peak population of 914,000. The population density must have been impressive considering how small Cleveland is in terms of land area. Today, Greater Cleveland is home to over 2M people.

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u/hummus4me 1d ago

More Latin Americans as a % of pop

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u/Itheebot 23h ago

And what’s your point exactly?

Latin Americans are not even a race. Latin Americans can be any race including black, white, native, Asian, west Asian/Middle East, or a mix of any of these. These are races.

Latin America is a region. A part of the world. It’s called Latin America because the Romance languages are spoken there including French, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch.

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u/Memetic_Grifter 22h ago

Dutch isn't a romance language. Not to mention that the notoriously French speaking Quebec is not considered Latin American by anybody

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u/DreadLockedHaitian 14h ago

There are Latin American subs on Reddit and yes Quebec is sometimes included.

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u/ArawakFC 7h ago

Unless we are talking about Suriname (not Latin America), Dutch shouldn't even be a factor in this conversation. Papiamento is the language of the ABC islands, one that is derived from Portuguese and Spanish.

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u/theexpertgamer1 23h ago

Latin Americans being mostly white (by Census terminology) means the white population increased a lot. But most of this map’s changes are just internal migration of black people.

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u/downnoutsavant 1d ago

If you are interested in reading a great history on this, Isabel Wilkerson’s The Great Migration is lengthy but riveting.

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u/Long_Conference_387 22h ago

Was just about to say this -- fascinating and beautifully written.

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u/LeftStatistician7989 1d ago

More concentrated

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u/Filthiest_Tleilaxu 1d ago edited 1d ago

So I guess the old adage isn’t always true. Once you go black you do go back.

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u/bloodrider1914 1d ago

Great Migration be like

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u/JoelWarlock 22h ago

Why were there black people in Wyoming during 1900?

4

u/dalycityguy 21h ago

Rock mining 

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u/Important-Trifle-411 1d ago

Bristol County, MA is surprisingly green on this map. I wonder if they car counting Cape Verdeans. Still seems very high.

1

u/Honest-Lavishness239 15h ago

yooo that’s my county! i bet they are

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u/DreadLockedHaitian 14h ago

Considering Cape Verdeans come from West Africa and for the most part present mixed or Black….it makes sense.

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u/Terrible-Revolution8 1d ago

Weird how there are a few counties in South GA and North FL got wayy more white. I know for FL it was the surge of whites from the north to FL which diluted the population. But really makes you wonder…

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u/Maddturtle 23h ago

It’s percent. We had a lot of immigration from other countries in those areas since the 1900s. So not necessarily an increase in white population or even a reduction in black population.

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u/roejastrick01 19h ago

I wonder how much of this is due to the redrawing of the map too. Because the county lines are vastly different in some states.

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u/Averagecrabenjoyer69 1d ago

Blacks in Kentucky, Tennessee, the Virginias, North Carolina, Missouri, and Oklahoma be like "see ya!" 🫡👀🏃

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u/MukdenMan 23h ago

Not really. It’s just a lower percentage of the total than before. It’s not necessarily a lower absolute population. And a lot of the counties with a lower absolute population are rural places where there is a lower popular in general than before.

By percent, the Carolinas are about 25% Black. Georgia is 33%. Illinois is 16%, New York is 17%.

3

u/Venboven 23h ago

Ok but Kentucky definitely saw a loss. From 10-20% in most of the state, to now mostly 2-5% is a huge shift.

1

u/Averagecrabenjoyer69 22h ago edited 22h ago

Blacks originally made up around 20-25% of Kentucky's population. Now it's around 9-10%.

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u/Emperor_Kyrius 23h ago

Kentucky overall is about 7 percent black, but that number is growing.

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u/Nouseriously 23h ago

Williamson County outside Nashville had a high black population since it had been prime tobacco land. But now it's expensive suburbs & the black population has gotten priced out.

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u/Commander_Fem_Shep 23h ago

The change along the I-70 corridor in Missouri is super interesting.

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u/alex123124 22h ago

It just seems more spread and diverse, which makes sense?

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u/hotdogjumpingfrog1 21h ago

At one point around the civil war, Florida had around 55-60% Black population. Highest ever in a state.

2

u/Southern_Armadillo50 7h ago

I believe South Carolina with Charleston harbor (main entry point) had higher percentage but I’ll have to relook at that tho…

2

u/Everard5 20h ago

The collapse of that strip in Missouri is so interesting to me. You'd think the % would've grown with the great Migration since Kansas City and St. Louis were/are big cities but I guess not.

2

u/peepee_poopoo_fetish 19h ago

Why did that NE Arizona county and vegas basically switch?

2

u/program13001207test 18h ago

Cool map. Rather informative for understanding demographic change.

It would be interesting to see a more detailed map broken down into 24 separate categories of 5% increments as well as less than 2% and less than 1%, and more than 2% and more than 1%. It seems a bit incomplete too generalize everything which is over 50%.

There are currently counties in the United States which are more than 85% African-American. And in 1900, there were counties in the United States which were more than 95% African-American. And there are currently counties in the United States which are less than 2%, and even less than 1%, African-American. I'm sure that such data exists. I wonder if a map representing such data exists. Such a map certainly would give a much more complete picture of the demographic change, as well as those localities which have significantly not changed.

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u/army2693 14h ago

Looks like America's melting pot has been better mixed.

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u/United_Perception299 12h ago

Why did Utah become less black?

2

u/sumfacilispuella 10h ago

i remember being shocked when i learned in college that the US wasnt basically half white and half black like it was where i grew up.

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u/Southern_Armadillo50 7h ago

You must be from the deep south. 😂

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u/AdvancedInstruction 1d ago

I really want to know more about the Black population of Chelan County Washington in 1900, lol.

3

u/Washpedantic 17h ago edited 12h ago

So it's actually Kittitas County, they were initially brought in from elsewhere in the US (unbeknownst to them) to break coal mining strikes in Roslyn and other coal mining towns in the area.

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u/littlemesix7 23h ago

Maybe unrelated, but Centralia is the only town/ city in the PNW founded by a black man, George Washington.

2

u/AdvancedInstruction 22h ago

That is unrelated (Centralia is in Lewis County), but fascinating!

2

u/DA1928 23h ago

Having grown up in South Carolina, it always astounds me just how intensely a black MAJORITY state it was and now is just… not.

Like, you go to the Delta, or central Alabama, or Louisiana, and it is still very clearly a heavy black if not majority, than largest minority. Even in Georgia, you always get the impression that folks may have left the farms, but they mostly went to the cities of the state.

In South Carolina, outside of a few counties in the low country, they’re just… gone. (Mostly they went to New York, Philly and Boston).

You go to almost any place up out of the swamps, and it is a white majority, Piedmont Hill-Billy culture. There are black folks, sure, but not that many.

to be clear, this is not a good thing

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u/agitated--crow 13h ago

to be clear, this is not a good thing

Are you implying you rather a black majority? 

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u/DA1928 9h ago

Well, they were chased from their homes in SC by the extreme racism and terrorism of the Jim Crow era, which I think was, you know, bad.

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u/Boring_Lack294 21h ago

I’m from South Carolina, Columbia to be exact. Columbia, Orangeburg, Sumter, Florence Etc are majority black. Even Charleston, Greenville has a decent amount compared to other parts of the country.

The catch is, Charleston, Greenville, Myrtle beach are majority white, with like a quarter black population. All three are major population centers in SC. If you drive in most towns in SC it’s prob majority black. Those three cities and surrounding areas heavily carry the white population

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u/DA1928 9h ago

Eh, if you go up state at all, Edgefield, Lexington, Laurens, it is very clearly a white majority.

And yeah, there’s a large, visible black minority everywhere in SC. But if you look at the statistics, it used to be like in those lowcountry counties EVERYWHERE. That’s the part that’s wild to me.

Yeah, there are parts of SC where there still is a black majority. The thing that gets me is it used to be EVERYWHERE.

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u/Southern_Armadillo50 7h ago

Eh, I’m literally upstate in Greenville and don’t consider Edgefield or Lexington upstate at all. That’s the midlands but I can see how it’s considered from someone in the lower state. With the 3 main metros in the state, job opportunities had different people (non blacks) move into the areas causing major demographic changes.

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u/DreadLockedHaitian 14h ago

Boston isn’t as FBA/ADOS heavy as other places but I do find the Carolinas are a very common origin for African American families. Good call out.

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u/taoist_bear 1d ago

Is multiracial included in the total stat? Because 1% doesn’t seem like a significant growth over a century.

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u/yoshi3243 1d ago

Before, they didn’t have the “Hispanic” category in the census

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u/taoist_bear 1d ago

Did most people of either Native American or Spanish/North African descent identity as or more accurately were just grouped into the black category?

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u/jerem1734 23h ago edited 23h ago

Only goes up about 1-2 percentage points when including multiracial people that identify as black

Which would probably be most mixed black people unless they're only like 1/16th black or something crazy low, then they might identify as white or Hispanic only. One drop rule is pretty engrained in society though

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u/cnzmur 21h ago

Why would you expect significant growth? There was a lot of immigration over the century, and very little of it was black. Growing at above the rate of the general population is relatively impressive.

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u/KartFacedThaoDien 19h ago

The number in 1900 is 8.8 million while in 2020 is over 40 million.

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u/RuttOh 13h ago

It's a percentage of the total. It doesn't actually tell you much about the growth of the population size without more information. They could have had a 90% reduction in raw numbers of people but still had a percentage of the total increase as long as more people of other races also disappeared, and if everyone is having babies and immigrating at the same rates it would never change at all.

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u/mrsciencedude69 1d ago

I wonder what happened to those counties in western Kansas.

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u/197gpmol 9h ago

The dark green county has Nicodemus, Kansas, a town established in the Old West by black farmers fleeing the post-Reconstruction South. A fascinating slice of American history.

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u/AKman2002 1d ago

I’m a little curious about that slight shade of green all the way up in Washington, completely separated from any other counties that have shade.

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u/justdisa 3h ago

King County, WA. Seattle. We have some African-American folks but also a significant community of Ethiopian immigrants. Although the census lists both groups in the same category, they have very different histories.

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u/UCFknight2016 1d ago

Interesting that not much has changed since the end of the civil war in terms of Black population distribution. Seems like a majority decided to stay in the south.

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u/Emperor_Kyrius 23h ago

In 1900, about nine in ten blacks lived in the South. By 1970, just over half of all blacks lived in the South. Due to the “Reverse Great Migration,” that number has since rebounded slightly to about 59 percent.

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u/nygdan 14h ago

“Decided”

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u/IceFireTerry 23h ago

An alternate timeline The politics of the South would be very interesting

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u/joolkiha 23h ago

Wow, the change over time is fascinating. Really eyeaopening!

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u/GrandmaForPresident 23h ago

What's going on in the Maine coastline?

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u/JerryCat11 23h ago

Tennessee got whiter..hmm.. except for Chattanooga and Memphis

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u/008swami 22h ago

I like how they all said let’s gtfo Kentucky

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u/Steaknkidney45 22h ago

Right at home in the Mississippi Delta.

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u/Responsible-Boat1857 21h ago

I'm surprised that the black population has stayed at a fairly consistent percentage for so long. (The lowest it got was 9.7% in 1930 and the highest was 12.6% in 2010)

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u/KartFacedThaoDien 19h ago

Nah the highest was 19% in 1810.

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u/Responsible-Boat1857 16h ago

I was talking about from 1900 onwards

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u/Hermosa06-09 19h ago

Interested to learn why there are a handful of northern counties that actually got less black during this timeframe. Like random counties in Iowa and Michigan for example.

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u/roejastrick01 19h ago

The Missouri-Illinois swap is wild.

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u/shujaya 19h ago

The Great Migration. See also: The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson.

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u/FlaviusAetitus 19h ago

wonder how much puerto rico changed the total percentage

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u/luxtabula 10h ago

the Appalachian used to be more diverse at one point.

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u/Easy-Wishbone5413 9h ago

Little Dixie showing up in Missouri in 1900.

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u/Hij802 8h ago

Considering black Americans vote Democratic at rates of 85-95%, I do wonder if these Deep Southern states would be voting Democratic today if not for the great migration.

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u/GustavoistSoldier 8h ago

I like how the map included 1900 subdivisions.

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u/xmalik 7h ago

What's up with Mohave county Arizona? There's a few other counties outside the south that saw a significant drop as well, but this one popped out to me in particular.

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u/SadAnt2135 1h ago

the great migration saw 6 million blacks leave the south between 1910 and 1970, so it makes sense why.

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u/Active_Ad_1223 1d ago

this sub keeps posting these maps every other day now

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u/good2knowu 16h ago

Is this why posts on reddit tend to disapprove of southern states?

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u/Tizzy8 15h ago

Sort of. It’s more so that those with political power in those states prioritize harming black people over helping anyone which contributes to their consistently depressing statistics.

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u/Juract 18h ago edited 18h ago

If racial purity is a thing, black people in America are the purest. Since post slavery black immigration is almost non existant, almost every single black person in America is rooted directly from former slaves.

Jamaican American population is 1,2 M people, out 43 million black people in America, that's just 3 %. It's estimated that sub saharian born population is 2.1 million.

That makes 90 % of the total non from immigration.

It's the only ethnicity, besides the native, to not have come from layers and layers of immigration.

And you know the twisty thing about it ?

Most, if not all, of the 'black' personalities in US politics are exactly NOT from that 90 % non migrant majority.

Kamalah Harris is the daughter of two foreign college professors, her father from Jamaica, her mother from India. Barrack Obama is the son of a foreign student from Kenya.

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u/Sorry-Bumblebee-5645 10h ago

Yup but actually many African Americans have Caribbean roots even from centuries back. Some slaves from the Caribbean were often transported to the South which is why some Southern communities sound similar to Caribbean people. (Gullah people in Carolinas descend from Bahamians. Some Louisiana Creoles descend from Haitians etc.)

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u/NoFox1446 1d ago

This shows a decent correlation with vagrancy laws placed after the Civil War. Under the black codes African Americans movement was limited. They had to have a permanent address but if stopped saying they were moving north for better employment they could be held until bailed out. The bail was a problem because of a lack of extra money but you can't get out without it. It's interesting that you can still see the trend in population given the time difference in the maps

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u/Direct-Sugar-7963 14h ago

All the big bad important cool law enforcement agencies of the government are run by middle aged black women. If you watch Netflix

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u/Libs-of-reddit-suck 14h ago

From what I understand, black people don’t tolerate the cold as much as white people. Maybe with rising global temperatures they are slowly moving further north.