National Plates
A Decade of Movement: Black Population Change Between the Censuses
Between the 2010 and 2020 censuses, the Black-alone population of the United States grew from 38.9 million to 41.1 million — an increase of about 2.2 million people, or 5.7 percent, in a decade when the national population as a whole grew by 7.4 percent. Growth on that scale is never evenly spread, and this plate reads the decade's unevenness: the states that gained the most, the states that stood still or slipped, and the metropolitan pattern that explains most of the movement. It is the national frame for the movement plates that recur in every section of the atlas.
Where the growth went
The decade's largest numerical gains were southern and metropolitan. Texas added the most Black residents of any state — on the order of half a million — concentrated in the Houston and Dallas–Fort Worth metros and their suburbs. Florida and Georgia followed, with gains gathered in the Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville, and Atlanta areas, and North Carolina behind them on the strength of Charlotte and the Triangle. The pattern below the top tier is consistent: growth flowed to the large, economically expanding metros of the South and, secondarily, to the suburbs of metros everywhere. States of the old industrial North tell a flatter story — New York grew modestly on its metro's sheer scale, while Illinois recorded a small decline, the only large state to do so, as Chicago's Black population continued a long, slow contraction even as some of its suburbs gained.
Standing still and slipping
At the other end of the table sit Mississippi, which recorded a small numerical decline across the decade, and a set of states — West Virginia among them — whose Black populations were essentially flat. Percentage growth tells yet another story: measured in percent, the fastest gains came in small-base states of the interior West and in parts of the South's rim, where modest absolute numbers translate into striking rates. The atlas keeps the two measures apart on every change plate, because they answer different questions: the count column finds where the population's weight is moving, and the rate column finds where its geography is genuinely new. Confusing the two is the most common error in reading a decade of movement, and the plates are designed to make it hard to commit.
The pattern underneath
Nearly all of the decade's net movement happened inside metropolitan areas, and much of it inside their suburban counties — the continuation of a suburbanization of the Black population that demographers have tracked across several decades and that the Metro Plates section maps in detail. The central counties of several historic Black metropolises lost population even as their metro totals grew, a divergence drawn plate by plate for Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, and others. Against that, the rural Black Belt's long decline continued at a slower pace. The next decennial comparison will be drawn from the 2030 Census when it is published; until then, the American Community Survey's annual estimates extend the picture year by year, and the atlas's movement plates note where their figures switch from the census count to the survey estimate, so the reader always knows which instrument is speaking.
Between the censuses
The decennial frame has a known limit: it photographs the population twice, ten years apart, and everything between the photographs must be inferred from the American Community Survey's annual estimates, which the atlas uses for its most recent readings and labels wherever it does. The two instruments differ — the census aims at a complete count on a single day, the survey at a rolling sample — and their figures for the same place can differ by small margins without either being wrong. The movement plates state their instrument on every table for exactly this reason. What the decade frame shows beyond dispute is the direction and the geography of travel: toward the South, toward the suburbs, toward the large and growing metros, away from a short and specific list of older industrial centers and rural counties. Six hundred plates will complicate that sentence in every direction; none of them will overturn it. It is the closest thing the atlas has to a plot, and it is drawn, like everything here, from the published counts.
Two further figures complete the plate's account of A Decade of Movement: National increase across the decade: About 2.2 million, or 5.7 percent; Largest state numerical gains: Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina. Stated together with the measures above, they fix the population this plate describes — its size, its share, and its standing against the national record — and they are the figures the surrounding text interprets, neither rounded further nor carried beyond what the source publishes.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black population, 2010 Census (alone) | 38.9 million |
| Black population, 2020 Census (alone) | 41.1 million |
| National increase across the decade | About 2.2 million, or 5.7 percent |
| Largest state numerical gains | Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina |
| States with the largest Black numerical declines | Illinois, Mississippi (small) |
| Fastest percentage growth | Smaller-base states of the West and South |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census Summary File 1; U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census Demographic and Housing Characteristics File. Method: Figures are drawn from the published federal sources named on this page, for the geography named; tile shading bands the published Black population share into the five legend classes. Counts are rounded as published by the source agency, and national benchmark rows are labeled with the basis they are published on.