State Plates
The Alaska Income Plate
In Alaska, income is where the atlas's population counts meet household economics. This plate places Black Alaska in the national income geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black households, and Alaska's own distribution figures — 50,000 Black residents, 3 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
In Alaska, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. Median household income is the most widely used single measure of a population's economic position, and for Black households in the United States the Census Bureau's annual income report places the figure at $56,490. Held against the national midpoint, Alaska's own rows say how its households stand.
In Alaska, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. Household income counts the combined money income of everyone aged 15 and over living in the home — wages, salaries, self-employment income, Social Security, pensions, interest, and cash benefits — before taxes. Against the national midpoint, the rows below say how Alaska's households stand.
In Alaska, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. The national median household income in the same report is $77,719. Against that benchmark, the Black median of $56,490 is about 73 cents on the dollar. Alaska's rows, read against the national midpoint, state the standing of its households.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Alaska; the benchmark rows are the published national figures, labeled as benchmarks. In Alaska, the plate makes no state income estimate of its own — it sets the state's population, counted exactly, beside the national income record, measured exactly, which is the honest first step of any income geography.
The Population Behind the Plate
The income figures take their local meaning in Alaska, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. Alaska holds about 50,000 Black residents — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in fifteen of its people, with Black alone at about 24,000, or 3.3 percent. National material earns its place on this plate only where it sharpens Alaska's own record, stated plainly in the table.
For Alaska, the national benchmark is a yardstick, not a description; the description is the state's own distribution, tabled below. When the Army built the Alaska Highway in 1942 — 1,500 miles of road through the Yukon and British Columbia in eight months — roughly a third of the soldiers who built it were Black, serving in segregated engineer regiments (the 93rd, 95th, and 97th Engineers and their sister units) assigned disproportionately to the northern, coldest, least-supplied sections. The state's own rows, tabled below, are where this general material becomes a specific place.
Residents moving between states — domestic migration — are the stream that built and rebuilt Black geographies across a century and a half, Alaska's among them. Read against the population counted on the distribution plate, the national median describes the economic center of gravity of the community that Alaska's 50,000 Black residents belong to. Holding the structure still while the numbers move is the gazetteer's work — the only way an atlas stays honest across editions, for Alaska as for every entry.
This plate takes up its subject directly: The Alaska Income Plate. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 3%; Black share, alone or in combination: 6.8%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 50,000. The plate reports what the sources publish for Alaska and leaves alone what they do not.
Two further figures complete the plate's account of Alaska: Black residents, alone or in combination: 50,000; United States benchmark — Black median household income, Census Bureau annual report: $56,490. The measures above and these together fix the population of Alaska as this plate describes it — its size, its share, its standing nationally — and the text that surrounds them interprets them without rounding or extension beyond the source.
A closing word on the use of this plate: the figures for Alaska are a reference, meant to be cited, compared, and returned to. A reader who needs the underlying counts will find them in the published tables of the source named below, from which every figure here descends without alteration beyond the rounding the source itself applies.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 3% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 6.8% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 50,000 |
| United States benchmark — Black median household income, Census Bureau annual report | $56,490 |
| United States benchmark — Black median household income per $1 of the national median | 73 Cents |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Income in the United States (Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement); American Community Survey. 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.