Metro Plates
Black Miami: Growth and Movement
In Miami, metros are where the national movement story is actually decided — the gains and losses of a few dozen large communities add up to the country's direction. This plate reads the movement record of Black Miami, a metro of about 1 million Black residents, against the currents that have reshaped Black geography in the present era.
Growth and Movement
For Miami, the national movement figures are the current; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is where the current lands. Miami was incorporated in 1896 with Black laborers — many of them Bahamian — forming a large share of the workforce that built it and of the men permitted to sign its charter. The Black community was confined to Colored Town, renamed Overtown, which became a flourishing entertainment and business district — the Harlem of the South in its own billing — until highway construction in the 1960s drove interstates through its center, dispersing thousands of households. In Miami, the comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national firm counts on one side, the state's enterprise on the other.
In Miami, that national movement pattern arrives as local gain or loss, and the table below fixes the population it describes. Haitian migration, accelerating from the 1970s through the boat-lift era and after, built Little Haiti around Miami's Northeast Second Avenue and extended through North Miami, North Miami Beach, and deep into Broward County. Against the national ladder, the rows below place Miami's attainment.
In Miami, that national movement pattern arrives as local gain or loss, and the table below fixes the population it describes. Broward County, centered on Fort Lauderdale, holds a Black population rivaling Dade's in size — roughly a quarter to a third of the county across its cities — and it is the region's suburban Black center: Lauderhill, majority Black and heavily Caribbean, bills itself accordingly; Lauderdale Lakes, Miramar, Pembroke Pines, Sunrise, and Plantation hold large and growing Black populations of homeowners. Against the national midpoint, the rows below say how Miami's households stand.
The Currents Around the Metro
In Miami, the present era's currents run in several directions at once: toward the South and its suburbs, out of the highest-cost coastal metros, and into mid-sized metros whose Black populations are growing fastest in percentage terms. The Miami metro's record, in the published counts, is its own negotiation among those currents. In Miami, each decennial census and each survey year revises the picture at the margin; the direction of the lines is the story, and this plate is built to be re-read as the lines extend.
For Miami, the national movement figures are the current; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is where the current lands. Here, on the plate for Miami, the Miami metropolitan area — Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties — holds more than one million Black residents, and no large American metro's Black population is more Caribbean. Miami's own rows, tabled below, are where this general material becomes a specific place.
Movement into and out of the Miami metro is measured in the federal record as the difference between counts, and its streams — births and deaths inside the metro, arrivals from other American places, arrivals from abroad — are published separately in the estimates program. In Miami, read together with the concentration plate, the movement record explains how the share above came to be, and where it is tending.
In Miami, that national movement pattern arrives as local gain or loss, and the table below fixes the population it describes. In Miami, the figures here are the published ones, rounded as the source agencies round them, and they describe the population as the federal record counts it: residents, in place, on the reference dates of the census and the survey. Against the table, the national pattern sharpens into the particular numbers of Miami.
This plate takes up its subject directly: Black Miami: Growth and Movement. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black residents of the Miami metro, alone or in combination: 1 million; Black share of the Miami metro population, alone or in combination: 17%; Black share of the state population, alone: 16%. In Miami, the figures are the argument; the text only keeps them in order.
A closing word on the use of this plate: the figures for Miami are a reference, meant to be cited, compared, and returned to. In Miami, 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 residents of the Miami metro, alone or in combination | 1 million |
| Black share of the Miami metro population, alone or in combination | 17% |
| Black share of the state population, alone | 16% |
| Black share of the United States population, alone (population estimates) | 13.5% |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census; American Community Survey; Population Estimates Program. 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.