Metro Plates
Black Richmond: Growth and Movement
In Richmond, 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 Richmond, a metro of about 105,000 Black residents, against the currents that have reshaped Black geography in the present era.
Growth and Movement
The migration currents read locally in Richmond, where the state rows below set the population whose movement the national pattern frames. The capital region's 330,000 Black residents distribute across the independent city's ring in the Virginia pattern. Henrico County, the suburban giant to the north and west, holds a Black population in the range of 100,000 — roughly three-tenths of the county — from the older East End communities of Sandston and Highland Springs to the new subdivisions of the far East End, one of the largest suburban Black populations of any county in the South. A benchmark in an atlas does not rank Richmond; it locates it, and that is its whole use here.
In Richmond, that national movement pattern arrives as local gain or loss, and the table below fixes the population it describes. For Richmond, richmond's data carry a juxtaposition no other profile matches exactly. Against the national midpoint, the rows below say how Richmond's households stand.
In Richmond, that national movement pattern arrives as local gain or loss, and the table below fixes the population it describes. The estimates show the metro's Black population growing steadily — Henrico and Chesterfield gaining fastest, Petersburg stable, the city itself growing in total with its Black share edging down from its late-century majority toward the mid-forties as downtown revival diversifies the core. Richmond's rows, read against the national midpoint, state the standing of its households.
The Currents Around the Metro
In Richmond, 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 Richmond metro's record, in the published counts, is its own negotiation among those currents. In Richmond, 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.
In Richmond, that national movement pattern arrives as local gain or loss, and the table below fixes the population it describes. Richmond holds about 105,000 Black residents — Black alone or in combination, roughly 46 percent of Virginia's capital city — and about 330,000 across its metropolitan area, the third-largest Black population of any Southern capital region. Against the table, the national pattern sharpens into the particular numbers of Richmond.
The migration currents read locally in Richmond, where the state rows below set the population whose movement the national pattern frames. Jackson Ward, the district northwest of downtown, was by 1900 among the most accomplished Black neighborhoods in the nation: a center of Black banking and insurance (the 'Black Wall Street of the South' of its boosters), home to the True Reformers' bank (the first Black-chartered bank in the United States, 1888) and to Maggie L. Walker, who in 1903 chartered the St. The benchmark's work is location, not rank: it fixes where Richmond stands so the plate can be read.
For Black Richmond: Growth and Movement, the method is the atlas's own: named sources, published figures, and a table that carries what the map cannot. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black residents of the Richmond metro, alone or in combination: 105,000; Black share of the Richmond metro population, alone or in combination: 46%; Black share of the state population, alone: 19%. The material is asked only for what it can state, and nothing beyond it is claimed for Richmond.
This plate takes up its subject directly: Black Richmond: Growth and Movement. How this plate is read, for Richmond: begin with the map, whose shading bands the published Black share into the legend's five classes, then turn to the table, which states the measures in figures — Black residents of the Richmond metro, alone or in combination: 105,000; Black share of the Richmond metro population, alone or in combination: 46%. In Richmond, a reader who holds the table and this text together has the plate entire.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black residents of the Richmond metro, alone or in combination | 105,000 |
| Black share of the Richmond metro population, alone or in combination | 46% |
| Black share of the state population, alone | 19% |
| 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.