Metro Plates
Black St. Louis: Growth and Movement
In St. Louis, 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 St. Louis, a metro of about 140,000 Black residents, against the currents that have reshaped Black geography in the present era.
Growth and Movement
For St. Louis, the national movement figures are the current; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is where the current lands. Louis holds about 140,000 Black residents within its independent city — Black alone or in combination, more than two in five of its 302,000 people — and more than half a million across the bi-state metropolitan area, including East St. The comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national currents on one side, the state's arrivals and departures on the other.
The Currents Around the Metro
In St. Louis, 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 St. Louis metro's record, in the published counts, is its own negotiation among those currents. In St. Louis, 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.
The migration currents read locally in St. Louis, where the state rows below set the population whose movement the national pattern frames. Sumner High School, opened in 1875 as the first high school for Black students west of the Mississippi, educated generations of the region's Black professional class; Homer G. Phillips Hospital, opened in 1937, was for decades the largest Black hospital in America and trained hundreds of Black physicians and nurses; Stowe Teachers College, Antioch Baptist, and the district's businesses completed the enclave. The benchmark's work is location, not rank: it fixes where St. Louis stands so the plate can be read.
For St. Louis, the national movement figures are the current; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is where the current lands. Modern Black St. Two sides frame the comparison here: the national midpoint, and the households of St. Louis.
Movement into and out of the St. Louis 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 St. Louis, read together with the concentration plate, the movement record explains how the share above came to be, and where it is tending.
For St. Louis, the national movement figures are the current; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is where the current lands. In St. Louis, an atlas earns its keep in the comparisons it makes possible. Where the general meets the particular is the table of St. Louis; read the two together.
In St. Louis, that national movement pattern arrives as local gain or loss, and the table below fixes the population it describes. In St. Louis, 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. Read back against the table, the general pattern resolves into St. Louis's particular numbers.
For Black St. Louis: Growth and Movement, the method is the atlas's own: named sources, published figures, and a table that carries what the map cannot. Louis metro, alone or in combination: 140,000; Black share of the St. Louis metro population, alone or in combination: 46%; Black share of the state population, alone: 11%. In St. Louis, a reader who holds the table and this text together has the plate entire.
The atlas gives this subject its own plate — Black St. Louis: Growth and Movement — because the published record supports one. Census Bureau, 2020 Census; American Community Survey; Population Estimates Program. In St. Louis, read with its table, the plate states the record and lets the record speak.
The record behind this plate of St. Louis is published, not estimated by this atlas: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census; American Community Survey; Population Estimates Program. The table's benchmark row for St. Louis states its basis in its label — the comparison rests on the same measure on the same basis. In St. Louis, this note is written for the movement plate; the companion plates of the same place carry notes of their own.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black residents of the St. Louis metro, alone or in combination | 140,000 |
| Black share of the St. Louis metro population, alone or in combination | 46% |
| Black share of the state population, alone | 11% |
| 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.