State Plates
The Delaware Education Plate
In Delaware, education plates turn on attainment — the credentials a population carries. This plate places Black Delaware in the national education geography: the benchmarks below are the published national attainment figures for Black adults, and Delaware's distribution figures — 245,000 Black residents, 22 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
In Delaware, that national attainment pattern meets a state school and college system of its own, and the table below fixes the population it describes. For Black adults aged 25 and over, the Census Bureau's surveys record a population that has reached near-parity in high school completion while remaining well behind national rates in college completion: about 89 percent hold a high school diploma or higher, and about 25 percent — one in four — hold a bachelor's degree or higher. Held against the national midpoint, Delaware's own rows say how its households stand.
In Delaware, that national attainment pattern meets a state school and college system of its own, and the table below fixes the population it describes. At the first step, high school completion, Black adults stand at about 89 percent, close to the national figure of about 90 percent — a convergence that is historically recent and remarkable, given that as late as the mid-twentieth century a majority of Black adults had not completed high school. At the third step, the bachelor's degree, the Black figure of about 25 percent separates from the national figure of about 36 percent and the non-Hispanic White figure of about 39 percent. Held against the national ladder, Delaware's own rows say where its attainment stands.
In Delaware, that national attainment pattern meets a state school and college system of its own, and the table below fixes the population it describes. Placed alongside the other groups the Census Bureau reports, the bachelor's-degree ordering reads: Asian adults at roughly 57 percent, non-Hispanic White adults at 39 percent, all adults at 36 percent, Black adults at 25 percent, and Hispanic adults at about 21 percent. Against the national ladder, the rows below place Delaware's attainment.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Delaware; the benchmark rows are the published national attainment record, labeled as benchmarks. In Delaware, attainment is a stock built over decades, so the national pattern changes slowly — and the size of the state's Black adult population is what turns that pattern into local classrooms, colleges, and workforces.
The Population Behind the Plate
For Delaware, the national attainment figures are context; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the plate's subject. Delaware holds about 245,000 Black residents — Black alone or in combination — nearly a quarter of the First State's people, with Black alone at about 218,000, or 22 percent. The general material becomes a specific place in the table below, in Delaware's rows.
For Delaware, the national attainment figures are context; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the plate's subject. Here, on the plate for Delaware, delaware's Black community is among the oldest in the mid-Atlantic in continuous record: a border state that held slavery to the eve of emancipation while sheltering one of the East's most active Underground Railroad corridors — Wilmington's stations and the harbor pilots' networks are the documented core of the state's freedom history — and free Black communities in its towns that predate the republic. For Delaware, the plate's own table is where this general material meets the specific geography, and the two should be read together.
In Delaware, attainment is cumulative: every graduating class adds to it, and nothing subtracts except time. That is why education plates reward patience — the national Black attainment record has risen across every measured generation, and a state like Delaware, holding 245,000 Black residents, holds its share of that rising stock in its own schools and campuses. Benchmark rows are labeled with their basis wherever they appear, so Delaware is compared on one measure and one basis only.
For The Delaware Education Plate, 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 share of the state population (alone): 22%; Black share, alone or in combination: 24%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 245,000. The plate states Delaware's record beside its table and lets the record speak.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 22% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 24% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 245,000 |
| United States benchmark — of Black adults hold a high school diploma or higher | 89% |
| United States benchmark — of Black adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher | 1 in 4 |
Source: National Center for Education Statistics; U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey educational attainment tables. 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.