State Plates
The Black Population of Illinois
About 2 million Black Illinoisans — roughly one in six residents — from Chicago's South Side to East St. Louis, one of America's most heavily Black cities.
Distribution Across the State
The distribution reads at state scale in Illinois, where the table's rows give the published count and the share the map draws. Illinois holds about 2 million Black residents — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in six of its people, with Black alone at about 1.8 million, or 14 percent. National material earns its place on this plate only where it sharpens Illinois's own record, stated plainly in the table.
The distribution reads at state scale in Illinois, where the table's rows give the published count and the share the map draws. Springfield, the state capital, is about a fifth Black, with a community reaching back to the free Black settlements of the 1820s. The general record is background; the local one — Illinois's, in the table — is the subject.
The State on the National Plate
On the national plate, Illinois sits in the 12 to 19 percent band. Its Black alone share of 14 percent — 15 of the fifty-one geographies mapped — stands against a national figure of 13.5 percent, and its Black population, 2 million alone or in combination, is one of the building blocks of the national total of 52.8 million. An atlas reads Illinois two ways at once: by the size of its community, and by that community's weight inside the whole population. Illinois is legible on both readings, and this section of the atlas holds the two side by side.
Where the general meets the particular is the table of Illinois; read the two together. In Illinois's band — the 12 to 19 percent band — the shaded peers include Arkansas, Florida, Michigan and New Jersey. In Illinois, banding is a cartographer's compromise: it trades precision for pattern, letting the eye take in the geography of a whole country at once. The table restores the precision the shading rounds away, carrying the published share and count for Illinois exactly as the source agency releases them.
In Illinois, every figure on this plate descends from the federal count of the whole population — the decennial census and the American Community Survey that updates it between census years. Those instruments count everyone, which is what makes a share meaningful: 14 percent is not a sample of Black Illinois, it is Black Illinois measured against all of Illinois. In Illinois, the atlas's other plates return to this population again and again, because income, schooling, health, and ownership are all attributes of the people counted here, in this place, first.
The distribution reads at state scale in Illinois, where the table's rows give the published count and the share the map draws. For Illinois, chicago State University, on the city's South Side, is the state's public predominantly Black university and one of the Midwest's designated HBCU-equivalent institutions; Southern Illinois University's campuses, the University of Illinois system, and the state's community colleges carry the remainder of Black enrollment in the education data. The benchmark's work is location, not rank: it fixes where Illinois stands so the plate can be read.
The distribution reads at state scale in Illinois, where the table's rows give the published count and the share the map draws. In Illinois, the downstate communities also hold a distinction the income tables miss: several — East St. Not to rank Illinois but to locate it — that, in an atlas, is the use of a benchmark.
The subject here is The Black Population of Illinois, and the reading is the atlas's standard one: the published figures first, the interpretation after. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 14%; Black share, alone or in combination: 15.6%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 2 Million. For Illinois, a reader who holds the table and this text together has the plate entire.
What follows is the plate the atlas files as The Black Population of Illinois. How this plate is read, for Illinois: 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 share of the state population (alone): 14%; Black share, alone or in combination: 15.6%. In Illinois, that is the whole of the plate's claim, and it is enough for a reference.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 14% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 15.6% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 2 Million |
| Black residents of the United States, alone or in combination (Census Bureau population estimates) | 52.8 million |
| 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.