State Plates
The Maryland Income Plate
In Maryland, income is where the atlas's population counts meet household economics. This plate places Black Maryland in the national income geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black households, and Maryland's own distribution figures — 2 million Black residents, 31 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
The income figures take their local meaning in Maryland, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. Median household income is the most widely used single measure of a population's economic position, and for Black households in the United States the Census Bureau's annual income report places the figure at $56,490. The benchmark's work is location, not rank: it fixes where Maryland stands so the plate can be read.
For Maryland, the national benchmark is a yardstick, not a description; the description is the state's own distribution, tabled below. Household income counts the combined money income of everyone aged 15 and over living in the home — wages, salaries, self-employment income, Social Security, pensions, interest, and cash benefits — before taxes. The comparison is two-sided by design: a national midpoint against Maryland's households.
For Maryland, the national benchmark is a yardstick, not a description; the description is the state's own distribution, tabled below. The national median household income in the same report is $77,719. Against that benchmark, the Black median of $56,490 is about 73 cents on the dollar. What the plate asks the reader to hold together is the midpoint of the nation and the households of Maryland.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Maryland; the benchmark rows are the published national figures, labeled as benchmarks. In Maryland, the plate makes no state income estimate of its own — it sets the state's population, counted exactly, beside the national income record, measured exactly, which is the honest first step of any income geography.
The Population Behind the Plate
For Maryland, the national benchmark is a yardstick, not a description; the description is the state's own distribution, tabled below. Maryland holds about 2 million Black residents — Black alone or in combination — nearly one in three of its people, with Black alone at about 1.82 million, or 29.5 percent. Below, the table's rows belong to Maryland, and there the general becomes particular.
The income figures take their local meaning in Maryland, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. Prince George's County, adjoining Washington on its east, holds roughly 580,000 Black residents — about 64 percent of its 967,000 people — the largest majority-Black county population in the nation. Not to rank Maryland but to locate it — that, in an atlas, is the use of a benchmark.
Residents moving between states — domestic migration — are the stream that built and rebuilt Black geographies across a century and a half, Maryland's among them. Read against the population counted on the distribution plate, the national median describes the economic center of gravity of the community that Maryland's 2 million Black residents belong to. Holding the structure still while the numbers move is the gazetteer's work — the only way an atlas stays honest across editions, for Maryland as for every entry.
An atlas is patient with its subjects. In Maryland, the income geography of Black America changes at the speed of households — of graduations, hires, diagnoses, incorporations, and moves — and the federal surveys that measure it publish on their own calendars. What does not change between releases is the structure this plate records: a counted population in Maryland, a measured national pattern, and the standing invitation to read the two together, state by state, until the whole country has been read that way. That is the work of this section of the atlas, and the Maryland Income plate is one page of it.
This plate takes up its subject directly: The Maryland Income Plate. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 31%; Black share, alone or in combination: 32%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 2 Million. Here, on the plate for Maryland, the figures are the argument; the text only keeps them in order.
In Maryland, a closing word on the use of this plate: the figures for Maryland are a reference, meant to be cited, compared, and returned to. For Maryland, 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. This note is written for the income plate; the companion plates of the same place carry notes of their own.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 31% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 32% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 2 Million |
| United States benchmark — Black median household income, Census Bureau annual report | $56,490 |
| United States benchmark — Black median household income per $1 of the national median | 73 Cents |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Income in the United States (Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement); American Community Survey. 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.