State Plates
The Mississippi Business Plate
In Mississippi, business plates turn on ownership — the firms a population builds. This plate places Black Mississippi in the national business geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black-owned businesses, and Mississippi's distribution figures — its counted population Black residents, 38 percent of the state — give the scale of the community from which the state's Black-owned firms are drawn.
The National Pattern
In Mississippi, that national business pattern meets the state's own firms and employers, and the table below fixes the population it describes. The Census Bureau's Annual Business Survey counts about 161,000 Black-owned employer firms — companies with at least one paid employee — generating roughly 183 billion dollars in annual receipts and employing about 1.3 million people. In Mississippi, held against the national counts, the state's own rows say how its business population stands.
In Mississippi, that national business pattern meets the state's own firms and employers, and the table below fixes the population it describes. Federal statistics classify a firm as Black-owned when Black owners hold 51 percent or more of the stock or equity. For Mississippi, held against the national counts, the state's own rows say how its business population stands.
In Mississippi, that national business pattern meets the state's own firms and employers, and the table below fixes the population it describes. Black Americans are 13.5 percent of the national population but own about 3 percent of employer firms, and those firms take in roughly 1 percent of the receipts of all employer businesses. Here, on the plate for Mississippi, held against the national counts, the state's own rows say how its business population stands.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Mississippi; the benchmark rows are the published national business record, labeled as benchmarks. Ownership rates measured nationally become concrete only at the scale of an actual population — and Mississippi's counted Black population is the ground from which its firms, employers and sole proprietors alike, are built.
The Population Behind the Plate
In Mississippi, that national business pattern meets the state's own firms and employers, and the table below fixes the population it describes. The decennial census counted Black Mississippians at about 37 percent of the population Black alone, and about 38 percent Black alone or in combination — the highest share of any state, a position Mississippi has held throughout the modern census era. In absolute terms the population is about 1.1 million, modest beside the giants of this series; it is the share, and what the share has meant across Mississippi's history, that makes the profile central to this reference. Read back against the table, the general pattern resolves into Mississippi's particular numbers.
The firm counts read locally in Mississippi: the state rows below give the population whose enterprise this national pattern frames. The Mississippi Delta — the flat alluvial plain in the state's northwest, among the richest farmland on earth — records the country's most extensive majority-Black rural geography: county after county above 60, 70, and in Holmes County's case around 80 percent Black. The county map of Black Mississippi is, with unusual literalness, a map of where enslaved labor was concentrated in 1860 — the demographic foundation on which everything else in the state's data rests. In Mississippi, read with the table, the general pattern and the local figures correct each other.
Household income, stated as a median — the middle household of Mississippi, half above, half below — is economic geography's most compared figure. The table's benchmark row for Mississippi states its basis in its label — the comparison rests on the same measure on the same basis. Against them, Mississippi's its counted population Black residents are the market, the workforce, and the founder pool of the state's Black business community — the three roles every business plate in this atlas keeps in view at once.
A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 38%; Black share, alone or in combination: 38%; Black residents of the United States, alone or in combination (Census Bureau population estimates): 52.8 million. In Mississippi, each figure is published by the source named below and rounded as published; the plate's map shades the Black share of the population on the same basis, so the table and the map can be read against each other without conversion.
In Mississippi, the record behind this plate of Mississippi is published, not estimated by this atlas: U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey; Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics; U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program. Where the table carries a national benchmark row for Mississippi, the row is labeled with the basis it is published on — the same measure, the same basis, two geographies.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 38% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 38% |
| Black residents of the United States, alone or in combination (Census Bureau population estimates) | 52.8 million |
| United States benchmark — Black-owned firms with paid employees | 161,000 |
| United States benchmark — annual receipts of Black-owned employer firms | $183 Billion |
| United States benchmark — people employed by Black-owned employer firms | 1.3 Million |
| United States benchmark — Black-owned nonemployer (solo) firms | 3 Million |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey; Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics; U.S. Census Bureau, 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.