State Plates
The North Dakota Income Plate
In North Dakota, income is where the atlas's population counts meet household economics. This plate places Black North Dakota in the national income geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black households, and North Dakota's own distribution figures — 42,000 Black residents, 4 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
In North Dakota, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. 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. Against the national midpoint, the rows below say how North Dakota's households stand.
In North Dakota, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table 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. North Dakota's rows, read against the national midpoint, state the standing of its households.
The income figures take their local meaning in North Dakota, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. 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. Not to rank North Dakota but to locate it — that, in an atlas, is the use of a benchmark.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for North Dakota; the benchmark rows are the published national figures, labeled as benchmarks. In North Dakota, 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
In North Dakota, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. Read for North Dakota, black North Dakota's early record is the plains pattern at its thinnest: Black soldiers at Fort Abraham Lincoln and Fort Totten, porters and barbers in the railroad towns (Fargo, Grand Forks, Bismarck, Minot), a small Fargo congregation tradition, and individual homesteaders in the settlement era — a population the censuses counted in the hundreds through the territory's first decades and in the low thousands across the twentieth century. Against the table, the national pattern sharpens into the particular numbers of North Dakota.
The income figures take their local meaning in North Dakota, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. The Bakken shale boom drew Black workers to the Williston Basin in the 2000s and 2010s — the oil counties' Black counts multiplied from near zero in the boom censuses, in the Wyoming energy pattern at greater amplitude — and the bust cycles thinned them in turn. For North Dakota, read with the table, the general pattern and the local figures correct each other.
Residents moving between states — domestic migration — are the stream that built and rebuilt Black geographies across a century and a half, North Dakota'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 North Dakota's 42,000 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 North Dakota as for every entry.
This plate takes up its subject directly: The North Dakota Income Plate. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 4%; Black share, alone or in combination: 5.4%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 42,000. In North Dakota, a reader who holds the table and this text together has the plate entire.
Two further figures complete the plate's account of North Dakota: Black residents, alone or in combination: 42,000; United States benchmark — Black median household income, Census Bureau annual report: $56,490. The measures above and these together fix the population of North Dakota as this plate describes it — its size, its share, its standing nationally — and the text that surrounds them interprets them without rounding or extension beyond the source.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 4% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 5.4% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 42,000 |
| 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.