State Plates
The Oklahoma Business Plate
In Oklahoma, business plates turn on ownership — the firms a population builds. This plate places Black Oklahoma in the national business geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black-owned businesses, and Oklahoma's distribution figures — 390,000 Black residents, 7 percent of the state — give the scale of the community from which the state's Black-owned firms are drawn.
The National Pattern
In Oklahoma, 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 Oklahoma, held against the national counts, the state's own rows say how its business population stands.
For Oklahoma, the national business figures are context; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the plate's subject. Federal statistics classify a firm as Black-owned when Black owners hold 51 percent or more of the stock or equity. In Oklahoma, the comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national firm counts on one side, the state's enterprise on the other.
For Oklahoma, the national business figures are context; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the plate's subject. 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. For Oklahoma, the comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national firm counts on one side, the state's enterprise on the other.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Oklahoma; 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 Oklahoma's counted Black population is the ground from which its firms, employers and sole proprietors alike, are built.
The Population Behind the Plate
For Oklahoma, the national business figures are context; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the plate's subject. Oklahoma holds about 390,000 Black residents — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in ten of its people, with Black alone at about 289,000, or 7.3 percent. Here, on the plate for Oklahoma, the comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national firm counts on one side, the state's enterprise on the other.
The firm counts read locally in Oklahoma: the state rows below give the population whose enterprise this national pattern frames. Oklahoma City holds the larger share: the capital city is roughly 15 to 16 percent Black (some 105,000 residents), centered historically on the Deep Deuce and the northeast side, with a metro Black population in the range of 155,000 spread through Midwest City (the Tinker Air Force Base suburb, roughly a fifth Black), Del City, Spencer, and the northeast suburbs. Tulsa, the second metro, holds about 110,000 Black residents in its metro — the city itself roughly a sixth Black — concentrated in North Tulsa, the districts beyond the railroad-and-highway line that has divided the city's data for a century. The general record matters here only as far as it sharpens the local one, which Oklahoma's table states plainly.
Household income, stated as a median — the middle household of Oklahoma, half above, half below — is economic geography's most compared figure. The table's benchmark row for Oklahoma states its basis in its label — the comparison rests on the same measure on the same basis. Against them, Oklahoma's 390,000 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): 7%; Black share, alone or in combination: 9.8%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 390,000. In Oklahoma, 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.
How this plate is read, for Oklahoma: 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): 7%; Black share, alone or in combination: 9.8%. In Oklahoma, the two presentations are one record in two forms, and a reader who checks one against the other has the plate's whole method in hand.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 7% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 9.8% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 390,000 |
| 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. 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.