State Plates
The Tennessee Income Plate
In Tennessee, income is where the atlas's population counts meet household economics. This plate places Black Tennessee in the national income geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black households, and Tennessee's own distribution figures — 1.25 million Black residents, 17 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
For Tennessee, the national benchmark is a yardstick, not a description; the description is the state's own distribution, tabled 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. The plate sets the national midpoint beside Tennessee's households and invites the two-sided reading.
For Tennessee, 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. On one side the national midpoint, on the other the households of Tennessee — that is the comparison this plate invites.
The income figures take their local meaning in Tennessee, 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. Rank is not the benchmark's business — location is, and Tennessee is located by it here.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Tennessee; the benchmark rows are the published national figures, labeled as benchmarks. In Tennessee, 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 Tennessee, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. Tennessee holds about 1.25 million Black residents — Black alone or in combination — nearly one in five of its people, with Black alone at about 1.13 million, or 16 percent. Here, on the plate for Tennessee, held against the national ladder, the state's own rows say where its attainment stands.
In Tennessee, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. West Tennessee holds the state's Black center of gravity. Read for Tennessee, held against the national ladder, the state's own rows say where its attainment stands.
Residents moving between states — domestic migration — are the stream that built and rebuilt Black geographies across a century and a half, Tennessee'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 Tennessee's 1.25 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 Tennessee as for every entry.
An atlas is patient with its subjects. In Tennessee, 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 Tennessee, 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 Tennessee Income plate is one page of it.
The atlas gives this subject its own plate — The Tennessee Income Plate — because the published record supports one. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 17%; Black share, alone or in combination: 18%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 1.25 Million. For Tennessee, the atlas asks no more of the material than the material can state.
Two further figures complete the plate's account of Tennessee: Black residents, alone or in combination: 1.25 Million; United States benchmark — Black median household income, Census Bureau annual report: $56,490. In Tennessee, stated together with the measures above, they fix the population this plate describes — its size, its share, and its standing against the national record — and they are the figures the surrounding text interprets, neither rounded further nor carried beyond what the source publishes.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 17% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 18% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 1.25 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.