State Plates
The Wisconsin Income Plate
In Wisconsin, income is where the atlas's population counts meet household economics. This plate places Black Wisconsin in the national income geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black households, and Wisconsin's own distribution figures — 430,000 Black residents, 6 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
In Wisconsin, 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. Wisconsin's rows, read against the national midpoint, state the standing of its households.
The income figures take their local meaning in Wisconsin, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. 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 benchmark's work is location, not rank: it fixes where Wisconsin stands so the plate can be read.
In Wisconsin, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table 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. The midpoint is the reference; Wisconsin's own rows give the standing of its households.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Wisconsin; the benchmark rows are the published national figures, labeled as benchmarks. In Wisconsin, 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 Wisconsin, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. Wisconsin holds about 430,000 Black residents — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in fourteen of its people, with Black alone at about 360,000, or 6 percent. Against the table, the national pattern sharpens into the particular numbers of Wisconsin.
For Wisconsin, the national benchmark is a yardstick, not a description; the description is the state's own distribution, tabled below. Madison, the capital and university city, is roughly 7 to 8 percent Black — a small, comparatively affluent community whose achievement data in the state education tables show the nation's pattern (strong overall metrics, wide internal gaps) in miniature. For Wisconsin, the plate's own table is where this general material meets the specific geography, and the two should be read together.
Residents moving between states — domestic migration — are the stream that built and rebuilt Black geographies across a century and a half, Wisconsin'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 Wisconsin's 430,000 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 Wisconsin as for every entry.
An atlas is patient with its subjects. In Wisconsin, 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 Wisconsin, 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 Wisconsin Income plate is one page of it.
What follows is the plate the atlas files as The Wisconsin Income Plate. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 6%; Black share, alone or in combination: 7.3%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 430,000. For Wisconsin, the figures are the argument; the text only keeps them in order.
In Wisconsin, a closing word on the use of this plate: the figures for Wisconsin are a reference, meant to be cited, compared, and returned to. For Wisconsin, 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. In Wisconsin, 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) | 6% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 7.3% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 430,000 |
| 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.