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Radio Soundbites
Majority of African Americans Live in 10 States; New York City
and Chicago Are Cities With Largest Black Populations
About 6 in 10 people reporting as Black or African American, alone or
in combination with other races, resided in 10 states where nearly half
the U.S. population lived last year, according to new Census 2000 analysis
released today by the Commerce Department's Census Bureau.
The Black Population: 2000 [pdf], one in a series of Census 2000 briefs,
shows that 36.4 million people, or 12.9 percent of the total population,
reported as Black or African American. This number includes 34.7 million,
or 12.3 percent, who reported as Black alone, in addition to 1.8 million,
or 0.6 percent, who reported as Black in combination with one or more
other races.
The 10 states where 60 percent of African Americans resided were: New
York, California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina,
Maryland, Michigan and Louisiana. Five of these had more than 2 million
Blacks each: New York, California, Texas, Florida and Georgia.
Other highlights of the brief:
Regions
Of all the people who reported as Black in Census 2000, 54 percent
lived in the South, 19 percent lived in the Midwest, 18 percent lived
in the Northeast and 10 percent lived in the West. *
The region with the highest proportion of people reporting Black as a
percentage of its total population was the South (20 percent), followed
by the Northeast (12 percent), the Midwest (11 percent), and the West
(6 percent).
States
In each of 10 southern states Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina,
Maryland, Louisiana, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi
more than 1 million people reported as Black.
New York was the state with the largest number of people reporting as
Black in 2000 (3,014,385).
Counties
There were 96 counties where people reporting as Black comprised at
least 50 percent the total population, and 95 were in the South.
In the Northeast, people reporting as Black were concentrated in a
band of counties extending from Philadelphia to Providence, R.I. and
along the Hudson Valley northward from New York city.
Although people reporting as Black were not concentrated in
Midwestern counties, in some metropolitan counties, around cities
such as Chicago, Gary, Ind., and Detroit, Blacks comprised a sizeable
proportion of the population.
Western counties with large concentrations of people reporting as
Black were located in Southern California, the San Francisco and
Sacramento areas, Denver and Colorado Springs, and Seattle and Tacoma
in Washington state.
Cities
New York city had the largest number of people reporting as Black
with about 2.3 million, followed by Chicago, 1.1 million, and Detroit,
Philadelphia and Houston, which had between 500,000 and 1 million
each.
Among places with 100,000 or more population, Gary had the highest
percentage of people reporting as Black, 85 percent, followed by
Detroit, with 83 percent.
Census 2000 data on race are not directly comparable with data from the
1990 census or earlier censuses because in 2000, for the first time, respondents
could report one or more races.
Additional Census 2000 briefs will be released over the next several
months on other races and on topics such as age, sex and housing. A
listing of Census 2000 briefs can be found on the Census Bureau's Web site
at www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/briefs.html.
* These percentages may not add to 100 percent due to rounding.