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Alabama
The state entry: 1.3 million Black residents, 25.8% of the state, in the published 2020 count.
Alabama holds about 1.4 million Black residents — Black alone or in combination — more than one in four of its people, with Black alone at about 1.3 million, or 26 percent. The state's Black geography gave the nation a term: the Black Belt, named first for its dark, rich soil and then for the people enslaved to work it, whose descendants still form majorities across the region's counties. Around that rural core stand three metropolitan Black populations — Birmingham, Montgomery, and Mobile — and the densest concentration of historically Black colleges in the United States. This article profiles the population in the census data.
Civic Snapshot
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Total population, 2020 | 5,024,279 |
| Black residents (alone), 2020 | 1,296,162 |
| Black share of the state, 2020 | 25.8% |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census Redistricting File (Public Law 94-171), Table P1 (race). Trend: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census Redistricting File (Public Law 94-171), Table P1.
Population Trend
Between the 2010 and 2020 censuses, the Black population of Alabama grew from 1,251,311 to 1,296,162 (+3.6%), and its share of the whole moved from 26.2% to 25.8%.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census Redistricting File (Public Law 94-171), Table P1 (race). Trend: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census Redistricting File (Public Law 94-171), Table P1.
The Record
The Black Belt arcs across Alabama's midsection from the Georgia line to Mississippi: a band of chalk-soil prairie counties — Wilcox, Lowndes, Dallas (whose seat is Selma), Greene, Sumter, Marengo, Hale, Perry, and their neighbors — where enslaved majorities worked the cotton economy and where Black majorities, in several counties exceeding 70 percent, persist today. These counties record the state's — and among the nation's — most difficult economic indicators: the lowest incomes, the highest poverty rates, and persistent population decline as younger residents leave for the metros. They also hold an outsized place in the nation's civic history: Lowndes County's freedom movement, Selma's voting-rights marches, and Montgomery's bus boycott all arose from this geography, within a day's travel of one another.
Institutions
For the institutions of Black Alabama, read downward: the gazetteer carries them in its county and place entries, place by place. This page frames the whole — 1.3 million Black residents, 67 counties and county equivalents, 593 incorporated and census-designated places, all in the published counts.