United States › North Carolina › Gaston County

Gaston County, North Carolina

40,323 Black residents · 17.7% of the county · ranked 9 of 100 in North Carolina by Black population

In Gaston County, North Carolina, the 2020 Census counted 227,943 people, 40,323 of them Black alone. At 17.7%, Gaston County's Black share stands against the state's 20.5% — the comparison this entry is built around.

Black share of state population — North Carolina highlighted — the state in the national tile map, shaded by the Black share of each state's population. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census (PL 94-171), Table P1.

Civic Snapshot

Measure	Figure
Total population, 2020	227,943
Black residents (alone), 2020	40,323
Black share of the county, 2020	17.7%
Rank by Black population among North Carolina counties	9 of 100

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

In 2010 Gaston County counted 31,431 Black residents; in 2020 it counted 40,323. The population grew by 28.3% across the decade, and the Black share in Gaston County moved from 15.3% to 17.7%.

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

Gaston County is one of 100 counties and county equivalents the Census Bureau counts in North Carolina. Together they hold the state's 2.1 million Black residents, and Gaston County's 40,323 of them give it rank 9 of 100 in that order. The county is the gazetteer's middle geography — larger than the places inside it, smaller than the state frame — and the figures printed here for Gaston County are the published redistricting counts, reproduced as released.

Institutions

The institutions of Black Gaston County, North Carolina, are recorded in this gazetteer through its place entries — the towns and communities inside the county's borders, each entered on its own published count. Read with those entries, the Gaston County page gives the frame they stand in: 227,943 residents in all, 40,323 of them Black, and the county's direction across the last two censuses.