United States › Georgia
Georgia
The state entry: 3.3 million Black residents, 31.0% of the state, in the published 2020 count.
Georgia is the state where Black America's scale and share coincide most completely. The decennial census counted about 3.6 million Black Georgians — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in three residents of the state, with Black alone at about 3.3 million, or 31 percent. No other large state combines so large a Black population with so high a Black share, and the combination shapes everything in the Georgia data: its politics of place, its business landscape, its college map, and its position at the center of the modern Black migration to the South. This article profiles the population in the census record.
Civic Snapshot
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Total population, 2020 | 10,711,908 |
| Black residents (alone), 2020 | 3,320,513 |
| Black share of the state, 2020 | 31.0% |
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 Georgia grew from 2,950,435 to 3,320,513 (+12.5%), and its share of the whole moved from 30.5% to 31.0%.
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
Georgia's Black geography has two layers. The older layer is the Black Belt: the band of rich-soil counties running across the state's midsection, from Augusta through Macon to Columbus and down into the southwest around Albany, where enslaved labor worked the cotton economy and where Black population shares remain the state's highest — many of these counties are majority Black today. The newer layer is metropolitan Atlanta, which holds more than half of all Black Georgians and is profiled in full in the cities section of this reference. Between them sit mid-sized Black population centers — Savannah on the coast, Augusta on the South Carolina line, Macon and Columbus in the Black Belt itself, and Athens in the northeast — each with Black shares at or above the state figure.
Institutions
Black Georgia's institutions — congregations, schools, businesses, civic organizations — are recorded in this gazetteer where they stand: in the county and place entries beneath this page. The state page is the frame around them, holding 3.3 million Black residents across 159 counties and county equivalents and 675 places in the published counts.