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Mississippi
The state entry: 1.1 million Black residents, 36.6% of the state, in the published 2020 count.
Mississippi is, by proportion, the Blackest state in the United States. The decennial census counted Black Mississippians at about 37 percent of the population Black alone, and about 38 percent Black alone or in combination — the highest share of any state, a position Mississippi has held throughout the modern census era. In absolute terms the population is about 1.1 million, modest beside the giants of this series; it is the share, and what the share has meant across Mississippi's history, that makes the profile central to this reference. This article reports the state's Black population in the census data.
Civic Snapshot
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Total population, 2020 | 2,961,279 |
| Black residents (alone), 2020 | 1,084,481 |
| Black share of the state, 2020 | 36.6% |
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 Mississippi declined from 1,098,385 to 1,084,481 (-1.3%), and its share of the whole moved from 37.0% to 36.6%.
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 geography of Black Mississippi is the geography of the cotton economy. The Mississippi Delta — the flat alluvial plain in the state's northwest, among the richest farmland on earth — records the country's most extensive majority-Black rural geography: county after county above 60, 70, and in Holmes County's case around 80 percent Black. The river counties, the Black Belt prairie of the east, and the Jackson metropolitan area hold most of the remainder. At the other pole, the Gulf Coast and the northeastern hill counties record shares well below the state figure. The county map of Black Mississippi is, with unusual literalness, a map of where enslaved labor was concentrated in 1860 — the demographic foundation on which everything else in the state's data rests.
Institutions
For the institutions of Black Mississippi, read downward: the gazetteer carries them in its county and place entries, place by place. This page frames the whole — 1.1 million Black residents, 82 counties and county equivalents, 428 incorporated and census-designated places, all in the published counts.