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North Carolina
The state entry: 2.1 million Black residents, 20.5% of the state, in the published 2020 count.
North Carolina holds about 2.5 million Black residents — Black alone or in combination — just under one in four of its people, with Black alone at about 2.2 million, or 21 percent. It is the growth-state profile of this series at full strength: a large, old Black population rooted in the plantation east and the industrial Piedmont, now joined by one of the strongest streams of the Black return migration, to Charlotte and the Research Triangle above all. This article profiles the population in the census data.
Civic Snapshot
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Total population, 2020 | 10,439,388 |
| Black residents (alone), 2020 | 2,140,217 |
| Black share of the state, 2020 | 20.5% |
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 North Carolina grew from 2,048,628 to 2,140,217 (+4.5%), and its share of the whole moved from 21.5% to 20.5%.
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 state's Black geography follows its famous three-part division. In the east — the Coastal Plain, the historic tobacco and cotton belt — Black population shares are the state's highest: the counties of the northeast, the old plantation region, include several with Black pluralities or majorities, and cities such as Greenville, Rocky Mount, and Fayetteville (the last shaped by Fort Liberty's military economy) hold large Black populations. In the Piedmont center, the industrial cities of the Triad — Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point — and the Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham metros hold the growth: Charlotte's Black population runs at about a third of the city, Durham's above a third, and both metros rank among the top destinations in the national Black migration data. In the mountain west, shares fall to the state's lowest, though Asheville and its surroundings hold small, old Black communities of their own.
Institutions
Black North Carolina'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 2.1 million Black residents across 100 counties and county equivalents and 776 places in the published counts.