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Oklahoma

The state entry: 289,961 Black residents, 7.3% of the state, in the published 2020 count.

Oklahoma holds about 390,000 Black residents — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in ten of its people, with Black alone at about 289,000, or 7.3 percent. Oklahoma's Black history is unlike any other state's: a territory that drew Black settlers as a promised land of self-governance, producing more all-Black towns than any state in the Union, the Freedmen communities of the Five Tribes, and Tulsa's Greenwood — the most famous Black business district in American history. The modern population divides between the two metros and a small-town landscape of unusual depth. This article profiles it.

Civic Snapshot

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 Oklahoma grew from 277,644 to 289,961 (+4.4%), and its share of the whole moved from 7.4% to 7.3%.

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

Oklahoma City holds the larger share: the capital city is roughly 15 to 16 percent Black (some 105,000 residents), centered historically on the Deep Deuce and the northeast side, with a metro Black population in the range of 155,000 spread through Midwest City (the Tinker Air Force Base suburb, roughly a fifth Black), Del City, Spencer, and the northeast suburbs. Tulsa, the second metro, holds about 110,000 Black residents in its metro — the city itself roughly a sixth Black — concentrated in North Tulsa, the districts beyond the railroad-and-highway line that has divided the city's data for a century. Lawton (Fort Sill) records the state's third community at roughly a fifth Black within the city, on the Army post's workforce. The metros together hold roughly two-thirds of Black Oklahoma.

Institutions

Black Oklahoma'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 289,961 Black residents across 77 counties and county equivalents and 843 places in the published counts.