United States › North Carolina › Rowan County

Rowan County, North Carolina

23,012 Black residents · 15.7% of the county · ranked 22 of 100 in North Carolina by Black population

The gazetteer enters Rowan County, North Carolina, on its published figures: a total population of 146,875 in 2020, with 23,012 Black residents counted alone — 15.7% of the county, a share that fixes the county's place in the state's pattern.

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	146,875
Black residents (alone), 2020	23,012
Black share of the county, 2020	15.7%
Rank by Black population among North Carolina counties	22 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

The published record across two censuses for Rowan County: 22,392 Black residents in 2010, 23,012 in 2020 — grew by 2.8% over the decade, with the Black share of the whole moving from 16.2% to 15.7%.

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

Within North Carolina, the Census Bureau counts 100 counties and county equivalents, Rowan County among them; it stands 22 by Black population, with 23,012 Black residents of the state's 2.1 million. The gazetteer takes the county as its middle geography — the frame between the state page and the place pages — and prints the redistricting counts of Rowan County, North Carolina, exactly as published.

Institutions

The institutions of Black Rowan 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 Rowan County page gives the frame they stand in: 146,875 residents in all, 23,012 of them Black, and the county's direction across the last two censuses.