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South Carolina
The state entry: 1.3 million Black residents, 25.0% of the state, in the published 2020 count.
South Carolina holds about 1.45 million Black residents — Black alone or in combination — more than one in four of its people, with Black alone at about 1.34 million, or 26 percent. The modern share is a fraction of the historical one: South Carolina was a majority-Black state from the colonial era into the early twentieth century, the only state besides Mississippi of which that is true, and its rice coast built one of the most African cultures in North America. This article profiles the population the census records today, in a state growing fast enough to be reshaping its composition again.
Civic Snapshot
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Total population, 2020 | 5,118,425 |
| Black residents (alone), 2020 | 1,280,531 |
| Black share of the state, 2020 | 25.0% |
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 South Carolina declined from 1,290,684 to 1,280,531 (-0.8%), and its share of the whole moved from 27.9% to 25.0%.
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
The coastal Lowcountry holds the state's oldest Black geography. Enslaved West Africans, brought in large numbers for their rice-growing knowledge, formed majorities on the sea-island plantations, and their descendants — the Gullah people of South Carolina's coast, kin to Georgia's Geechee — preserved a creole language, foodways, and craft traditions of unusual continuity, now recognized in a federal cultural heritage corridor running the coast. Charleston, the principal port of the domestic slave trade's Atlantic side — a large share of enslaved Africans who survived the crossing entered North America through its harbor — is today roughly a fifth Black within the city, its historic Black neighborhoods pressured by the peninsula's real-estate values, while North Charleston and the inland suburbs hold the larger modern population. Heirs' property — land passed without wills across generations, clouding title — is a documented legal-economic issue of the coastal Black landholding data, tracked in this section's land coverage.
Institutions
The institutions of Black South Carolina — its congregations, schools, businesses, and civic organizations — are carried in the county and place entries beneath this state entry, where the gazetteer records them place by place. This state page is the frame: 1.3 million Black residents in 46 counties and county equivalents and 475 incorporated places and census-designated places in the published counts.