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Virginia
The state entry: 1.6 million Black residents, 18.6% of the state, in the published 2020 count.
Virginia holds about 1.85 million Black residents — Black alone or in combination — about one in five of its people, with Black alone at about 1.6 million, or 19 percent. No state frames Black America's arc more completely: the first enslaved Africans in English America arrived at Point Comfort, in present-day Hampton, in 1619; Richmond became the domestic slave trade's second city and the capital of the Confederacy; and the modern commonwealth holds a Black population that is simultaneously rural-rooted in the Southside tobacco country, urban in Richmond and Hampton Roads, and suburban in the counties outside Washington. This article profiles the population in the census data.
Civic Snapshot
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Total population, 2020 | 8,631,393 |
| Black residents (alone), 2020 | 1,607,581 |
| Black share of the state, 2020 | 18.6% |
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 Virginia grew from 1,551,399 to 1,607,581 (+3.6%), and its share of the whole moved from 19.4% to 18.6%.
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 Hampton Roads region — Norfolk, Hampton, Newport News, Portsmouth, Virginia Beach, and their neighbors — holds the state's largest Black concentration and its oldest. Hampton, where the first Africans arrived and where contraband camps of the Civil War sheltered thousands of self-emancipated people, is about half Black; Portsmouth is a majority-Black city; Norfolk, the great naval port, is more than two-fifths Black; and Newport News, built on shipbuilding, stands near two-fifths as well. The region's Black population was built on maritime and federal employment — the Navy economy that made Hampton Roads a Black professional and working-class center — anchored by Hampton University and Norfolk State, two of the nation's prominent HBCUs.
Institutions
Black Virginia'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 1.6 million Black residents across 133 counties and county equivalents and 672 places in the published counts.