African American History Month is here, and in celebration, we’re exploring the black, non-Hispanic population in Georgia. Statewide, a little less than a third of our residents are black. The set of maps below show the distribution of this population across the state. Some important technical notes: we are using the Census ACS race variable of “black, non-Hispanic, one race only” for these maps; ‘race’ is a self-classified designation in census data; a person could classify themselves as “black, non-Hispanic, one race only” and not be African-American; the universe of “black, non-Hispanic, one race only” is as such not exactly equal to “African-American”, though the values are close.

The interactive map below shows the shares of black, non-Hispanic population, using the American Community Survey (ACS)’s 2013-2017 five-year rolling average at county level in Georgia.

Hancock County has the highest percent share of black population at 72.9 percent, followed by Dougherty County (68.4 percent) and Clayton County (67.7 percent). When looking at pure population numbers, Fulton County has the largest number of  black residents, at 440,568 (43.6 percent of the county population), followed by DeKalb , at 392,421 (53.3 percent of the county population).

Turn on the second layer option to see the percentage point change in the black, non-Hispanic population since 2000. The greatest increases of this type were in Rockdale (32.90 percentage point increase), Henry (26.1 percentage point increase) and Douglas (25.6 percentage point increase) counties.

Source: ACS 2013-2017

Below, we’re looking at how the data plays out across Georgia cities. Stonecrest and Lithonia, both located in DeKalb County, rank first and second for the highest percent share of totals represented by the black population– at 92.5 percent and 91.6 percent, respectively. In absolute number, the City of Atlanta has the greatest number of black residents, at 465,230 — for 51.8 percent of that city’s population.

Source: ACS 2013-2017