In the 1990s, Black Americans began moving in significant numbers to the South. This marked a reversal of the Great Migration, in which Blacks fled Jim Crow racism in the 1920s and 1930s for jobs in the industrial cities of the Northeast, Midwest and West.
Analysis of 2010 census data shows that more than half the cities with large concentrations of Blacks have seen significant declines in their Black populations. Here are nine of those cities experiencing elevated levels of Black Flight.
New York
According to the 2010 census, New York City still has the largest population of self-defined Black residents of any U.S. city, with 2,088,510 Black people (25.5 percent of total population) living within the city’s boundaries. But this is 41,252 fewer Black people since 2000.
Chicago
The 2010 census showed the city of Chicago lost 200,000 people over the last decade. The city now has about as many people as it did in 1910. There are 181,000 fewer African-Americans in the city, a whopping drop of 17 percent, and 72,000 fewer in the region as a whole. An estimated 1 million Blacks remain — about one-third of the population.
