Tennessee's Black Population

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Western Division

The Western Division, with 21 counties, mostly rural but also including Shelby County (Memphis), has the greatest concentration of blacks. In aggregate, 39.0 percent of the population in 2010 was black in every western county except the three that border the Tennessee river, each having a black population of at least 8 percent. Nine of these 21 western counties had black population proportions greater than the state average of 16.7 percent, and seven of these nine counties were 25 percent or more black. Two of the counties, Shelby and Haywood, had more blacks than whites. These are the only two counties in Tennessee where this pattern occurs. Thus, as one moves to the southwest corner of the state, the proportion of blacks becomes greater.

 
In fact, 45.7 percent of all blacks in Tennessee reside in Shelby County.

Western Division Counties: Black Population Change and Rank, 2000-2010

       Census                        Change
          2000           2010                         2000           2010
County Number Rank   Number Rank   Number Rank   % Rank
Benton 348 69   321 69   -27 72   -7.8 78
Carroll 3,050 26   2,879 27   -171 89   -5.6 72
Chester 1,558 41   1,569 41   11 58   0.71 61
Crockett 2,088 36   1,843 40   -245 92   -11.7 86
Decatur 407 66   338 68   -69 79   -17 93
Dyer 4,795 18   5,477 18   682 14   14.2 32
Fayette 10,355 9   10,784 10   429 17   4.1 52
Gibson 9,497 13   9,340 15   -157 87   -1.7 66
Hardeman 11,516 8   11,281 9   -235 91   -2.0 67
Hardin 944 51   896 52   -48 76   -5.1 71
Haywood 10,106 11   9,465 14   -641 95   -6.3 75
Henderson 2,042 38   2,187 33   145 28   7.1 42
Henry 2,787 28   2,599 30   -188 90   -6.7 76
Lake 2,481 30   2,171 34   -310 93   -12.5 89
Lauderdale 9,236 14   9,720 13   484 15   5.2 48
Madison 29,810 5   35,636 5   5,826 6   19.5 25
McNairy 1,537 42   1,550 42   13 55   0.85 60
Obion 3,196 23   3,367 24   171 27   5.4 47
Shelby 435,824 1   483,381 1   47,557 1   10.9 37
Tipton 10,202 10   11,449 8   1,247 11   12.2 34
Weakley 2,424 31   2,736 29   312 22   12.9 33
               
Total 554,203   608,989   54,786   9.9
Tennessee 932,809   1,057,315

The heavy black population in the Western Division can be distributed in several ways. For example, while approximately more than one-third of the population there is black, 57.6 percent of all Tennessee blacks reside in these Western counties, and 53.3 percent of the state's blacks reside in the seven southwesternmost counties. Of the 12 counties in Tennessee whose black populations were greater than the state average, nine were in the Western Division.

Among the individual counties, Shelby (Memphis) had the largest black population. This concentration indicated a black population ratio of at least three to one over any other county in the state. In fact, 45.7 percent of all blacks in Tennessee reside in Shelby County. If one looks at the ratio of blacks to total population, the highest ratio occurs in Shelby County (52.1 percent), followed by Haywood (50.4 percent), Hardeman (41.4 percent), Madison (36.3 percent), Lauderdale (34.9 percent), Fayette (28.1 percent), and Lake (27.7 percent). These seven counties, all of which are contiguous except for Lake, are 48.9 percent black.

continued: Middle Division