| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 2,415,824[1] (2017) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Charlotte,Durham,Fayetteville,Greensboro,Raleigh | |
| Languages | |
| Southern American English,African-American Vernacular English,Gullah,African languages | |
| Religion | |
| Black Protestant[2] | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| African Americans,Barbadian Americans,West Indian Americans,Barbadians |
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| History of North Carolina |
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African-American North Carolinians orBlack North Carolinians are residents of the state ofNorth Carolina who are ofAfrican ancestry. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, African Americans were 22% of the state's population.[3] African enslaved people were brought to North Carolina during the slave trade.[4]
In the2020 Census, 2,140,217 North Carolina residents were identified as African American (of the total 10,439,388).[5] In 5 of the state's 100 counties, African Americans make up more than 50% of the population:Bertie (59.8%),Hertford (57.5%),Edgecombe (56.1%),Northampton (55.5%),Halifax (51.1%). African Americans in the ten counties ofMecklenburg (330,458),Wake (208,493),Guilford (181,848),Cumberland (127,610),Durham (110,610),Forsyth (95,324),Pitt (60,414),Cabarrus (42,622),Gaston (40,323),Nash (36,958) make up more than 57% of all African Americans in the state.[6]
Slavery has been part of North Carolina's history since its colonization by white Europeans in the late 1600s and early 1700s. Many of the first black enslaved people in North Carolina were brought to the colony from theWest Indies, but a significant number were brought from Africa. Records were not kept of the tribes and homelands of African enslaved people in North Carolina.[7]
A significant number of free African Americans migrated from Virginia to North Carolina, making up most free families in the state. Many owned land, and communities formed aroundfree Black people who would continuously migrate onto the frontier and purchase the more affordable land there. At least one member of most families tended to own land, causing closer relationships with whites.[8]
Significant numbers of free African Americans in the state caused the North Carolina General Assembly to pass a law in 1723 mandating that freed slaves must leave the colony, and a law restrictingmanumission in 1741.[8] A complaint in the 1723 Assembly mentioned:
"great Numbers of Free Negroes, Mulattoes, and other persons of mixt Blood, that have lately removed themselves into this Government, and that several of them have intermarried with the white Inhabitants of this Province..."
However, by 1790 free Black people represented 5% of free people in some counties in the state. Some of these families would alternatively be classed as white or "mulatto" by tax assessors. In some cases, settlers would attempt to illegally indenture them for longer than their term, or sell them into slavery. After theFree Negro Code, many married freed slaves.[8]
African Americans in North Carolina suffered fromracial segregation. Most white people in North Carolina sought to refine the Jim Crow system and retain systematic segregation.[9] Some free people of color agitated for separate schools under Jim Crow, apart fromfreedmen, who unlike them, had not been free before the Civil war.[8] They were granted separate schools under different names, such as "Croatan" schools for theLumbee, or "Indian" schools for the "old-issue negroes" ofPerson County.[8]
Raleigh (capital) | |
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