The U.S.A. 11.6 9.8 9.8 10.5 18,871,831 The Negro component within the American Union, it is evident, remains today about what it has been all along. Within the Southern States, the Negro population is dropping steadily as a percentage of the whole. Negroes comprised 11.6 per cent of the nation’s total in population in 1900, 9.7 per cent in 1930, and 10.5 per cent in 1960. But this 10.5 per cent of 1960 has shifted dramatically across the nation. Of 18,872,000 Negroes, 8,641,000 or 46 per cent, were living in 1960 outside the thirteen States of the South. There were more Negroes in New York City (1,227,000) than in all of Mississippi or Alabama. Philadelphia turned up 26.4 per cent Negro; Georgia is 28.5 per cent Negro. Chicago counted almost as many Negroes in its city limits (813,000) as there were in the whole of Virginia (816,000), and they represented a larger part of the total--a concentrated 23 per cent in Chicago, a scattered 21 per cent in Virginia. Between 1950 and 1960, the Census Bureau has reported, the South experienced a net out-migration of about 1,457,000 Negroes. The figure represents the number of Negroes that census enumerators of 1960 would have expected to find in the South if the Negro populations of 1950 had stayed put and had experienced a normal increase of births over deaths. Alabama, which should have gained 225,000 Negroes on this basis, gained only 1000 in the decade; South Carolina, which normally would have gained 226,000 Negroes, gained only 8000. Mississippi actually experienced a net loss in Negro population, from 986,000 in 1950 to 915,000 in 1960. Where did these Negro migrants go? To the North, primarily--more than a million of them. Others went west: California experienced a net in-migration of 354,000 Negroes. Large numbers moved to Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan. The migration was almost entirely to Northern cities, and ironically, to urban societies of the North almost as segregated by geography as the Old South is segregated by custom. Yet for all the steady decline of Negro components in Southern States, it still is true that the South, as a region, houses the largest concentration of colored citizens. Of the fifteen States that in 1960 had more than 500,000 Negro residents, all but four (New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey) were in the South. The thirteen Southern States that were 35 per cent Negro in 1900 were still 21 per cent Negro in 1960, and in 140 Southern counties, white residents in 1960 remained numerically in the minority. Consider some further statistics: URBAN AND RURAL POPULATION THIRTEEN SOUTHERN STATES, 1900-1960.