There were almost 700 thousand slaves in the US in 1790, which equated to approximately 18 percent of the total population, or roughly one in every six people. By 1860, the final census taken before the American Civil War, there were four million slaves in the South, compared with less than 0.5 million free African Americans in all of the US. Of the 4.4 million African Americans in the US before the war, almost four million of these people were held as slaves; meaning that for all African Americans living in the US in 1860, there was an 89 percent* chance that they lived in slavery. A brief history Trans-Atlantic slavery began in the early sixteenth century, when the Portuguese and Spanish forcefully brought captured African slaves to the New World, in order to work for them. The British Empire introduced slavery to North America on a large scale, and the economy of the British colonies there depended on slave labor, particularly regarding cotton, sugar and tobacco output. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century the number of slaves being brought to the Americas increased exponentially, and at the time of American independence it was legal in all thirteen colonies. Although slavery became increasingly prohibited in the north, the number of slaves remained high during this time as they were simply relocated or sold from the north to the south. It is also important to remember that the children of slaves were also viewed as property, and (apart from some very rare cases) were born into a life of slavery. Abolition and the American Civil War In the years that followed independence, the Northern States began gradually prohibiting slavery, and it was officially abolished there by 1805, and the importation of slave labor was prohibited nationwide from 1808 (although both still existed in practice after this). Business owners in the Southern States however depended on slave labor in order to meet the demand of their rapidly expanding industries, and the issue of slavery continued to polarize American society in the decades to come. This culminated in the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860, who promised to prohibit slavery in the newly acquired territories to the west, leading to the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865. Although the Confederacy (south) were victorious in much of the early stages of the war, the strength in numbers of the northern states (including many free, black men), eventually resulted in a victory for the Union (north), and the nationwide abolishment of slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Legacy In total, an estimated twelve to thirteen million Africans were transported to the Americas as slaves, and this does not include the high number who did not survive the journey (which was as high as 23 percent in some years). In the 150 years since the abolishment of slavery in the US, the African-American community have continuously campaigned for equal rights and opportunities that were not afforded to them along with freedom. The most prominent themes have been the Civil Rights Movement, voter suppression, mass incarceration and the relationship between the police and the African-American community has taken the spotlight in recent years.

In the past four centuries, the population of the United States has grown from a recorded 350 people around the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1610, to an estimated 331 million people in 2020. The pre-colonization populations of the indigenous peoples of the Americas have proven difficult for historians to estimate, as their numbers decreased rapidly following the introduction of European diseases (namely smallpox, plague and influenza). Native Americans were also omitted from most censuses conducted before the twentieth century, therefore the actual population of what we now know as the United States would have been much higher than the official census data from before 1800, but it is unclear by how much. Population growth in the colonies throughout the eighteenth century has primarily been attributed to migration from the British Isles and the Transatlantic slave trade; however it is also difficult to assert the ethnic-makeup of the population in these years as accurate migration records were not kept until after the 1820s, at which point the importation of slaves had also been illegalized. Nineteenth century In the year 1800, it is estimated that the population across the present-day United States was around six million people, with the population in the 16 admitted states numbering at 5.3 million. Migration to the United States began to happen on a large scale in the mid-nineteenth century, with the first major waves coming from Ireland, Britain and Germany. In some aspects, this wave of mass migration balanced out the demographic impacts of the American Civil War, which was the deadliest war in U.S. history with approximately 620 thousand fatalities between 1861 and 1865. The civil war also resulted in the emancipation of around four million slaves across the south; many of whose ancestors would take part in the Great Northern Migration in the early 1900s, which saw around six million black Americans migrate away from the south in one of the largest demographic shifts in U.S. history. By the end of the nineteenth century, improvements in transport technology and increasing economic opportunities saw migration to the United States increase further, particularly from southern and Eastern Europe, and in the first decade of the 1900s the number of migrants to the U.S. exceeded one million people in some years. Twentieth and twenty-first century The U.S. population has grown steadily throughout the past 120 years, reaching one hundred million in the 1910s, two hundred million in the 1960s, and three hundred million in 2007. In the past century, the U.S. established itself as a global superpower, with the world's largest economy (by nominal GDP) and most powerful military. Involvement in foreign wars has resulted in over 620,000 further U.S. fatalities since the Civil War, and migration fell drastically during the World Wars and Great Depression; however the population continuously grew in these years as the total fertility rate remained above two births per woman, and life expectancy increased (except during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918).

Since the Second World War, Latin America has replaced Europe as the most common point of origin for migrants, with Hispanic populations growing rapidly across the south and border states. Because of this, the proportion of non-Hispanic whites, which has been the most dominant ethnicity in the U.S. since records began, has dropped more rapidly in recent decades. Ethnic minorities also have a much higher birth rate than non-Hispanic whites, further contributing to this decline, and the share of non-Hispanic whites is expected to fall below fifty percent of the U.S. population by the mid-2000s. In 2020, the United States has the third-largest population in the world (after China and India), and the population is expected to reach four hundred million in the 2050s.

The Colony of Virginia, the location of the Jamestown Settlement (the first permanent English settlement in the Americas), was the most populous southern colony or state in the region until it was partitioned into Virginia and West Virginia during the American Civil War. Virginia was also the most populous of the Thirteen Colonies throughout most of the Colonial Era. In terms of ethnicity, the southern colonies had the largest relative Black populations, with South Carolina even becoming majority-Black in the 1710s.

About this dataset

Context

The dataset tabulates the Non-Hispanic population of Shelby by race. It includes the distribution of the Non-Hispanic population of Shelby across various race categories as identified by the Census Bureau. The dataset can be utilized to understand the Non-Hispanic population distribution of Shelby across relevant racial categories.

Key observations

With a zero Hispanic population, Shelby is 100% Non-Hispanic. Among the Non-Hispanic population, the largest racial group is Black or African American alone with a population of 1,700 (97.09% of the total Non-Hispanic population).

Content

When available, the data consists of estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 2018-2022 5-Year Estimates.

Racial categories include:

• White
• Black or African American
• American Indian and Alaska Native
• Asian
• Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
• Some other race
• Two or more races (multiracial)

Variables / Data Columns

• Race: This column displays the racial categories (for Non-Hispanic) for the Shelby
• Population: The population of the racial category (for Non-Hispanic) in the Shelby is shown in this column.
• % of Total Population: This column displays the percentage distribution of each race as a proportion of Shelby total Non-Hispanic population. Please note that the sum of all percentages may not equal one due to rounding of values.

Good to know

Margin of Error

Data in the dataset are based on the estimates and are subject to sampling variability and thus a margin of error. Neilsberg Research recommends using caution when presening these estimates in your research.

Custom data

If you do need custom data for any of your research project, report or presentation, you can contact our research staff at research@neilsberg.com for a feasibility of a custom tabulation on a fee-for-service basis.

Inspiration

Neilsberg Research Team curates, analyze and publishes demographics and economic data from a variety of public and proprietary sources, each of which often includes multiple surveys and programs. The large majority of Neilsberg Research aggregated datasets and insights is made available for free download at https://www.neilsberg.com/research/.

Recommended for further research

This dataset is a part of the main dataset for Shelby Population by Race & Ethnicity. You can refer the same here

The Plymouth Colony was established in present-day Massachussets in 1620. It was the first permanent British colony in New England, and the second in the Americas after Jamestown, Virginia. However, the neighboring Massachussets Bay Colony quickly became the most populous of the Thirteen Colonies, and Massachussets maintained this position until the end of the century. In terms of ethnicity, Rhode Island had the highest relative share of Black people in its population, the majority of whom lived in slavery until the 1780s when it was abolished in each of the New England states.

At the end of the Revolutionary Period in United States history, the majority of white settlers in the United States of America had English heritage. The Thirteen Colonies, which claimed independence in 1776, was part of the British Empire until this point - English settlers and their descendants made up over 60 percent of the population by 1790. The English were the ethnic majority (among whites) in all states except Pennsylvania, which had a similarly-sized German population, while New York had a sizeable Dutch population as it was a former Dutch colony. The second-largest group was the Irish, where those from both the island's north and south made up a combined 10 percent of the population, followed by the Scottish and Germans at over eight percent each. Outside of the United States, the French and Spanish territories that would later be incorporated into the Union were majority French and Spanish - despite their large size they were relatively sparsely populated. The composition of the U.S. population would change drastically throughout the 19th century due largely to waves of migration from Europe.

Between 1628 and 1860, it is estimated that almost 390 thousand Africans were transported as slaves to European colonies in Mainland North America. This figure refers only to those who survived the journey, as it is also thought that over 470 thousand captives embarked on these ships at African ports, however 84 thousand died en route (giving a mortality rate of 17.7 percent). The transportation of African slaves to the Thirteen Colonies was highest in the mid-18th century (although there was some fluctuation), before an observable decline around the time of the American Revolutionary War. Following independence, the importation of slaves remained lower than in previous decades, until it saw a sharp increase in the five years leading up to the slave trade's abolition. In 1807 alone, the year before the U.S. abolished the slave trade, almost 29 thousand slaves were imported from Africa into the U.S. Following this, activity declined greatly; the relatively small number of slaves imported from Africa to the U.S. were most likely into the Spanish territory of Florida. Smuggling also existed on a smaller scale; this accounts for the entries in 1858 and 1860.

The earliest point where scientists can make reasonable estimates for the population of global regions is around 10,000 years before the Common Era (or 12,000 years ago). Estimates suggest that Asia has consistently been the most populated continent, and the least populated continent has generally been Oceania (although it was more heavily populated than areas such as North America in very early years). Population growth was very slow, but an increase can be observed between most of the given time periods. There were, however, dips in population due to pandemics, the most notable of these being the impact of plague in Eurasia in the 14th century, and the impact of European contact with the indigenous populations of the Americas after 1492, where it took almost four centuries for the population of Latin America to return to its pre-1500 level. The world's population first reached one billion people in 1803, which also coincided with a spike in population growth, due to the onset of the demographic transition. This wave of growth first spread across the most industrially developed countries in the 19th century, and the correlation between demographic development and industrial or economic maturity continued until today, with Africa being the final major region to begin its transition in the late-1900s.

Between 1775 and 1841, the population of Cuba grew to almost six times its size, from approximately 170 thousand people to over one million. During these years, Cuba was a Spanish colony, where slavery remained legal. In 1841, slaves counted for almost 45% of the total population.

Sugar industry A large reason for this growth was the emergence of the sugar industry, as production was relocated from areas of the Caribbean where slavery was abolished (most notably Haiti in 1804 and Jamaica in 1834). Although Cuba had been a Spanish colony for almost three centuries before these figures begin, it was economically isolated and trade with other nations was restricted; following a brief occupation by the British in the 1860s, international trade became encouraged, and a slave-based plantation complex emerged. By the middle of the 19th century, Cuba had established itself as the largest producer of sugar in the world (a position that it held until the mid-20th century), with the U.S. as it's primary consumer.

Gender differences From the figures for 1827 and 1841, the disparities between the male and female populations become apparent. Males migrated to the Americas at a much higher rate than females, while African males were also captured and enslaved at a higher rate than females during the Atlantic slave trade. This is reflected in the slave and white populations, although the difference within the slave population is much greater. Conversely, among free people of color, the female population population is actually higher than the number of males; this was due to a number of reasons, such as higher rates of manumission among females (the ratio of female to male manumissions was estimated to be around 3:2 in the Caribbean in the 19th century) and higher life expectancy.

From the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, Portuguese and Brazilian traders were responsible for transporting the highest volume of slaves during the transatlantic slave trade. It is estimated that, of the 12.5 million African slaves captured during this time, more than 5.8 million were transported in ships that sailed under the Portuguese and, later, Brazilian flags. British traders transported the second-highest volume of slaves across the Atlantic, totaling at almost 3.3 million; over 2.5 million of these were transported in the 18th century, which was the highest volume of slaves transported by one nation in one century.

During the eighteenth century, it is estimated that France's population grew by roughly fifty percent, from 19.7 million in 1700, to 29 million by 1800. In France itself, the 1700s are remembered for the end of King Louis XIV's reign in 1715, the Age of Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. During this century, the scientific and ideological advances made in France and across Europe challenged the leadership structures of the time, and questioned the relationship between monarchial, religious and political institutions and their subjects. France was arguably the most powerful nation in the world in these early years, with the second largest population in Europe (after Russia); however, this century was defined by a number of costly, large-scale conflicts across Europe and in the new North American theater, which saw the loss of most overseas territories (particularly in North America) and almost bankrupted the French crown. A combination of regressive taxation, food shortages and enlightenment ideologies ultimately culminated in the French Revolution in 1789, which brought an end to the Ancien Régime, and set in motion a period of self-actualization.

War and peace

After a volatile and tumultuous decade, in which tens of thousands were executed by the state (most infamously: guillotined), relative stability was restored within France as Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in 1799, and the policies of the revolution became enforced. Beyond France's borders, the country was involved in a series of large scale wars for two almost decades, and the First French Empire eventually covered half of Europe by 1812. In 1815, Napoleon was defeated outright, the empire was dissolved, and the monarchy was restored to France; nonetheless, a large number of revolutionary and Napoleonic reforms remained in effect afterwards, and the ideas had a long-term impact across the globe. France experienced a century of comparative peace in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars; there were some notable uprisings and conflicts, and the monarchy was abolished yet again, but nothing on the scale of what had preceded or what was to follow. A new overseas colonial empire was also established in the late 1800s, particularly across Africa and Southeast Asia. Through most of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, France had the second largest population in Europe (after Russia), however political instability and the economic prioritization of Paris meant that the entire country did not urbanize or industrialize at the same rate as the other European powers. Because of this, Germany and Britain entered the twentieth century with larger populations, and other regions, such as Austria or Belgium, had overtaken France in terms of industrialization; the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War was also a major contributor to this.

World Wars and contemporary France

Coming into the 1900s, France had a population of approximately forty million people (officially 38 million* due to to territorial changes), and there was relatively little growth in the first half of the century. France was comparatively unprepared for a large scale war, however it became one of the most active theaters of the First World War when Germany invaded via Belgium in 1914, with the ability to mobilize over eight million men. By the war's end in 1918, France had lost almost 1.4 million in the conflict, and approximately 300,000 in the Spanish Flu pandemic that followed. Germany invaded France again during the Second World War, and occupied the country from 1940, until the Allied counter-invasion liberated the country during the summer of 1944. France lost around 600,000 people in the course of the war, over half of which were civilians. Following the war's end, the country experienced a baby boom, and the population grew by approximately twenty million people in the next fifty years (compared to just one million in the previous fifty years). Since the 1950s, France's economy quickly grew to be one of the strongest in the world, despite losing the vast majority of its overseas colonial empire by the 1970s. A wave of migration, especially from these former colonies, has greatly contributed to the growth and diversity of France's population today, which stands at over 65 million people in 2020.

It is only in the past two centuries where demographics and the development of human populations has emerged as a subject in its own right, as industrialization and improvements in medicine gave way to exponential growth of the world's population. There are very few known demographic studies conducted before the 1800s, which means that modern scholars have had to use a variety of documents from centuries gone by, along with archeological and anthropological studies, to try and gain a better understanding of the world's demographic development. Genealogical records One such method is the study of genealogical records from the past; luckily, there are many genealogies relating to European families that date back as far as medieval times. Unfortunately, however, all of these studies relate to families in the upper and elite classes; this is not entirely representative of the overall population as these families had a much higher standard of living and were less susceptible to famine or malnutrition than the average person (although elites were more likely to die during times of war). Nonetheless, there is much to be learned from this data. Impact of the Black Death In the centuries between 1200 and 1745, English male aristocrats who made it to their 21st birthday were generally expected to live to an age between 62 and 72 years old. The only century where life expectancy among this group was much lower was in the 1300s, where the Black Death caused life expectancy among adult English noblemen to drop to just 45 years. Experts assume that the pre-plague population of England was somewhere between four and seven million people in the thirteenth century, and just two million in the fourteenth century, meaning that Britain lost at least half of its population due to the plague. Although the plague only peaked in England for approximately eighteen months, between 1348 and 1350, it devastated the entire population, and further outbreaks in the following decades caused life expectancy in the decade to drop further. The bubonic plague did return to England sporadically until the mid-seventeenth century, although life expectancy among English male aristocrats rose again in the centuries following the worst outbreak, and even peaked at more than 71 years in the first half of the sixteenth century.

From 1501 until 1866, it is estimated that the transatlantic slave trade saw more than 12.5 million African people forcefully put on slave ships and transported to the Americas. Of these 12.5 million, only 10.7 million disembarked on the other side of the Atlantic, meaning that approximately 1.8 million (14.5 percent) did not survive the journey, known as the Middle Passage. Throughout most of the the sixteenth century, the mortality rate was around thirty percent, it then fell below twenty percent in the late seventeenth century, and below fifteen percent in the late eighteenth century. There was a slight increase in the mid-1800s, before the transatlantic slave trade effectively ended in the 1860s. The overall average mortality rate is lower than the rate in most decades, due to the larger numbers of captives transported in the late 1700s; a significant number of these voyages were between Africa and Brazil, which was generally the shortest of the major routes.

Throughout the history of the transatlantic slave trade, approximately 5.7 million of the 12.5 million African slaves who embarked on slave ships did so in ports along the region of West Central Africa and St. Helena. Today, these regions are in the countries of Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo. The majority of the rest were taken from West Africa, embarking in ports between the present-day countries of Senegal and Gabon, while a smaller number of slaves were captured in the southeast of Africa. Senegambia and off-shore Atlantic islands had the highest number of captives taken from that region in the 16th century, however West Central Africa and St. Helena was the region where most slaves embarked on their journey across the Atlantic in the following centuries. As Portuguese traders were responsible for transporting the largest volume of slaves to the Americas, it is unsurprising that many of the busiest ports in the transatlantic slave trade were in Portuguese-controlled enclaves along the African coast.

The fertility rate of a country is the average number of children that women from that country will have throughout their reproductive years. In the United States in 1800, the average woman of childbearing age would have seven children over the course of their lifetime. As factors such as technology, hygiene, medicine and education improved, women were having fewer children than before, reaching just two children per woman in 1940. This changed quite dramatically in the aftermath of the Second World War, rising sharply to over 3.5 children per woman in 1960 (children born between 1946 and 1964 are nowadays known as the 'Baby Boomer' generation, and they make up roughly twenty percent of todays US population). Due to the end of the baby boom and increased access to contraception, fertility reached it's lowest point in the US in 1980, where it was just 1.77. It did however rise to over two children per woman between 1995 and 2010, although it is expected to drop again by 2020, to just 1.78.

In the United States, the crude birth rate in 1800 was 48.3 live births per thousand people, meaning that 4.8 percent of the population had been born in that year. Between 1815 and 1825 the crude birth rate jumped from 46.5 to 54.7 (possibly due to Florida becoming a part of the US, but this is unclear), but from this point until the Second World War the crude birth rate dropped gradually, reaching 19.2 in 1935. Through the 1940s, 50s and 60s the US experienced it's baby boom, and the birth rate reached 24.1 in 1955, before dropping again until 1980. From the 1980s until today the birth rate's decline has slowed, and is expected to reach twelve in 2020, meaning that just over 1 percent of the population will be born in 2020.