- The number of Black residents has increased, but the overall percentage of the Black population has decreased.
- Some Black residents are choosing to leave for better opportunities and more diverse cities.
- More of those moving to the area are buying second homes, increasing housing demands and limiting affordable housing.
- ‘Black excellence can’t increase’ until the percentage of the Black community increases
Over the past 30 years, Black residents have made up a steadily shrinking slice of New Hanover County’s population.
In 1990, Black residents made up approximately 20% of the county’s population. In 2019, just over 13.4% of the county’s residents identified as Black, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Neighboring counties have undergone similar demographic shifts.
Brunswick County’s proportion of Black residents dropped from 18.1% in 1990 to 10% in 2019. Nearly 30.4% of Pender County’s population identified as Black in 1990, but in 2019, Black residents made up just 14.7% of the county’s residents.
In comparison, Black residents have made up a consistent percentage of North Carolina’s population over the past 30 years, with numbers hovering between 21% and 22%.
So, why is the proportion of Black residents declining in counties across the Cape Fear region?
It’s tough to pinpoint a single cause, but local officials and experts offered some explanations for the trend.
Why are demographics changing?
While the total number of Black residents living in New Hanover County has not decreased over time, it isn’t growing as quickly as the county’s other populations, said Nick Pylypiw, the director of data science at Cape Fear Collective, a nonprofit that collects data to inform equity work in Southeastern North Carolina.
Because of this, white residents and those from other racial backgrounds are “diluting” the Black population in counties like New Hanover, Plylypiw added.
Since 1970, for example, New Hanover County’s non-white population has become increasingly less Black, according to data compiled by Jan Davidson, a historian at the Cape Fear Museum.
Some Black residents have chosen to leave Wilmington for better opportunities and more diverse cities.
Deborah Maxwell, the president of the New Hanover County NAACP, said she has watched friends and family members leave Wilmington for bigger cities like Charlotte and Atlanta.
“If there’s a better opportunity, they leave,” she said.
Cedric Harrison chose to leave Wilmington when he was just 17 and didn’t plan on returning.
He left to attend college and escape the violence that made Wilmington a “dangerous space” for him.
“Being dead or in jail was a very, very real reality for me,” he said.
After college, Harrison moved to Atlanta where he found a more diverse and inclusive community. In 2019, 51% of Atlanta’s residents identified as Black.
While Harrison felt the need to dress or act a certain way in some spaces in Wilmington, he could be himself in Atlanta, even in more formal settings.
“When I would come to work, I didn’t have to be dressed or styled in a certain way,” he said. “I could wear my hair as I wanted to or show a tattoo or two.”
Harrison returned to Wilmington to work with Support the Port, the nonprofit he founded. The organization’s mission is to enhance, cultivate and provide a renewed sense of community ownership for Wilmington residents.
Harrison has watched other family members leave Wilmington for places like Charlotte, Atlanta and Durham that offer more opportunity and diversity.
Wilmington – for example – doesn’t offer the types of social and entertainment options that would generally appeal to working Black professionals, Harrison said. Because Wilmington’s population is predominantly white, businesses and other institutions in the city often cater to the interests of white residents, he added.
“Overall, the experience of a Black individual in Wilmington is not very welcoming or warming,” Harrison said.
Linda Thompson, New Hanover County’s chief diversity and equity officer, said she, too, has noticed Black young adults moving out of the area to attend college or to secure better job opportunities.
“I truly believe that the reason why we see this decrease is certainly because of jobs and because of the economy,” Thompson said.
Some residents might be pushed out of New Hanover County because of a lack of affordable housing combined with stagnant wages and limited job prospects, she added.
Maxwell has seen the demographic shifts reflected in changes within some of the area’s historically Black neighborhoods. Gentrification is occurring in the Northside community and in other neighborhoods near downtown Wilmington, she said.
These demographic shifts have the potential to impact New Hanover County residents, especially those who are low income.
A recent assessment of New Hanover County by the Office of Diversity and Equity found that Black residents are the most likely to live in poverty, with 33% living at or below the poverty line. More than half of all Black New Hanover County residents received at least one FAST benefit – including food stamps, Medicaid and childcare vouchers – in 2019, according to the report.
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As wealthier residents move into the county, lower income people are pushed out into neighboring areas that often offer more affordable housing.
“When we see people from that (higher) income bracket moving in, it’s displacing people who rely on those city services,” said Pylypiw, “That’s really the biggest impact that we’re seeing.”
History of New Hanover’s Black population matters
It’s important to understand the history of the Black population in New Hanover County, according to Davidson.
New Hanover County’s demographics have always been out of step with the rest of the state because its early predominant industries — including the production of tar and turpentine, the railroad and the area’s rice plantations — enslaved large numbers of Black people.
“We had a much higher enslaved population than the rest of North Carolina as a whole,” she said, “which meant that throughout much of the 18th and 19th century, Wilmington was predominantly African American.”
Those demographics began to shift around 1900 as Black people across the south began to head north for more opportunities. In Wilmington, a massacre and coup d’etat that succeeded in overthrowing the city’s biracial government in 1898 also drove Black residents from the city, Davidson said.
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The number of Black residents continued to fall throughout the 1900’s. In 1970, New Hanover County’s proportion of Black residents dropped below the state’s proportion of Black residents for the first time.
In the decades that followed, New Hanover County’s development boom began to pick up, said Mark Imperial, the director of the Master of Public Administration program and an associate professor of public administration at UNC Wilmington.
“This region in 1990 looked a lot different than it does today,” he said.
Attracting whiter, more diverse residents
The new development was fueled, in part, by people purchasing second homes in the county and by retirees moving to the area from the northeast and midwest, Imperial said.
As more people move to New Hanover County, the increased demand has raised the cost of housing in the area, Pylypiw said.
“Over the last 40 years, home prices in Southeast North Carolina increased 22% faster than the rest of the state, and most of that increase is driven by New Hanover County,” Pylypiw said.
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That limited access to affordable housing could play a role in pushing low-income or minority residents out of the county, he added.
The number of people who call New Hanover County home has nearly doubled over the past 30 years, growing from 120,284 residents in 1990 to 234,473 in 2019.
During that time, the population has become whiter, more diverse and less Black.
White residents made up 78.9% of the county’s population in 1990. That rose to 82.2% in 2019. The number of county residents who identify as Asian, American Indian or as another race has also grown substantially since 1990.
In 1990, 0.47% of the county’s population identified as Asian. The number of people identifying as Asian grew to 1.6% of the population in 2019. The number of people identifying as American Indian or Alaska Native increased from 0.36% in 1990 to 0.6% in 2019. The percentage of residents identifying as another race grew from 0.24% in 1990 to 2.2% in 2019.
“There’s other populations that are really exploding in the New Hanover County area, but the Black population has really slowed,” Pylypiw said.
In comparison, white residents made up 75.6% of North Carolina’s residents in 1990. That percentage decreased to 70.6% in 2019. The proportion of the state’s Black residents remained roughly the same between 1990 and 2019 while residents identifying as another race increased.
‘Growth has consequences’
Population growth inevitably brings changes that must be addressed by local governments, Imperial said.
“Growth always brings challenges. The changing diversity is one. The lack of affordable housing is another,” he said. “All this growth has consequences.”
Providing more affordable housing options is something that New Hanover County’s Planning Department is working to address, said Planning Department Director Rebekah Roth.
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One of the goals in the county’s comprehensive plan is to give all residents more housing options throughout the county, Roth said.
Currently, “you may have pockets of different types of housing in different areas, but you don’t really have a diversity of options for folks at different socioeconomic levels,” she said. “We’ve got a lot of economic segregation.”
Residents shouldn’t have to live in a certain neighborhood or part of the county just because of the amount of money they make, Roth said.
Beyond housing, Maxwell said the declining proportion of Black residents could have consequences for local government representation.
“What it does is dilutes the effectiveness of voting power,” she said.
Thompson said she is hopeful that the percentage decline will slow as more jobs become available in the area and companies consider providing higher wages. The formation of the Office of Diversity and Equity is a step in the right direction in addressing disparities, she added.
Maxwell is also optimistic about new organizations that are aimed at helping Black entrepreneurs and Black-owned businesses succeed. Despite the changing populations, Maxwell said it doesn’t change the way the NAACP goes about its work in the county.
“We are formed to look at discrimination, be it Black, white, blue or brown,” she said. “There are still issues to address despite the number of the population, the issues don’t go away.”
Harrison said he believes there is potential for New Hanover County to become a more diverse and inclusive place for Black residents. The Black Lives Matter protests last summer generated a “cloud of energy” around issues of race, Harrison said.
He hopes this energy will translate into action and change in the area’s outlook on diversity and inclusion.
It will be critical for the county to attract more Black residents in the coming years.
“No matter how many well-intended and non-racist white people Wilmington has, until the percentage increases of the African American population here,” he said, “Black excellence can’t increase.”
Reporter Emma Dill can be reached at 910-343-2096 or edill@gannett.com.
