U.S. Census Office, Colored Aggregate Population (1874)

This choropleth map showing the distribution of the Black population of the United States was featured in the Statistical Atlas of the United States based on the Results of the Ninth Census 1870, published in 1874 under the direction of Francis Amasa Walker. The map used a gray scale to indicate the percentage of people living in a Census area who were Black, with darker gray indicating a higher percentage. The map illustrates how the distribution of the Black population was still highly concentrated in the South following the Civil War and emancipation. In the Antebellum South, the social order had been premised on the enslavement of a similarly large Black population, but by the time this map was published, reconstruction was underway, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution had been passed, and Black men had voted and entered political roles in large numbers. However, Black people were also regularly terrorized and lynched by individuals and groups, including the newly formed Ku Klux Klan, who tried to prevent them from voting, buying property, or otherwise enjoying their freedom and exercising their civil rights.