Majority-minority state

A majority–minority or minority–majority area is a term used in the United States to refer to a jurisdiction in which one or more racial and/or ethnic minorities (relative to the whole country's population) make up a majority of the local population. The term is often used in voting rights law to designate voting districts which are altered under the Voting Rights Act to enable ethnic or language minorities "the opportunity to elect their candidate of choice." In that context, the term is first used by the Supreme Court in 1977. The Court had previously used the term in employment discrimination and labor relations cases.

In the United States of America majority–minority or minority–majority area is a United States state or jurisdiction whose population is composed of less than 50% non-Hispanic whites. Racial data is derived from self-identification questions on the U.S. Census and on U.S. Census Bureau estimates. (See Race and ethnicity in the United States Census).

From colonial times to the early 20th century, much of the Lower South had a black majority. Three Southern states had populations that were majority black: Louisiana (until about 1890), South Carolina (until the 1920s) and Mississippi (from the 1830s to the 1930s). In the same period, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, had populations that were nearly 50% black, while Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia had black populations approaching or exceeding 40%. Texas' black population reached to 30%.

The demographics of these states changed markedly from the 1890s through the 1950s, as two waves of the Great Migration led more than 6.5 million African Americans to abandon the economically depressed, legally segregated Deep South in search of better job opportunities and living conditions, first in Northern and Midwestern industrial cities, and later west to California. One-fifth of Florida's black population had left the state by 1940, for instance. During the last 30 years of the 20th century into the 21st century, scholars have documented a reverse New Great Migration of blacks back to southern states, but typically to destinations in the New South, which have the best jobs and developing economies.

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