[A] Figures 1704-1757 from Du Bois, Notes, etc., p. 1.

[B] Negro not reported separately 1790 to 1850; includes "slaves" and all other "Free Colored" which does not involve serious error in the earlier censuses.

Census figures 1790-1910 are from the latest revisions of the Bureau of the Census. Figures for same area, outside of Manhattan and Brooklyn, are estimates of censuses 1790-1890. Figures for 1900 and 1910 are exact.

[C] Decrease.

To summarize the point, while the Negro population has become a smaller relative part of the total population each decade since 1810, it has shown a decided trend toward a large actual increase.

The distribution of the Negro population has varied with its increase and with the growth of the city. But almost from the beginning, probably the environing white group has segregated the Negroes into separate neighborhoods. The figures available for Brooklyn do not permit a positive inference, but in Manhattan, while the areas populated by Negroes have shifted somewhat from decade to decade, there have been distinctively Colored sections since 1800.[41]

An idea of this segregation is shown in the fact that in 1900, 80.9 per cent of all the Negro population of Manhattan was contained within 12 out of 35 Assembly Districts and that in 1890 seven wards of Manhattan contained fully five-sixths of the Negro population of the Borough. The largest number of Negroes, 13.8 per cent of the total number, were living, in 1900, in the Nineteenth Assembly District with numbers approximating this in the Eleventh, which contained 10.4 per cent, the Twenty-seventh, which had 9.2 per cent, and the Twenty-third, which had 8.7 per cent of the Negro population. The Negro population for Manhattan, 36,246, was distributed in 1900 by assembly districts as is shown in Table IX ([p. 49]).

These figures give a clear idea of the segregated character of the Negro population and show something of its present location. There has been a decided shifting from the part of Manhattan between Twenty-fifth, Forty-second streets, Sixth and Eighth avenues, and into Harlem between One Hundred and Thirtieth, One Hundred and Fortieth streets, Fifth and Eighth avenues during the past five years as business interests have been taking possession of the zone around the new Pennsylvania Railway Station, between Thirty-second and Thirty-third streets. But as the Negroes have moved into blocks in Harlem, the whites have moved out.

Table IX. Distribution of Negro Population by Assembly Districts of Manhattan, 1900.

Assembly District.Negro population.Per cent of total.
5th Assembly District1,3783.8
9th Assembly District1,6734.6
11th Assembly District3,75610.4
13th Assembly District2,5847.1
17th Assembly District1,2143.4
19th Assembly District4,98213.8
21st Assembly District1,1353.1
23rd Assembly District3,1698.7
25th Assembly District2,9508.1
27th Assembly District3,3189.2
31st Assembly District1,4834.1
32nd Assembly District1,6804.6
All other Districts6,92419.1
Total36,246100.