When the suburbs opened up after passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, Prince George’s County became the default destination for middle-class African Americans leaving the District in search of manicured lawns, big houses and the suburban lifestyle.
Over the next 20 years, the Black share of the population more than tripled. The once rural, predominantly White Maryland county on the District’s eastern flank gradually transformed into the richest majority-Black county in the nation, becoming a potent symbol of Black advancement — proof that, stereotypes aside, prosperous suburbs didn’t have to be White.
We here at the Department of Data are dedicated to exploring the weird and wondrous power of the data that defines our world. Read more.
But is Prince George’s still the richest majority-Black county in America? Answering that question launched a long and winding quest that I’ll spoil here: It isn’t.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Andrew Van Dam over at The Washington Post
