The trajectories of white flight in Milwaukee

2010:  

• 37% white
• 40% black

Source:  Historical Census Statistics On Population Totals By Race,1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, ForLarge Cities And Other Urban Places In The United States.  (U.S. Census Bureau)

The Racial Segregation And Economic Devastation That Made Milwaukee A ‘Powder Keg’. (Think Progress, 8/15/2016)

• 1920-1940.  The city’s segregation traces back to the 1920s. Although it had a tiny black population at the time, as it started to grow it worried the Milwaukee Real Estate Board, which undertook an effort of excluding black renters and homeowners from white areas and pushing them elsewhere. That effort resulted in the city’s nearly 9,000 black residents living in an area four blocks long and three blocks wide in 1940.
• 1960-2010.  Black residents began to move to the city in large numbers in search of manufacturing jobs in the 1960s. But shortly after their arrival, jobs dried up and many people fled to the suburbs. White flight bloated the counties surrounding Milwaukee County, where the white population almost tripled between 1960 and 2010. Yet today their populations are less than 2 percent black and less than 5 percent Hispanic. Their poverty rates are also in the single digits.