midfield parade 3-14-14.zip

The members of the Midfield High School boys basketball team celebrate their Class 3A championship with a parade on Friday, March 14, 2014. Midfield experienced the biggest demographic shift of any Alabama community since 1990, switching from 89.2 percent white that year to 22 percent white in 2012. (File photo)

The New York Times last week mentioned a Birmingham suburb among a group of cities across the country where, as in Ferguson, Mo., the black population has surged to a majority since 1990.

The report, which AL.com's Leada Gore summarized here, described how most of the cities on the list are near a larger city and generally are struggling economically more than their neighbors. The Times published the report in an attempt to place recent shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer context.

Jefferson County's Midfield was the only city on the Times list. A review of U.S. Census Bureau data, though, shows that many Alabama cities and communities have experience dramatic demographic changes. You can search your city with the database below.

Thirty-two places in Alabama that had majority-white populations in 1990 now are majority-minority. The group includes cities, towns and unincorporated communities that the federal government calls "census designated places." The largest cities to flip were Montgomery and Mobile.

Seven smaller communities, meanwhile, experienced a shift in the opposite direction after 1990 and now are majority-white.

Take the unincorporated community of Point Clear, south of Fairhope in Baldwin County. It is one of the few spots in the fast-growing county that has been losing population for the last two decades.

The population in the area that is home to the plush Marriott Grand Hotel resort went from 2,125 residents in 1990 to an estimated 2,068 in 2012. The reason for the decline is a black population that shrunk from to 1,293 to 858. The community's white population, meanwhile, grew by 44.5 percent during that time.

The place with the biggest change from black to white occurred in the town of Geiger in Sumter County. In 1990, whites made up 24.8 percent of the population. In 2012, it was 65.9 percent. It is much smaller than Point Clear, which only 164 residents. But the demographic shift is a similar story – the white population is growing but not fast enough to make up for the shrinking black population.

Tracking changes since 1990

Type in the name of your community in the search bar to see how the white population has changed since 1990. Cities that formed after 1990 or that existed in 1990 but no longer do are not included. Also, the city is labeled as it existed in 1990. Spanish Fort, for instance, was a census designated place but not is a city.

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