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2000 — 2020
The three most recent censuses describe a different city from the one the German-era counts describe: In 2000 the census counted Fort Wayne as 73.09 percent white alone (non-Hispanic), 17.20 percent Black alone, 5.78 percent Hispanic or Latino of any race, 1.53 percent Asian alone and 1.81 percent of two or more races. By 2020 the white share had fallen to 62.85 percent (165,865 people — fewer in absolute terms than the 178,436 of 2010, the first absolute decline of the white population in the city's census history), while every other counted group grew: Hispanic or Latino residents to 27,896 (10.57 percent), Asian residents to 15,229 (5.77 percent), residents of two or more races to 13,084 (4.96 percent), and Black residents to the 39,560 of the preceding entry. The Asian count nearly doubled between 2000 and 2010 alone, and the 2010 census's detail shows why: 1.4 percent of the entire city was Burmese in 2010, the largest single Asian group, the census trace of the refugee settlement told in the Communities section, where the American Community Survey's 2024 figures for the Burmese metro population are carried.
The foreign-born series, which the German entry watched decline from 1910, closes its arc here: the American Community Survey's 2024 one-year estimates put the foreign-born at 10.1 percent of the city (27,572 people) — statistically back at the 1910 level of 11.3 percent, but composed now of Burmese, Latino, and other new Fort Wayne stock rather than German. The peoples behind the modern percentages — their parishes, groceries, mosques and newspapers — belong to the Communities section; the population record's point is the symmetry: Fort Wayne was a city of immigrants in 1910, ceased to be one in the middle of the century, and is one again.
Sources:
- U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 (Summary File 1), Census 2010 and Census 2020 (P.L. 94-171 redistricting file) — race and Hispanic-origin counts for Fort Wayne city, non-Hispanic categories as tabulated with the 2020 census returns.
- U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2010 — the city's Asian population by group, including Burmese at 1.4 percent of the total population.
- U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024 one-year estimates (via Census Reporter) — foreign-born 10.1 percent (27,572) in Fort Wayne city; 7.6 percent in the metropolitan area.
- Communities section of this history — the Burmese settlement in full and the ACS 2024 metro figures, cross-referenced and not retold here.