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1970 – 2024
The 1970 count, read first-hand in the census volume's own tables: the Seventeenth Census's Indiana volume, in both its race-by-sex table for places and its age table, counts Mishawaka city at 35,517 people, of whom 35,312 were white and 107 were Negro — 57 male and 50 female, three-tenths of one percent of the city. The remaining 98 residents were of other races, itemized in the same table: 24 Indian, 17 Japanese, 8 Chinese, 2 Filipino and 47 of all other races. The figure is printed on the volume's own basis — the 35,517 this build's population file follows, against the revised 36,060 of modern compilations; the basis question is the population file's, and the race count stands on the 1970 volume itself either way. Set beside South Bend's 1970 count across the river, the 107 is the whole story of Black Mishawaka's first century in one number: the Great Migration filled the city next door and, on the record the census gives, essentially passed this one by.
The modern series, conformed to the neighborhoods and population files: the count then moved faster than at any time in the city's history. In 2000 the census counted 1,659 Black residents alone (3.6 percent of 46,557) and 1,987 alone or in combination (4.3 percent). In 2010 the African American share stood at 6.9 percent of 48,252. In 2020 the census counted 4,857 Black or African American residents, 9.5 percent of 51,063. The City of Mishawaka's own statistics page, read in November 2026, gives 9.2 percent Black alone, and the American Community Survey for 2020–2024 gives 5,658 Black alone (11.1 percent) and 7,736 alone or in combination (15.2 percent). The growth from 107 to nearly five thousand in fifty years — a forty-five-fold increase while the city as a whole grew by less than half — is the community's modern history, and it is recent: essentially all of it postdates 1970, and most of it postdates 1990.
What the record does not give:The counts for 1960, 1950 and 1940 stand in the census volumes' own place tables — the 1960 Census, Volume I, Part XVI (Indiana), General Population Characteristics, places of 10,000 or more; the 1950 Census, Volume II, Part 14 (Indiana) — and in the NHGIS place-level race tables; a pull attempted from the IPUMS-hosted 1960 section failed on an empty response and was not repeated. The earlier decades are therefore printed as a named gap, not estimated: the qualitative record (the Powell family's decades) stands in the entry above, and no number is invented to dress it.
Sources
- U.S. Census of Population, 1970, Vol. I, Part 16 (Indiana), Chapter B, Table 27 (Race by Sex, for Places of 10,000 to 50,000) and Table 28 — Mishawaka: total 35,517; white 35,312; Negro 107 (57 male, 50 female); other races 98, itemized. Read first-hand.
- Neighborhoods file, article nbh-black-mishawaka, and population file, article pop-race — the 2000, 2010 and 2020 counts, the city's statistics page figure, and the ACS 2020–2024 series, conformed exactly.
- Population file — the 1970 total's basis (35,517 in the volume's tables against the revised 36,060), owned there.