The modern composition: the censuses of 2000, 2010 and 2020, and the Hispanic series

1970 — 2020

The three most recent censuses describe a city its 1960 count would not recognize: Counted on the modern basis — race alone, with Hispanic or Latino origin treated as an ethnicity counted across the races — South Bend in 2000 was 63.3 percent white (68,202 people, non-Hispanic), 24.4 percent Black (26,259), 8.5 percent Hispanic or Latino of any race (9,110), 1.2 percent Asian (1,271) and 2.2 percent of two or more races (2,372). By 2020 the white count had fallen to 51,891 (50.2 percent — an absolute decline of 16,311 across the two decades, in a city whose total fell by only 4,336, because the other counted groups grew around it), the Black count stood at 26,102 (25.2 percent), the Asian count at 1,549, the multiracial count had more than doubled to 5,654 (5.5 percent), and the Hispanic count had nearly doubled to 17,249 (16.7 percent). On the survey estimates since — the American Community Survey's 2020–2024 figures, a different instrument from the count — the city reads 50.9 percent white non-Hispanic and 17.9 percent Hispanic or Latino: estimates, printed as estimates.

The Hispanic series deserves its own line, because it is the newest of the city's great migrations and the census watched it arrive. The Bureau's historical compilation gives the first counts from the 1970 census's samples: 1,267 residents of Hispanic origin on the 15-percent sample (the 5-percent sample read 1,744 — the two samples are printed here as the Bureau printed them, a sample spread, not a conflict of counts). Then the full counts: 2,594 in 1980 (2.4 percent), 3,546 in 1990 (3.4 percent), 9,110 in 2000 (8.5 percent) — the decade of the near-tripling is the migration the foreign-born entry traces through the entry-year figures — 13,116 in 2010 (13.0 percent) and 17,249 in 2020 (16.7 percent). In fifty years the series runs from about one resident in a hundred to one in six, and it is the largest single reason the city's total stopped falling when it did: between 1990 and 2020 the city lost 2,058 people net, while its Hispanic population grew by 13,703 — which is to say the rest of the counted city shrank by nearly 16,000 over the same thirty years, and the growth of one community carried the total to the edge of level.

Sources:

1. 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 South Bend city, non-Hispanic categories: white alone 68,202 / 56,474 / 51,891; Black alone 26,259 / 26,496 / 26,102; Asian alone 1,271 / 1,295 / 1,549; two or more races 2,372 / 3,189 / 5,654; Hispanic or Latino 9,110 / 13,116 / 17,249.
2. Gibson and Jung, Working Paper No. 76 (2005), Table 15 — Hispanic origin in South Bend: 1970 on the 15-percent sample, 1,267 (the 5-percent sample, 1,744); 1980, 2,594; 1990, 3,546; and the white non-Hispanic counts of 1980 (86,181) and 1990 (78,764) behind the modern series.
3. U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020–2024 (Census QuickFacts) — white alone, not Hispanic or Latino, 50.9 percent; Hispanic or Latino, 17.9 percent; survey estimates, not counts.