“This is the biggest loss of blacks the city has shown, and that’s tied to the foreclosures in the city’s housing,” Mr. Frey said. Because of the Great Migration — when blacks flowed from the South to the North — and the loss of whites, he said, “Detroit has been the most segregated city in the country and it is still pretty segregated, but not as much.” At one point, the city was 83 percent black.
Many blacks moved to nearby suburbs, but census data shows that even those suburbs have barely held their own against population loss.
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