BackStory

Beyond Numbers: A History of the U.S. Census

Have Your Answers Ready, 1917 (Library of Congress)To mark the culmination of Census 2010, BackStory takes on the fascinating story of how Americans have counted themselves throughout our nation’s history. As it turns out, the idea of doling out power based on the actual number of people in a region was an American innovation. The History Guys explain what was so revolutionary about the concept in 1787, and explore how assumptions about who counts as an American have shifted over time. They also look at the reasons the “undercount” became such an important issue in the 20th century, and consider the ways Americans’ suspicion of government has posed a challenge to the work of the Census Bureau. Over the course of the hour, they are joined by a scholar, former Census workers, and listeners interested in exploring the invisible backbone of American democracy: the U.S. Census.

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Guests Include:

* Michael Quinn, President of the Montpelier Foundation
* Melissa Nobles, political scientist (Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics)
* Fernando Armstrong, Philadelphia Regional Director of the U.S. Census Bureau
* Vincent Barabba, Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, 1973-76 & 1979-81
* Al Marquart, Enumerator for the 1940 Census

Features & Highlights

Hear more stories from the 1940, 1980, and 1990 Censuses in these extended interviews of Vincent Barabba, Al Marquart, and UVa professor Peter Norton. Listen here.

Mistress Columbia (Library of Congress)Further Reading

Want to dig deeper into Census history? The BackStory research team has compiled a comprehensive list of resources for further exploration. Read on.

24 Responses

  • offical census what a joke. I live in the inner city and i know many many households that don’t want the government to know how many people live in their home. Multiply that by all the inner cities throughout the country and you see just how impossible an accurate cenus is. One person that comes to mind moves from house to house and isn’t getting counted. Accurate no way

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    noel troike
    10/27/2010 at 3:21 pm

  • I was one of the lucky few singled out for the extended census interrogation. As someone who recognizes the need for census data (and on occasion has used it), I have to admit it was incredibly intrusive. Giving that much personal information to a stranger showing up at the front door is not a comfortable experience. For people who are suspicious of the government, or perhaps hate the government, I can imagine an escalation to armed assault. I am curious how much resistance there has been to the census, anything from anecdotal cases of violence to court challenges.

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    Denton
    11/1/2010 at 8:29 am

  • I was a “field operations supervisor” for the “Twenty-first Decennial Census” (that’s the 1990 census to everyone else). I was 26. I was in charge of getting counts from all the “group quarters” in the state of Delaware: long-term motel tenants, military personnel on bases, students and migrant farm workers dormitories, people in halfway houses, prisoners, people in homeless shelters, and people on the streets. It was an education. I learned that hundreds of people can engage in a common enterprise that none of them was trained to do or had any experience in–but could not do it well. I learned about political appointees when a change in governors meant that I lost a mediocre boss in favor of a more mediocre (more mediocre?) boss. I learned about bureaucratic scapegoating when a supervisor had to take a fall for me because staying on would have embarrassed his boss. I learned that it’s possible to furnish a large office entirely with desks we assembled ourselves from corrugated cardboard. I learned about the Bill of Rights when we couldn’t swear in Jehovah’s witnesses as enumerators–then debated what to do about it. I learned about the Hatch Act. I learned about corner cutting when I resorted to counting names in a directory and got a long-distance dressing down from Philadelphia. I learned about being prepared when I had to simultaneously swear in hundreds of enumerators simultaneously in a hangar at Dover Air Force Base–and could not remember the exact words and did not have them in print. I learned about creative use of unscheduled time (after the census was over–but before the office closed down) by reading all of both volumes of Democracy in America at work. And I learned about honesty when an enumerator brought back a census form completed by an inmate in Smyrna state prison: under “principle source of income,” he carefully pencilled in “theft.” Easily equal to a year in college–without tuition.

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    Peter Norton
    11/2/2010 at 5:16 pm

  • Peter, it is easier to cut corners when the desks are cardboard. Thanks for taking the time to share these great insights with us. At the risk of sounding too “pro” government, I wonder whether we might benefit from more civic experiences that brings folks together, unexpectedly, rather than less. Twentieth-Century Guy.

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    tewntieth-century guy
    11/3/2010 at 2:02 pm

  • At 4:15 p.m. Sat. 6 Nov in a discussion of veterans, it was said that no black soldiers served in the Confederate Army. Much has also been said about the new Virginia History text used in 4th grades.
    I suggest you read an article written by Walter Williams, a black newsman, appearing in the Saturday, 6 Nov Daily News-Record. He emphatically states that many black free people and slaves served on the side of the Confederacy. He quotes Charles H. Wesle;y, “a distinguished black historian who lived from 1891 to 1987″ who details 70 blacks enlisting in Lynchburg, VA and also about 16 companies (1600) of free men of color marched through Augusta, GA. I suggest your commentators get their facts correct.

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    Wilton B. Thomas
    11/6/2010 at 4:34 pm

  • He didn’t say no black soldiers served; he said compared to the vast numbers of black people who were enslaved for two centuries and of those who served the Union, the numbers who served the Confederacy were negligible.

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    Anna
    11/6/2010 at 5:05 pm

  • Was the 1940 census used to identify persons of Japanese ancestry after FDR signed Executive Order 9066 which authorized the relocation of anyone deemed a threat to national security?

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    Shawn Meredith
    11/14/2010 at 12:16 pm

  • Related to the census and the resulting apportionment is the subject of “Article the first”, the very first amendment proposed in the Bill of Rights document. Its intended purpose was to limit the population size of congressional districts to 50,000. However, because the amendment was made defective in its final wording it was never ratified. To read the amendment, view the “zoomable” Bill of Rights at: http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/BoR_image_repro.htm
    Use the pull-down menu to the right of the image to zoom to each of the twelve articles inscribed in the Bill of Rights document.

    To learn more about “Article the first” and the defect which effectively sabotaged its purpose, read section 3 of “Taking Back Our Republic”, a pamphlet that can downloaded from this page: http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/TBOR.htm

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    Jeff Quidam
    11/23/2010 at 10:02 am

  • Isn’t it interesting that the census at the turn of the 20th century pushed the development of the computer — Hollerith cards were perfected so as to compute all the data. Now, with our burgeoning population and thirst for more demographic data, even supercomputers are falling behind.

    We also must wonder if a wait of 10 years for important information upon which we base our public policy is too long a wait. We have the technology to compute socio-economic changes almost at “point-of-sale,” why not do away with the 10 year wait and use create a system that supplies our government entities with data in an on-going basis that is acceptable for laws, regulations and policy? Technology can do this if we are willing to invest.

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    Mike Haftel
    12/21/2010 at 6:29 am

  • Fascinating show covering the evolution of the census in historical context. Love it. Is there a full audio version I can send out to my fellow history geeks?

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    Liz Wallace
    12/22/2010 at 10:45 pm

  • Fascinating show covering the evolution of the census in historical context. Love it. Is there a full audio version I can send out to my fellow history geeks?

    Hi Liz — So glad to hear you enjoyed the show! To download the episode, control-click the “Download” link above and save, or sign up for our free podcast and get the file that way. Or simply link your geeks to this page, where they can stream/download the episode. Thanks for your help in spreading the word!

    –Catherine, Assistant Producer

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    cm6ay
    12/23/2010 at 2:48 pm

  • I sent back my 2010 form with a striking addition on the reverse of the envelope: a pink sticker from “Queer the Census,” with “bisexual” checkmarked on it. To think that a decade or two before, I and my friends seriously discussed either marrying for cover or fleeing the country, yet here I was, outing myself to the Federal government—and now, I’ve outed myself to you as well.

    I suppose it’s part of the LGBT movement’s efforts to assert our full citizenship in this country. That’s largely what prompted me to send for the sticker and use it. After all, one of the arguments against queer rights (sometimes implied, sometimes quite explicit) is that our numbers are too small to count, so our grievances don’t count either. To quote the protest chant, “We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it!”

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    Brenda Trickler
    1/1/2011 at 11:26 pm

  • Jan. 8,2011: Listened to (some) of program re: Census 640AM NPR. Talk got around to
    Puerto Rico’s need of US govt. Census. My ears perks up as my grandfather was the
    Director of Census under Wilson and the first one (says family lore) to include PR in the
    census. He was also the first, perhaps ONLY, Director to return unused budget surplus
    to the general fund for which he was given a silver headed gavel upon his retirement.
    His name was Samuel L. Rogers (note my middle name) Good show!

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    Robert Rogers Lehan
    1/8/2011 at 4:13 pm

  • I understand how everyone feels about the privacy issue of giving out their personal info to anyone, not just to the Census. But think about it, the information you gave on the 2010 Census forms weren’t that personal — there wasn’t any SS#, none of your banking stuff, or your email address, or your driver license #. Just names, race, and other not-too-personal information. Gmail and Google hold more of your personal information than what was on the Census form!! And you didn’t even know that you have inadvertently gave all that to Google. Your banks hold more of your personal information (such as your SS#, your banking habits, the amounts in the banks, etc) and they profit from it without your permission!!!

    Filling out the Census form will help your future generations to do a genealogy on your family. How cool’s that?

    You all whining about the privacy and the Big Brother stuff from the government. But you forget that the private sector actually has more of your private information that you can imagine. And they got these all without your knowing or your permission.

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    Elaine2010
    3/8/2011 at 10:44 pm

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