Missouri

After the flatboat and French traders and settlers had made possible the earliest development of Missouri and its Mississippi shore, the river steamer, the Civil War, the Homestead Act (1862), and the railroad changed the character of the state ethnically as well as economically. Germans came in large numbers, developing small diversified industries, and they were followed by Czechs and Italians. The foreign-born numbered 151,196 in 2000, up from 83,633 in 1990.

Black Americans have represented a rising proportion of Missouri's population in recent decades: 9% in 1960, 10.3% in 1970, 10.5% in 1980, 10.7% in 1990, and 11.2% in 2000. Kansas City's black community supported a flourishing jazz and urban blues culture between the two world wars, while St. Louis was the home of Scott Joplin and W. C. Handy in the early years of the century. Of the 629,391 black residents of Missouri in 2000, 178,266 lived in St. Louis, which was 51.2% black. In 2000 Missouri also had 118,592 Hispanics and Latinos, nearly double the 1990 figure of 62,000, and including 77,887 of Mexican ancestry. The total Asian population as of 2000 was 61,595; in that year there were 13,667 Chinese, 7,735 Filipinos, 6,767 Koreans, 3,337 Japanese, and 12,169 Vietnamese (triple the 1990 figure of 4,030). Pacific Islanders numbered 3,178.

Only a few American Indians remained in Missouri after 1836. The 2000 census showed an Indian population of 25,076. The state has no Indian reservations.

Of those claiming descent from at least one specific ancestry group in 2000, 1,313,951 named German, 528,935 English, and 711,995 Irish.