Recent research suggests not only that the U.S. population has deconcentrated from metropolitan to nonmetropolitan areas, but also that the 1970s have ushered in a period of widespread population deconcentrationwithinnonmetropolitan areas. The present paper examines the extent to which U.S. blacks have participated in urban—rural deconcentration in the 1970s. Using population counts from the 1950 through 1980 decennial censuses, we report significant intranonmetropolitan population change over the 1950–80 period. After decades of black rural decline, the number of blacks in rural America increased in the post-1970 period for the first time. However, despite the white transition to differential rural growth, our analysis demonstrates that blacks continued in the 1970s to follow historic patterns of concentration into metropolitan and larger urban places. Moreover, the differential urban growth among blacks was found to be pervasive across a variety of spatial settings. Thus the urban—rural turnaround of the 1970s was largely a white phenomenon.