PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, Md. — A recent tour through Prince George’s County, Maryland, is drawing attention online for showcasing a side of Black America that some viewers say they rarely see represented nationally: sprawling homes, luxury cars, highly educated families, entrepreneurs and generations of Black professional success.

RocaNews recently visited several communities in the majority-Black county outside Washington, D.C., including Bowie, Woodmore, Upper Marlboro and Fort Washington, giving viewers a glimpse into an area that has spent decades developing one of the most significant concentrations of Black wealth in the United States.

During the tour, cameras captured everything from Rolls-Royces and McLarens to multimillion-dollar homes and private schools, but residents and the history of the county made clear that the area’s prosperity goes much deeper than displays of luxury.

Prince George’s County is approximately 61% Black, with a median household income of about $101,800. More than 62% of homes are owner-occupied, and nearly 30% of county households earn at least $150,000 annually.

The area has long been recognized as a center of Black affluence. A frequently cited ranking of America’s wealthiest Black communities placed five Prince George’s County communities — Fort Washington, Friendly, Kettering, Mitchellville and Woodmore — among the country’s top 10.

Although demographic shifts have since changed which majority-Black county holds the title of America’s wealthiest, Prince George’s remains an extraordinary concentration of Black middle- and upper-income households.

The roots of that prosperity stretch back decades.

Following the expansion of fair-housing protections during the civil rights era, Prince George’s County increasingly became a destination for middle-class Black families leaving Washington, D.C., in search of suburban homes and greater opportunities.

The transformation was dramatic.

In 1970, Black residents represented only about 15% of Prince George’s County. Over the following three decades, that share climbed to roughly 64%, creating something relatively unusual in the United States: predominantly Black suburban communities where high incomes and substantial homeownership existed on a large scale.

Federal employment played a major role.

Because Prince George’s County sits just outside Washington, generations of residents built careers with the federal government, military, government contractors and related industries.

More than 65,000 federal employees have lived in the county in recent years, representing roughly 17% of its workforce, with median federal salaries exceeding $110,000.

For generations of Black Americans who faced discrimination and restricted advancement opportunities elsewhere in the labor market, federal employment offered something particularly valuable: stable salaries, benefits, pensions and career advancement.

Those paychecks helped families purchase homes, send children to college and accumulate assets that could be passed from one generation to the next.

Government work, however, is only part of the modern Prince George’s County story.

The RocaNews tour highlighted a younger generation increasingly moving into technology, entrepreneurship and private enterprise.

One resident featured during the visit described going from working on a defense contract to launching an artificial-intelligence startup.

Another woman shared that her mother had been appointed to a position by former President Joe Biden, offering another glimpse into the professional and political circles represented throughout the county.

Bowie provides a particularly striking example of the area’s transformation.

The city is nearly 58% Black, while its median household income has been measured at more than $127,000. More than 95% of residents age 25 and older have completed high school.

Prince George’s County also has a substantial entrepreneurial community, alongside its large population of government employees and contractors.

But perhaps what has attracted the most attention to the RocaNews tour isn’t simply the amount of money visible in these communities.

It’s the image of Black suburban prosperity itself.

For decades, national portrayals of predominantly Black communities have frequently centered poverty, crime and economic hardship. Prince George’s County complicates that narrative.

Neighborhoods throughout the county contain Black doctors, attorneys, engineers, educators, federal executives, military officers, technology professionals, entrepreneurs and government officials living in communities where Black homeownership and professional achievement have existed across multiple generations.

The phenomenon was already visible more than a decade ago. By 2011, approximately three-quarters of Prince George’s County neighborhoods with household incomes exceeding $100,000 were majority Black.

Woodmore and surrounding communities became particularly notable for large estates and affluent Black families, creating neighborhoods that researchers at the time described as exceptionally rare nationally.

Prince George’s County’s history of Black community-building stretches even further back.

The county is home to several historically African-American incorporated towns, including North Brentwood, Fairmount Heights, Glenarden and Eagle Harbor. North Brentwood became the county’s first incorporated African-American town in 1924 after Black families established a community centered heavily around homeownership.

That history makes today’s multimillion-dollar estates part of a much longer story of Black families pursuing property ownership and economic independence in the region.

The county’s prosperity, however, is not universal.

Prince George’s County also contains working-class and lower-income communities, and residents continue to face economic inequality and uneven development. Its heavy dependence on federal employment has also created new economic vulnerabilities as federal workforce reductions have affected thousands of workers throughout the Washington region.

Still, the wealth visible in communities such as Woodmore, Bowie and Fort Washington isn’t a newly created phenomenon.

It represents decades of Black migration, education, federal employment, homeownership, entrepreneurship and generational investment.

And with videos from the area now circulating widely online, people far beyond Maryland are getting a closer look at a community that has existed largely outside the national spotlight.

For many viewers, the luxury cars and mansions may grab their attention first.

But Prince George’s County’s bigger story is the generations of Black families who built the wealth behind them.

PULSE RADIO 96.1 NEWS DEPARTMENT
The Beat of Lake County