© 2024 Kansas City Public Radio
NPR in Kansas City
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

The Complicated History Of The U.S. Census Asking About Citizenship

Lawmakers are set to question the Justice Department Friday about why it requested the 2020 census to ask about citizenship. The history of using the U.S. census to ask about citizenship has many twists and turns.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Corrected: April 24, 2019 at 11:00 PM CDT
In this story, we incorrectly imply the U.S. census did not ask about citizenship status for the national head counts between 1840 and 1890. In fact, questions for the 1870 census included, "Is this person a male citizen of the United States of 21 years or upwards?"
Hansi Lo Wang is a national correspondent for NPR based in New York City. He reports on the people, power and money behind the 2020 census.
KCUR prides ourselves on bringing local journalism to the public without a paywall — ever.

Our reporting will always be free for you to read. But it's not free to produce.

As a nonprofit, we rely on your donations to keep operating and trying new things. If you value our work, consider becoming a member.