According to 2010 U.S. Census figures released Thursday, the African-American population of D.C. is now 50.7 percent, a black majority by only the slimmest of margins.

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Many are already lamenting the demise of “Chocolate City,” the nickname given to D.C. by George Clinton on a 1975 Parliament album and song of the same name, and noting that “Swirl City,” “Slightly-less-Chocolate City,” “Vanilla City,” or “White Chocolate City” will soon be more apt descriptors.

The Census figures merely quantified what District residents have anecdotally reported for the last decade: D.C.’s black residents have either fled or been forced out of the city in droves, relocating to Prince George's County and other neighboring jurisdictions, while white residents are moving back to the city from the suburbs. While the non-Hispanic black population dropped 11.1 percent between the 2000 and 2010 census, the white population grew 31.4 percent.

The shift is not unique to D.C. USA Today pointed out that black residents are leaving many major cities, including Chicago, Oakland, Cleveland, St. Louis, and even Atlanta, which is often referred to as the new “Chocolate City.”

D.C. Councilmember Marion Barry told the Washington Post yesterday that the trend of gentrification can be stopped, essentially saying that, despite all of the talk surrounding the numbers, that 50.7 percent isn’t 49 percent — yet.

Unless it is: The Post also pointed out that the city’s black population drops about 1 percent a year, meaning African Americans might already be a minority in D.C. Below, a catalog of events that may have contributed to and/or resulted from this state of affairs.

Sometime in the 1980s: The debut of the bike lane

The District's first bike lanes popped up along East Capitol Street and on 4th and 6th Streets on Capitol Hill. Another early one spanned Calvert Street NW around Adams Morgan. Jim Sebastian of the city's Department of Transportation believes they were installed in the 1980s, but that question remains open. Whenever the bike lanes made their disjointed debut on the city map, they gain miles of ground after Sebastian came aboard in 2001, as part of Mayor Anthony A. Williams' progressive approach to transportation policy. Year after year, street-resurfacing contractors finish their work by painting in a comfortable berth reserved for cyclists. From three miles of lanes in 2001, the coverage has grown to a current count of 50 miles. On their face, bike lanes would appear a race-neutral upgrade to the District's infrastructure. All races and nations, after all, make use of bikes, and few would argue with making the streets safer for everyone. Yet the lanes manage to merge with the city's history of framing everything in black and white terms. Though Williams got us into the lanes, successor Adrian Fenty really pushed them hard. Soon they became synonymous with white urban culture---heavy on hipsters and triathletes---and served as one of the many rallying points for the legions of black voters who turned against Team Fenty.

May 11, 1991: The U Street/Cardozo Metro station opens, helps usher in the gentrification of the U Street Corridor, once referred to as Washington's "Black Broadway," and the surrounding Shaw neighborhood.

June 14, 1992: The rise of "Ward 9"
The New York Times Magazine runs a feature by David J. Dent titled "The New Black Suburbs." It details how middle-class and upper-middle-class African-Americans have left behind the crime and damaged school system of D.C. for Prince George’s County, creating one of the wealthiest black enclaves in the country. A photo of Jack and Leslie Johnson outside of their Mitchellville, Md., home accompanies the piece.

November 1998: D.C. Council becomes majority white
White Phil Mendelsohn and white David Catania win at-large D.C. council seats, and black Hilda Mason loses her council bid, making the 13-member D.C. Council majority white for the first time. Washington is still 62 percent African-American at this point. In September of that year, Mayor Marion Barry expresses his wish that the council reflect the city’s demographics.

Jan. 17, 1999: Washington Post questions blackness of Mayor Anthony A. Williams
Perhaps it was because he liked canoeing, or perhaps it was because of the bow tie. But whatever the case, people all over Washington were questioning just how black Anthony A. Williams was. In an Outlook section piece just weeks into Williams’ mayoralty, Northeast resident-cum-black man Anthony Jenkins poses the question: “How black is Mayor Anthony Williams?” The question is more rhetorical than scientific, as Jenkins proceeds to knock Williams on blackness grounds over 21 beefy paragraphs. The diatribe goes on to dominate the public debate for days, despite containing vacuous passages such as this one: “I was embarrassed once because of assumptions I made about someone, and that was once too often. I used to hold a superstar athlete in low regard, based erroneously on what I thought was his lack of ‘blackness.’ Later, I saw his true nature, which he made public at the most strategic and effective moments.” The tagline of the piece gives a nod to Chocolate City sensibilities, noting that Jenkins is a D.C. native.

Sept. 11, 2000: Rap City no more
BET moves entertainment operations from its Northeast D.C. headquarters to New York City. Video Soul, Rap City, Teen Summit, and other programs shot in D.C. are canceled or relocated a couple of hundred miles up I-95.