 The largest minority group in Virginia is African American , at 19 @.@ 7 % as of 2015 . Most African American Virginians have been descendants of enslaved Africans who worked on tobacco , cotton , and hemp plantations . These men , women and children were brought from West and West @-@ Central Africa , primarily from Angola and the Bight of Biafra . The Igbo ethnic group of what is now southern Nigeria were the single largest African group among slaves in Virginia . Though the black population was reduced by the Great Migration , since 1965 there has been a reverse migration of blacks returning south . According to the Pew Research Center , the state has the highest concentration of black and white interracial marriages . 
