 As of the 1980s the only counties in the United States where more than half the population cited "English" as their only ancestry group were all in the hills of eastern Kentucky (and made up virtually every county in this region).Kentucky was a slave state, and blacks once comprised over one-quarter of its population; however, it lacked the cotton plantation system and never had the same high percentage of African Americans as most other slave states.While less than 8% of the total population is black, Kentucky has a relatively significant rural African American population in the Central and Western areas of the state.