February 12, 2025
An app uncovers York, NY’s buried Black historical past, however its creator questions why so many former Black group hubs have been changed by parking heaps.
The Black girl behind an app devoted to uncovering York, New York’s forgotten Black historical past is questioning whether or not the previous Inexperienced E book stops have been deliberately paved over to erase the city’s Black trailblazers.
Samantha Dorm launched the Paved Over Prominence mission after discovering that lots of York’s former Black companies and group hubs had been changed by parking heaps. She later partnered with Andy Lynch and his firm, Imaginative and prescient Options AR, to develop an app that permits customers to discover York’s neighborhoods via their telephone or pill, overlaying real-time digital camera views with textual content and artwork that convey the realm’s hidden historical past to life.
“I personally didn’t know this historical past,” Dorm instructed the York Each day Document.
“I began doing a little analysis with the Buddies of Lebanon Cemetery in 2019 and to study in regards to the accomplishments of York’s African-American group and what they have been in a position to obtain even throughout the worst of instances is simply superb.”
The app highlights historic Black communities in York, together with two key neighborhoods: the realm round North Duke and East Philadelphia streets, and the neighborhood surrounding West Princess and Beaver Streets and Pershing Avenue. The latter was as soon as dwelling to the previous Moravian Church, which dissolved in 1905 and have become town’s solely playground for Black youngsters.
Throughout its prime, the park hosted boxing matches, drawing crowds of 400 to 600, as reported by previous articles in The Baltimore Afro-American newspaper. The Imaginative and prescient Options app options an overlay of the boxing ring that when stood within the park for these occasions. The park was led by Johanna “Aunt Jo” Harris, who based York’s first Lady Scouts chapter for Black women. Her legacy lives on with Aunt Jo Lane, a avenue named in her honor.
In 1938, metropolis funds cuts led to the park’s closure the next 12 months. Immediately, the positioning the place it as soon as stood has been changed by a parking zone.
“Was it simply that the properties have been dilapidated or was there was deliberate effort to pave over websites essential to the Black group?” Dorm stated. “You possibly can’t say. You need to take it with a grain of salt. What we should always do is attempt to spotlight the lives of the households who lived right here and constructed a group.”
Dorm was aware of York’s Black historical past due to her ancestors being amongst York’s pioneering Black households who migrated from South Carolina in quest of alternative. Nonetheless, her analysis uncovered a broader historical past, revealing a once-thriving group that has since been changed by parking heaps.
“Quite a lot of the locations the place outstanding Black households lived, cherished and worshipped at the moment are parking heaps,” she stated. “That’s why we known as it Paved Over Prominence.”
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