The Black woman behind an app dedicated to uncovering York, New York’s forgotten Black history is questioning whether the former Green Book stops were intentionally paved over to erase the town’s Black trailblazers.
Samantha Dorm launched the Paved Over Prominence project after discovering that many of York’s former Black businesses and community hubs had been replaced by parking lots. She later partnered with Andy Lynch and his company, Vision Solutions AR, to develop an app that allows users to explore York’s neighborhoods through their phone or tablet, overlaying real-time camera views with text and art that bring the area’s hidden history to life.
“I personally didn’t know this history,” Dorm told the York Daily Record.
“I started doing some research with the Friends of Lebanon Cemetery in 2019 and to learn about the accomplishments of York’s African-American community and what they were able to achieve even during the worst of times is just amazing.”
The app highlights historical Black communities in York, including two key neighborhoods: the area around North Duke and East Philadelphia streets, and the neighborhood surrounding West Princess and Beaver Streets and Pershing Avenue. The latter was once home to the former Moravian Church, which dissolved in 1905 and became the city’s only playground for Black children.
During its prime, the park hosted boxing matches, drawing crowds of 400 to 600, as reported by old articles in The Baltimore Afro-American newspaper. The Vision Solutions app features an overlay of the boxing ring that once stood in the park for these events. The park was led by Johanna “Aunt Jo” Harris, who founded York’s first Girl Scouts chapter for Black girls. Her legacy lives on with Aunt Jo Lane, a street named in her honor.
In 1938, city budget cuts led to the park’s closure the following year. Today, the site where it once stood has been replaced by a parking lot.
“Was it just that the properties were dilapidated or was there was deliberate effort to pave over sites important to the Black community?” Dorm said. “You can’t say. You have to take it with a grain of salt. What we should do is try to highlight the lives of the families who lived here and built a community.”
Dorm was familiar with York’s Black history due to her ancestors being among York’s pioneering Black families who migrated from South Carolina in search of opportunity. However, her research uncovered a broader history, revealing a once-thriving community that has since been replaced by parking lots.
“A lot of the places where prominent Black families lived, loved and worshipped are now parking lots,” she said. “That’s why we called it Paved Over Prominence.”
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