Basic Information
- Type of Place
- Independent City or Town
- Metro Area
- Politics c. 1860?
- Don’t Know
- Unions, Organized Labor?
- Don’t Know
Sundown Town Status
- Sundown Town in the Past?
- Possible
- Was there an ordinance?
- Don't Know
- Sign?
- Don’t Know
- Year of Greatest Interest
- Still Sundown?
- Surely Not
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | ||||||||
| 1930 | ||||||||
| 1940 | ||||||||
| 1950 | ||||||||
| 1960 | 6,851 | 4 | ||||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | 11,860 | 197 | ||||||
| 2000 | ||||||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Unknown
Main Ethnic Group(s)
- Unknown
Group(s) Excluded
- Unknown
Comments
In 1960, Hershey had at most one black household; however, information on the race relations in the town is sparse. In the A&E video biography, Milton Hershey: The Chocolate King there was no mention of race in Hershey. I think Hershey did not employ blacks and did not let them live in “his” town but have no evidence for or against this opinion.
An employee at the Hershey Community Archives did recall that the Hershey Industrial School was all white for more than 50 years. Hershey set it up in 1909 for orphans. The school desegregated and accepted its first black child in 1968, 14 years after BROWN.
Gary Pomerantz wrote a book on Wilt Chamberlain who scored 100 points in an NBA game in Hershey for the Philadelphia Warriors in 1962. Some 4,124 fans attended the game; they may or may not have been all white. In his book, Pomerantz described Hershey as a sweet-seeing model of the gentle, homogenous small-town America that was fast becoming anachronistic.