Basic Information
- Type of Place
- Independent City or Town
- Metro Area
- Politics c. 1860?
- Unions, Organized Labor?
Sundown Town Status
- Sundown Town in the Past?
- Possible
- Was there an ordinance?
- Sign?
- Year of Greatest Interest
- Still Sundown?
- Don’t Know
Census Information
| Total | White | Black | Asian | Native | Hispanic | Other | BHshld | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1860 | ||||||||
| 1870 | ||||||||
| 1880 | ||||||||
| 1890 | ||||||||
| 1900 | ||||||||
| 1910 | ||||||||
| 1920 | ||||||||
| 1930 | ||||||||
| 1940 | ||||||||
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| 1960 | ||||||||
| 1970 | ||||||||
| 1980 | ||||||||
| 1990 | ||||||||
| 2000 | 9,042 | 67 | ||||||
| 2010 | ||||||||
| 2020 |
Method of Exclusion
- Realtors
Main Ethnic Group(s)
Group(s) Excluded
- Black
Comments
Email from the brother of a resident: “My brother in law bought a house in Mechanicsburg 5 years ago and in signing all the paperwork, there was a racially restrictive housing covenant attached. There was a single pen mark slash through that particular piece of paperwork, none the less, having gone to college in nearby Grantham, I was struck by a current almost entirely white community allowing this type of history to remain present. This set me into looking for any documentation from mechanicburgs past that may suggest its nonwhite residents were drove out.”
Email from a resident: “After moving into a home in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania in November of 1989 we learned that the terms east shore and west shore referred to whether your town was east or west of the Susquehanna River. We also frequently heard the west shore referred to as ‘the white shore.’ We live on the west shore.”
Conversation in 2002 with a black woman attempting to move in on the west shore: “The realtor told me, and this was two weeks ago, I could live on the west shore, but it’s really called the white shore, so I’d probably be happier somewhere else.”