The "Segregation and Racial Prejudice in Lancaster, PA in the 50s: Part II" Story

It was an ordinary day.  It's Saturday morning and I'm heading to baseball practice which is behind Edward Hand Junior High School in the southeast section of Lancaster.  My first year of playing organized baseball and I'm playing for the Schick Midget-Midget team.  The bus ride from the north end of the city to practice takes close to 30 minutes, since I have to get off the bus and transfer to a different bus in downtown Lancaster.  I usually sit in the  back of the bus because when a couple of my teammates get on at stops on the way to the field, they always head to the back.  Wasn't until a few years after that I realized that they were supposed to go to the back because they were black.  Lancaster was segregated with the blacks living in the southeast section of the city and the whites occupying the rest of the city.  Not only was Lancaster segregated, it was un-equal.  Most of the local industries in Lancaster didn't hire blacks unless they absolutely had to.  During WWII the companies had to hire the blacks to fill out their workforce.  The blacks that did work earned less then their white counterparts and that was one reason for living in the southeast.  That area was referred to as the ghetto.  Some houses had dirt floors while others had no electricity or running water.  One of my black teammates lived on what was called Barney Google Row which was one block west of and ran parallel to South Duke Street between Susquehanna and Juanita Streets.  I was only 12 at the time and I could see the house that my friend lived in when dad would drive him home from practice on Saturdays, but I didn't associate it with being poor.  How naive I was!  Barney Google Row got it's name from a comic book character named Barney Google who came from a poor rural area in the comic book stories.  The houses in the row consisted of fifteen frame buildings that were erected (I am using the word loosely) around 1922.  They were one story flat roof units, each covering an area approximately 16 feet square.  Seven were two-room units and eight were three-room units.  Water was only in the kitchen area in most of the buildings, but no other conveniences of any kind were provided.  Outhouses were located twelve feet from the back doors in a yard sixteen feet square.  This was where one of my teammates lived, if you can call it living.  Years later I only realized how sad it was that he had to live like that.  Eventually the Lancaster Housing Committee of the Post-War Planning Council decided to demolish Barney Google Row the year after I played baseball in that area of Lancaster.  Subsidized housing was to be provided for the inhabitants of Barney Google Row.  The residents were paid approximately $1000 for their homes on the row and they were forced to leave.  As I sit here and write this story I think back to those days almost 60 years ago and wonder what I must have thought about playing on a mostly black team while living in a white area of Lancaster.  Wasn't scared to travel to that section of the city by myself.  Can't believe my mom and dad left me do that, but they may have been as naive as I was.    Being a 12 year old I didn't know any better.  I just assumed all people were the same and some were poor because they didn't work as hard.  Boy was I wrong!!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.  PS - photos follow to show you the housing that existed in southeast Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

This Sanborn fire insurance map depicts Barney Google Row and the immediate area.  The row is located on the left-center of the map, marked in yellow and running at a slight diagonal to the pink housed in front of them.  If you click on the map it will be enlarged, but may be hard to read.

Barney Google Row from the rear.

Starting the demolition.

As it appears today.