Pennsylvania Archives - The Race Card Project

East Shore, White Shore: Segregation lives

March 29, 2016March 29, 2016 adopted, bi-racial, census, Confederate flag, diverse, Dixie, East Shore, Faculty, Gettysburg, Mason-Dixon Line, Mechanicsburg, Messiah College, PA, Pennsylvania, Samuel P. Wilcock, segregation, USA, White Shore

Samuel P. Wilcock,
Mechanicsburg, PA.
Messiah College, Faculty.

Just look at race by census track. The “West Shore” is over 90% white pretty much all over the place, while the “East Shore” is much more diverse and white is the minority in Harrisburg. We lived in Lemoyne, right across the river from the city, and saw a Dixie/Confederate flag flying on a pole in a backyard less than a block from our house. As an adoptive father to two biracial kids, this was deeply unsettling. We are north of Gettysburg and the Mason-Dixon line, but at times it is hard to tell.

I’m a German Russian Nazi Jew.

May 8, 2013 Bozrah, ct, Dutch, German, grandfather, Jew, nazi, Pennsylvania, Rachel Stahr, Russian

Rachel Stahr
Bozrah, CT

This is my heritage. My maternal grandfather and father are both Pennsylvania Dutch, but my great-grandmother is where things get interesting. Her family emigrated from Russia and was Jewish. She studied German and later moved there. She married a man who I’ve been told was in the S.S. Before things got too dangerous, she moved back to the US with her two daughters. This is what I grew up knowing. In the early 90s, I felt I had to hide the fact that I was of German descent because all the school children around me meant that meant I was a Nazi-and of course it didn’t. In high school, I adopted this phrase to describe my heritage. I don’t use it unless I can then explain it, but it how my family was shaped.

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