Codorus Street reunion planned for Saturday

But the memories, and many of the people who once lived there, remain.

On Saturday, former residents of the Codorus Street neighborhood in York City will gather to reminisce about a place where friends and family looked out for one another.

The reunion is scheduled for noon to 7 p.m. at Martin Luther King Park, where the tight-knit community of neighbors once lived.

Jeff Kirkland, who lived there until he was 8, said the neighborhood became a destination in the 1920s for black transplants from South Carolina who traveled north looking for work.

Kirkland said his grandfather was actually on his way to New York in 1923, but he stopped in York and decided to stay because jobs were plentiful.

Friends and family members followed. Some Italian immigrants lived there too, Kirkland said.

“It was just a village-type atmosphere,” he said. “People looked after each other.”

As a child, Kirkland said, he learned the values of respect and hard work on Codorus Street.

For some reason Kirkland does not understand, the government took the homes by eminent domain in the 1960s. Some of the land remained vacant for years. Part of it was sold to a local business, he said.