For Black History Month, The Spark is spotlighting voices who have spent decades uncovering the stories often left out of Central Pennsylvania’s historical record. One of those voices is Dr. Leroy Hopkins, a historian whose work has focused on Lancaster’s African American past—and whose own life reflects the complicated realities of race, community, and belonging in the region.
Hopkins grew up in southeast Lancaster during segregation, but his earliest memories challenge the idea that racial tension defined every aspect of daily life. “I lived in a multicultural enclave, the 7th Ward,” he said. “I was born on the 400 block of North Street, grew up in the 500 block, and then moved to Church Street, which is in the 3rd Ward. And my neighbors were German, Russian Jews, Italians, and we all got along. There was no racial tension. The problems came when you went outside of your community.”
Within the neighborhood, Hopkins recalled a sense of safety and independence that feels distant today. “We were pretty much self-sufficient. The only time I left the neighborhood was to go to the movies,” he said, laughing as he remembered his childhood ritual. “I acquired a taste for movies, and I miss that now. I used to be in the movies every Saturday.” By age seven, he was walking downtown on his own. “I walked from the Southeast to downtown, went to the Hamilton. That was the favorite movie theater.”
Yet even as a child, he was aware—through family stories—that this sense of normalcy did not extend everywhere. “My mother talked about discrimination in the movie theater I didn’t experience that,” Hopkins said. “But there were places where you were not welcome. We never went out to eat. Part of the reason we didn’t go out to eat, we didn’t have the money. But we knew we weren’t welcome.”
Some of those stories were subtle but deeply telling. “I’ve heard from friends that there was one establishment in downtown Lancaster—the Black person ordered, say, a soda, and they drank the soda, put the glass down, the server would take it and throw the glass away,” he said. “In my lifetime, I know, you went into a store, you were gonna buy a hat. If you put it on your head, that was your hat. And it was subtle. It wasn’t like in the South. There was no violence involved, although there were threats of violence.”
Hopkins described clear geographic boundaries enforced by fear and reputation. “We were told not to go to Cabbage Hill,” he said, referring to a predominantly German Catholic area of Lancaster. “There were stories about individual violence against the Blacks who came in there.” Even decades later, echoes of that exclusion remained. He recalled a friend in the 1970s who walked into a neighborhood bar and was refused service. “The bartender said, ‘No, you’re inebriated.’ He wouldn’t serve him.”
Those experiences shaped how Hopkins came to define discrimination. “Discrimination is denial of opportunity,” he said. “But sometimes the opportunity is denied because you don’t have access to the education and the employment.” He pointed to the closure of Lancaster’s Urban League in 2013 as a major loss. “The purpose of the Urban League was to work with the powers that be, the industries and so forth, to create those access points,” he said. “It’s a mistake to deny DEI, because diversity is really our strength. Who knows what skills are out there?”
Hopkins’ professional life has been devoted to finding the stories that never made it into textbooks. “I’ve discovered aspects that there are no textbooks, and no one told me about,” he said. One recent example is his research into Black baseball in Lancaster. “Not the Negro Leagues,” he explained, “but what about the local scene?”
Using Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com, Hopkins uncovered what he called “a whole hoard of information.” He found evidence of the Bethel Athletic Club, a Black baseball team playing as early as 1910. “I think they were members from my church,” he said. He also discovered the Judeans, a team made up of Jewish Lancastrians from the same neighborhood. “All history is local history,” Hopkins said. “Just by looking in the newspaper, you can discover things that you never would have imagined otherwise.”
That philosophy guided decades of painstaking research, often conducted on microfilm. “I would spend five, six, seven hours reading the microfilm,” he said. “That’s how I got bifocals.” While the 19th-century newspapers were often steeped in racism, Hopkins said they still offered clues. “Thanks to that sort of negative press, I found things to investigate.”
One of his most impactful discoveries came from an 1820 ordinance requiring all free persons of color entering or leaving Lancaster to register at the mayor’s office. “Here were all the entries from 1820 to 1849 of people who entered,” he said. That research became his first published article in the Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society and later took on a life of its own.
“In 2000, the Black Student Union at McCaskey dramatized sections from the entry book,” Hopkins recalled. “We took them to Washington to the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History.” Founded by Carter G. Woodson, the organization also created Negro History Week, now Black History Month. “The students did their dramatic skit, and they got a standing ovation,” Hopkins said. “I’m thinking that’s what history should be about. It touched the lives of young people, and it gave some information to the public.”
His work has also challenged long-standing myths. Hopkins described his investigation into the so-called “Negro Plot of York” in 1803. “If you dig deeply into things,” he said, “you’ll find that it’s not always cut and dry.” Newspaper accounts blamed Black residents for a supposed conspiracy, but court records told a different story. “I found that the people who were arrested included a white man and a white woman,” he said. “The white man confessed his guilt, recanted, and was let go. The woman was told not to show her face in York again. And then they prosecuted the Blacks.”
The consequences were severe. “Blacks living in York had to have passes, had to identify themselves,” Hopkins said. “They couldn’t enter or leave York without having these passes.” Even when his research challenged accepted narratives, Hopkins encountered resistance. “They said it wasn’t valid,” he recalled of one rejected article. “And I said, ‘Well, I’m not writing about Philadelphia, I’m writing about York.’”
For Hopkins, the work has always been about more than academic recognition. “I do history not just for myself,” he said. “But hopefully to interest young people in history.” As Black History Month continues, his message is clear: the stories are there, waiting to be found, if we are willing to look—and willing to listen.
