Rev. Susan Ashe (Hodge)
In the mid-1950s, a man named Elmo Hodge had a vision to develop a community of custom-built homes marketed to upwardly mobile blacks, a notion then unique in the region.
As a young girl, I recall my mother pointing toward a particular home and saying, “That’s Mr. Hodge’s house!” So, who was this Mr. Hodge and why should I care that it was his house? I wondered.
I would like to share a portion of his vision and journey, one that culminated with the creation of the Lower Paxton Township community of Hodges Heights.
For Everyone
Elmo Hodge was a pig farmer and trash collector who lived in Edgemont with his wife Sibbie and their eight children. His daughter, the Rev. Susan Ashe (Hodge), reminisced with me about growing up in Edgemont with her parents, four sisters and four brothers.
“Daddy raised pigs that were fed from the food scraps he picked up on his trash route in Camp Hill,” she said. “Some of his Camp Hill customers liked daddy so much that they would separate the food scraps for the pigs, and he sold his meat to the Swift Packing House.”
Her husband Charles told me how the Edgemont community would close down 25th Street each Labor Day. Mr. Hodge, an avid hunter, and other neighborhood men would cook wild meat and roast a whole pig. The women would prepare all the side dishes, and the entire community would have a feast.
In April 1945, Elmo Hodge decided to look beyond Edgemont, purchasing 137 acres of farmland in the southeastern section of Lower Paxton Township (near the new Bishop McDevitt campus) from the Anderson family, which caused a stir among the neighbors.
“These neighbors just couldn’t understand why Mr. Anderson would sell his farm to a black man,” said Rev. Ashe.
Mr. Hodge farmed for about a decade when a real estate agency offered him $175,000 for the land. At settlement, he found out that the developers were going to sell lots and houses to whites only, which meant even he wouldn’t be able to live there. Without a second thought, he turned down the money and walked out of the courthouse.
He farmed the land for several more years before deciding to develop the property himself, in the way he wanted. He became even more determined after people from the adjacent area signed petitions to keep him from developing it.
“Daddy dreamed of a community where people of all colors would be able to live together in peace and harmony,” said Rev. Ashe. “He then knew that the success or failure of this business venture to personally develop the property depended upon the availability of blacks to buy lots and build homes.”
Dream Realized
The Hodges Heights project began with 97 one-quarter acre lots. The parcels originally sold for $900 and eventually for as much as $2,000 per lot.
Elmo Hodge had a vision of a community of single-family homes, custom-designed with specific parameters. To provide a sense of those expectations, the following paragraphs were taken directly from a deed of sale dated Jan. 24, 1959.
“No permanent structure to be erected nearer than twenty-five (25) feet of the aside property lines, no house to cost less than fourteen thousand-five hundred ($14,500.00) Dollars, no tannery, piggeries, etc. No gasoline service station, taproom, hotel, nor any materials which are inherently dangerous, and neither garages for occupancy, nor dog kennels or chicken farms.”
For perspective, $14,500 in 1959 had the same buying power as $116,927 does today.
According to Rev. Ashe, her father originally brought a developer to the farm to discuss building homes and selling them.
“Daddy couldn’t get financed by the banks, so their deal never got off the ground,” she said. “His alternative plan was to sell the lots directly to prospective home owners, and they would secure the financing to build their custom homes.”
The plan worked.
Among the buyers were doctors, dentists, teachers, mid-level managers in the private sector and auditors. Many were proud graduates of HBCUs—historically black colleges and universities. The community was never a blacks-only endeavor, though the “original” residents of Hodges Heights were all black folks.
It is worth mentioning that the some of the children of these original families today are surgeons, dentists, a neonatologist, a Rhodes scholar, an investment banker (whom I babysat), tenured university professors, a truck driver, a professional sports figure, a colonel and federal government employees. What’s also noteworthy is that almost none returned to the Harrisburg area to build their careers.
Pride in Ownership
I sat down with my childhood dentist, Dr. Thaddeus Phillips, and his wife Marge. In 1968, they built their family home, where they raised five daughters and one son. They still live in that house today.
Dr. Phillips told me about the formation of the Hodges Heights Men’s Club, which functioned somewhat like a current-day homeowners association. There were annual dues, and one of the primary functions was to ensure property was properly maintained at all times—pride in ownership was the expectation.
Today, the club is called the Hodges Heights Neighborhood Civic Club.
“Dues are still paid and the club function has expanded to include providing gestures of comfort for those who may be ill around the holidays, giving gifts to high school and college graduates, having a Christmas luncheon and sometimes a bit of community activism,” said Marge Phillips. “Many of us petitioned to close a nearby landfill when radon was found in some of our homes, and we won.”
A resident who built in the 1950s added, “It was exciting to be able to build the home that you wanted and to know it was the first in the area to be an all-black, custom-built community.”
Elmo Hodge’s vision and dream has come to be. Today, Hodges Heights is a community that still boasts pride in ownership, and people of all stripes exist in harmony.
Wendy Jackson-Dowe can be reached at [email protected]. She would like to thank the Ashe family for sharing this important piece of history and pride for the greater Harrisburg region.
