In a time of segregated dining and lodging, Jack’s Hotel, the Jackson House, and other Black-owned businesses in Harrisburg provided essential accommodations to Black travelers.
In 1937, over one hundred Philadelphia teachers visited Harrisburg. Among them was a small group of African American educators. When the Penn Harris Hotel refused to serve food to African American principal Arthur H. Fauset and a handful of other teachers on account of their race, their fellow visiting teachers declared a boycott of the hotel, igniting a stir surrounding Pennsylvania’s Equal Rights Law. As a matter of fact, the Pennsylvania law - which prevented denial of service based on race in a broader scope of “public places” than before - was a source of contention ever since its passage in 1935 on the grounds that it was too vague, supposedly rendering it ineffective. Appealing to this line of reasoning, Franklin Moore, chairman of the Hotel Association’s legislative committee and manager of the Penn Harris Hotel at the time of the 1937 incident, advised hotels not to comply. Therefore, not even the law protected Black travelers in Pennsylvania like it was intended to, as was the case for those visiting teachers.
The Equal Rights Bill was declared valid in the end, but the whole situation nonetheless demonstrated the immense challenges that often came when traveling as an African American during Jim Crow, even in a northern city like Harrisburg. Due to the rejection and discrimination that African Americans faced on the road throughout the United States, many turned toward African American postal worker Victor H. Green’s Green Book for guidance on which businesses - including restaurants and hotels - would accept them and be safe for them in a Jim Crow environment. The Green Book, first published in 1936, listed several Harrisburg locations throughout its many editions. Today, only two remain standing, with only one still in operation. These businesses serve as a reminder of not only the hardships that African Americans faced when traveling, but also of the immense successes that Black business owners were able to achieve in spite of it all.
Jack’s Hotel was opened in 1946 by Calobe Jackson Sr., father of prominent Harrisburg historian Calobe Jackson Jr., who recalls its location on North Sixth Street as being vibrant and full of small businesses during his childhood. Jackson Jr. remembers the Green Book as something that offered African Americans a sense of comfort and safety so they could travel without confrontation, an expectation that was no doubt fulfilled by Jack’s Hotel as well as Jack’s Barber Shop, another Green Book location that was owned by his father.
On the very same street, a different Jackson family was operating their own hotel, seemingly even causing some confusion in the 1962 iteration of the Green Book. The Jackson House was founded by German Jackson, the son of an enslaved man who came to Harrisburg as part of the Great Migration during the 1920s. Working at the Penn Harris Hotel for more than 30 years did not deter him from operating his own businesses at the same time, their successes illustrated in part by the hosting of major figures such as boxer Joe Louis and bandleader Cab Calloway at the Jackson House. Although the hotel portion of the Jackson House has since been demolished, its cafe is still standing. Now owned and operated by German Jackson’s friend, Dave Kergis as the Jackson House sandwich shop. The Jackson House restaurant and the building that once housed Jack’s Hotel are not only Harrisburg’s final Green Book locations; they are also two of the last three remnants of the historic Seventh Ward, the African American business district of the early twentieth century, which was demolished during the 1950s in order to expand the Capitol Complex.
Even if most of Harrisburg’s historic Black businesses no longer exist in the tangible sense, their legacy lives on through the stories of those who built them - or advocated for them. African Americans fought for safe travel and accommodations decades before the Green Book’s publication. One of the most prominent figures was William (W.) Justin Carter, a Black attorney who participated in civil rights cases both locally in Harrisburg and on the national scale. In light of the Old Eighth Ward’s demolition during the 1910s, the Frye Hotel, a State Street hotel that was welcoming to African Americans, needed a liquor license in order to move to a new location at 1012 North Seventh Street. Alderman Charles P. Walter, the man in charge of the new property, had plans to build a modern, 40-room hotel there, declaring that Harrisburg needed a hotel that would serve traveling African Americans, and if the Frye Hotel was forced out of business without being able to move somewhere else, then they would no longer have “adequate accommodations” when visiting the city.
It was not long before objections began rolling in. Some argued that the Frye Hotel would attract “unlawful” clientele to North Seventh Street, while others shuddered at the possibility of white and Black patrons being served together, leading owner Theodore Frye to “vigorously [deny] that white men or women [were] permitted to drink together in his State street hotel” during his witness stand testimony. Others yet claimed that North Seventh Street already had enough bars, raising the question if race should ever be a factor in the granting of liquor licenses considering that there would be “no licensed [bars] conducted by a colored man” if the Frye Hotel closed. Defending the Frye Hotel, W. Justin Carter argued that a hotel geared toward African Americans was a necessity, pointing to the fact that even though they were legally allowed to purchase liquor just as whites were for the same price, the act of doing so was often met with humiliation by racist bartenders. He also pointed out that in many hotels, while white patrons received pure liquor, African Americans were given “jigger” whiskey, described as a “concoction of cologne and alcohol.” A hotel catering mainly to African Americans, on the other hand, would give its patrons better treatment regardless of race.
Unfortunately, the Frye Hotel lost its legal battle, which was memorialized in a 1917 article of the Harrisburg Telegraph as “one of the most notorious dives of the city.” However, the work of W. Justin Carter was not in vain; he paved the way for Green Book locations such as Jack’s Hotel and the Jackson House, helping to inspire African Americans to create safe places for themselves if nobody else would. These places were not “notorious dives” as some in the past have argued. Rather, they were opportunities for African Americans to travel and to patronize businesses that welcomed them with open arms. You and I may have a habit of taking the ability to lodge at a hotel for granted, but the stories of those Black teachers in 1937, the two Jackson families, and W. Justin Carter’s defense of the Frye Hotel demonstrate that such a convenience has not always been so accessible for everyone.
A full list of resources used in this story can be accessed here.
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